Hey, everyone meet Kevin Here We've got to talk about my expectations for the stock market going forward because we just hit I Can't believe I'm going to say this phrase, a 52-week high. How remarkable is that the NASDAQ 100 Technologies I prefer Ticker Qqqm to measure it just hit a 52 week high. That's absolutely remarkable given that it feels like we're still supposed to be in sort of a recessionary time. And you've got fears about Russia Ukraine Even though they just extended a grain deal, you've got fears of the debt ceiling.

Even though we keep hearing they're not going to default, it's not over yet. We keep having talk about, well, all this. There's got to be all this new inflation while at the same time corporations are missing earnings just unfortunately. Almost seems like for the Bears the stock market recession may already be behind us.

Which is quite odd because a lot of people generally say oh, it's when the FED pivots, That's when we have the the second true collapse of the stock market and we hit new lows. But I think for a moment it makes sense to just zoom out and just ignore all the short-term data and noise. The corporate earnings, the short-term inflation expectations of consumers which are so shaped by the media. The Five-Year Bond markets expectations of inflation which are at a one year low.

Uh, the Federal Reserve the debt ceiling Just put a sign all of the noise for a second. And let's try to together logic out. why would we be at a 52-week high on the NASDAQ up 1.3 percent today at the time of this recording? Why does it make logical sense at all? Let's just start there and try to analyze that and then move on from there before we do. I You have to quickly remind you.

thank you for being here. If you like the kind of content I do and you want to see more of it I Know I haven't been posting as much lately. Leave a comment let me know you want to see more videos Subscribe: Consider sharing the video if you found this one helpful or share a different video. it helps the channel out tremendously.

Hit that like button. but uh, I I am considering flip-flopping again into some form of morning live stream routine just mostly because as much as I I like the idea of fewer videos that we spend more time editing I get this like weird fulfillment of waking up early and just sharing my thoughts in the morning. uh and uh, that that is is like missing. So anyway, let's get into this.

Okay, this this is the chart now. I actually have the Fibonaccis drawn here on Qqm or QQQ rather than Qqqm. Keep in mind that M is the cheaper version of this. It's exactly the same thing by the same company M is.

if you are going to invest in this ETF this index ETF get Qqqm instead of QQQ. You'll see the same thing. just a lower fee. So what do we have here? Well, this is, uh, basically a Fibonacci retracement drawn over the top of the market back in November of 2021 all the way down to the bottom of the market in October And then you can see we've kind of started creating.

If you could imagine that, maybe in 10 years this is the start of a volatile Nike Swoosh right? This is the thesis that I've had that we're going to have this sort of Rapid one year down and then it might take a few years and we'll have this extended longer prolonged bull market. Hopefully knock on wood. That's been my thesis, right? And if you look out if you zoom out sort of onto the weekly chart, you could see the beginning of that right picture that there's your down and then picture extending this for five years out, right? And obviously I don't know if that's going to be the case you'd want to be in rather than out. We don't know that that's going to be the case.

but when we look at this now, we have to try to go back to October and think what was going on in the summer of last year and September and October what was going on? What was going on was we just had the double dip of inflation news. In other words, we thought maybe inflation would have been over in March we got some bad reports and we got a soft report. And so the market rallied on that soft report. But as soon as there were signs that uh oh, we were actually about to get more bad reports, we plummeted and we had the same thing happen a few times.

It's been a very volatile way down on inflation reports. If you go back and look at the actual granular data, you'll see it, but you'll also have to align that in September We got the Jackson Hole meeting where where Jerome Powell essentially told us look, we are going to have to go a lot higher And it was really at that moment that markets internalized this fear of oh my gosh, we could truly be facing a Paul Volcker moment and that led to the tax loss harvesting leading into the end of the year Because people thought, boy, let's get some more clarity going into the beginning of 2023 if we get Paul Volckert, which is a reference to 1981 1982 the second double Dip recession after the 79-80 recession where essentially interest rates were jacked up from eight percent to like 19 more than a double a two and a half X just to control inflation expectations, That fear started getting priced into our market. and in my opinion, that is exactly why we hit a bottom. A true fear.

Think about that for a moment. Why were we so low? A true fear that a Paul Volcker was coming, that we were going to get rug pulled and we were going to hell of a depression. In other words, if you go back to October what did we have in front of us in October we had oh my God Inflation's not going down, we're going to get Paul Volckert. We are going to have a really nasty recession.

Jerome Powell Basically says we're screwed. Those were the fears that we had back then. you know. Add on top of that Commodities inflation, oil prices were still very high.

Uh, China's reopening was going to create an inflationary boom. All this nonsense was ahead of us. Okay, well, where do we stand today? Do we think we're going to get Paul Volckerd? Well, no, because inflation is falling substantially. In fact, leading indicators at companies and earnings calls and that indicate that inflation is falling.

Now, the debate has gone from oh my gosh, inflation is out of control and we're going to get Paul Volckerd to the bear argument, which is, well, it's not two percent yet and and it's gonna take a lot longer to get to two percent. So therefore, it's bad. Fine, that may be true. In fact, if there's one lesson that I've learned over this cycle, it's patience.

It's you know things don't go as quick as you think Now Patience aside, consider the difference of those arguments. The argument in October was we have zero hope. Prices are still rising at substantial rates. Companies are still talking about rates going up.

Commodities prices are high, Energy prices are high. Uh, you know that was right around the time of the Nordstream Pipeline. Oh my gosh is is you know, Uh, uh, the geopolitical situation going to go nuclear, right? I Mean how many? How many video titles did we see about nuclear warfare? So anyway, that was your October era today. It's like, wow.

It's just not following as fast as we'd like. That's okay though in a weird way, the Federal Reserve and this is an important principle to remember. Can undertake a principle known as opportunistic disinflation. They can do so as long as two conditions are met.

So this is a lot of words. I'm gonna try to simplify this. There are two conditions that the FED can that needs in order to undertake opportunistic disinflation. Let me first explain: opportunity to stick disinflation.

Opportunistic disinflation is a fancy way of saying inflation is still higher than where we want it, but we don't have a rush to get it down. so let's just patiently wait for it to get down. This has historical context. In 1982, interest rates were two and a half X Inflation quickly fell to around eight to nine percent, and the Federal Reserve said, well.

we eventually want to get to maybe two, two and a half percent. How long are we going to take to get to two and a half percent? Yes, In other words, they had no idea. They're just like. well, as long as inflation expectations are going down and those expectations are stable, we can be patient.

Guess how patient they were. They waited 20 years to get inflation to two percent. 20 years to get inflation to two percent. They basically just used every next Market cycle to to ratchet inflation down.

It was perfect. I mean I shouldn't say it was perfect. Nothing's ever perfect. But the point is, as long as your inflation expectations are anchored, the FED can undergo what's known as opportunistic disinflation.

So okay. Well, that's also one of the conditions. Is of the two conditions, uh, inflation expectations remaining anchored. There are some worries that consumer expectations of inflation are de-anchoring because of the University of Michigan consumer sentiment surveys.

However, there's an asterisk on that because consumer inflation expectations are really shaped by what news headlines are, and news headlines are blatantly lying to us saying that companies raise prices nine percent in the first quarter when we know they raise prices nine percent the first half of last year. Which then when you look at a year-over-year comparison, you're like, no, the company's raised night versus nine percent year over year. Very different. Just ignore that for a moment.

The point is I Think you could put on the tinfoil hat with me? I'll join you on this and say the news media makes more money if they have more fearful headlines and articles. We all know this. Nobody can dispute that and as a result, the news media would love for you to believe that inflation is still a massive problem. It's not.

But is it at two percent yet? No, No, No, it's not. But again, we're doing opportunistic disinflation here, right? Okay, so condition number One is of opportunistic disinflation is anchored Inflation Expectations which we have one year low of the Uh five year Break Even Inflation Rate Easy Charges Google That St Louis Fed five Year Break Even Boom. Look at the chart. Okay, pay attention to it.

If that disanchers we got a problem, then you have, uh, this idea of uh, the FED having a meaningfully restrictive position policy position. uh, drum Powell believes that is having a real rate at two percent and you calculate that. Don't worry if you're I lose you here on this. Okay, I'll just give you the bottom line.

You can calculate what the real rate is by taking your outlook of inflation expectations and subtracting that from the Fed rate. If The Fed rate is five percent and one or three year inflation expectations are three percent. Then the real yield is the difference. two percent.

As long as we're two percent, we're good. So what happens if inflation expectations fall to two percent for the next year out? Well, great. Now we can bring the interest rate down two percent. Now what if the FED says Well, We actually don't need a real rate of two percent? We actually only need a real rate of one percent.

Well, now you're at three percent fed Funds rate, so there are plenty of ways to loosen this. And I'm not trying to be permeable here. I'm just trying to say this is what the FED is probably looking at. Well, as long as expectations are broadly in line, there's no rush to get this down.

In fact, people are like, what do you mean Kevin They got to get down. Man, they gotta get it down before they cut. No, they don't. They do not need to get inflation down, they just need to have inflation expectations anchored.

And the, uh, the the path of decline. They don't need to get inflation down by a certain point. In fact, take their own words for it. Let's just skip to that.

Take their own words for it. Look at their last summary of economic projections: How long does it take to actually get inflation close to two percent end of 2025.? that's them, not me. They're basically saying, look, we know this is going to take a while. It's probably going to be two years before we get inflation down.

And people are like, you mean they don't have to get inflation down to two percent sooner or before they cut? No, they don't And so now when we look at this, this chart of what I call the Nike Swoosh, it makes sense. In fact, about a year ago at this time I said I Believe this Market is going to pre-price in the Feds rate Cuts Well before they come, because we know the problem of this Market is not the actual economy. it's inflation. Now, of course, we're starting to see faltering in the economy, right? Uh, credit? Whether it's credit tightening or certain segments of the auto market, or the Freight Market is in a straight recession, right? There are definitely problems within the market, but broadly the economy is doing phenomenally well on a broad average.

Again, that's not to say things aren't trending towards softening, but we look at S P earnings, they're above 2019 levels. If you look at S P margins, they've just declined to 2019 levels. This is like a normalization that we're going through right now. Can it get worse if the FED goes too far? Absolutely.

Don't get me wrong, if you're a bear and you're like Kevin man, you're full of it. You're biased. There were absolutely still reasons to be bearish. If inflation unanchors via the Market's expectations of inflation and this, these next inflation reports don't show us a continued, at least slow downtrend, we're gonna have problems.

The Market's going to have to price in higher for even longer and we're gonna have to push back those rate cut expectations. Right now, we're looking at a 36 chance of a 25 basis point hike next. Uh, cycle here. June 14th and a UH 60 chance.

Well, a little bit more like 64 chance of of a pause that has actually compressed. We used to be at 80 chance of pause, but at the same time as that is compressed, that is. the odds of a pause have actually gone down. The stock market has actually gone up.

In my opinion. that is solely because this these two lower bounds of the Fibonacci retracement here the two lower channels. Our fear they are fear that we are blatantly screwed worse than we were in the 1980s. Now does that justify us getting to new all-time highs? Probably not.

Right then, we really have to be on a path to Uh to two percent inflation. Then we can Absolutely. but again, I Really believe in this Nike Swoosh recovery. and I believe that the companies with the most pricing power are your uh Nvidia AMD Intel To some extent though, it's the redheaded stepchild.

Uh, you've got um, you know Tesla uh. end phase is probably at its bottom right now and I think after AMD Nvidia and these companies level out which are big positions of mine or I have personal exposure to them. Uh, then after they level out I think that you're kind of like gonna pull up like a rubber band The the Left Behind uh chip and Innovative stocks and those will be like the end phase and the Teslas uh I. Really don't think companies like Walmart I mean okay.

this morning in the course member live stream I had a hernia over Walmart I I Kid you not? Okay, let me just give you a quick little example over why I was pissed at Walmart Okay Walmart is a company that is trading at a 24.6 p E ratio with three percent Revenue growth, Three percent Revenue growth and nearly a 25 p E ratio forward? That's dumb. On top of that, earnings per share are expected to grow nine percent. That puts them at an almost three peg. Okay, they bring 1.1 to their bottom line.

Costco brings 2.6 to the bottom line of everything they sell. Walmart barely makes money, their valuation is stupid, and then what's Walmart doing? They're paying dividends and issuing BuyBacks like total morons of their short-term liabilities and bills that they have to pay. They only have 11.2 percent in cash available. Five times as bad as Costco Costco has nearly five times as much cash available for their short-term liabilities as Walmart does.

When you look at their long-term debt combined, you combine their long-term and short-term debts divided by the cash they have. Walmart has 13.7 times as much cash as debt or uh, sorry, 13.7 times as much debt as cash. It's stupid Walmart has about 2.7 times as much debt as cash. Oh sorry Costco I Keep screwing these things up.

Costco is the better one Costco is 2.7 times as much uh, debt as cash compared to like the 13x at Walmart. But Walmart's doing well because people are still convinced. Somehow, confusingly convinced that the best place to be going into a recession is defensive stocks. Oh well, people still gotta buy toothpaste.

so I'll buy staples like Walmart Are you kidding me? At a 24 P E ratio with earnings growth like Revenue growth three percent in earnings growth at eight to nine percent. This PEG ratio and phases half the valuation Tesla is like 60 of valuation. Like 60 less of a valuation than Walmart. What do you think is gonna be worth more in five years? Don't worry.

I already did the math. Our projection for end phase in five years is around a two and a half X from here Walmart Our projection for five years out, four or five years out, 28 up from here. What do you want? Two and a half X or 28 One's Gonna have more volatility than the other because Walmart thinks it's a great idea when you have that much debt and you're paying 500 million dollars in interest in a quarter. They think it's a great idea to pay dividends and do stock BuyBacks Whatever.

That's just my personal opinion, right? Whatever. those are the things we cover in our course member live streams by the way, things like that along with real estate analysis. But so what's the bottom line here? Well, I ask the people I truly ask the Bears and it's okay to be bearish I Get it, You know I was a bear at one point January 2022. I didn't make I didn't make every move perfectly Nobody's Perfect It's okay, it's okay to make mistakes, but the point is I ask the Bears what does it take to get back to this level and they just say oh well, just wait, it's coming, there's gonna be another drop and it's gonna be even worse than this because you know we're gonna go into the real earnings recession or whatever and then we look and it's like earnings have normalized and margins have normalized to 2019.

It's like okay, so it's gonna get even worse. Okay mate, maybe for the Staples You know you look at chips, their earnings recession is over. You know they had their 30 decline. So now you look and you say okay, well what is it going to take to get back there? Oh well.

a double dip of inflation? Okay, well, where is it? We're slowly trending down on inflation. Oh yeah, but that's not fast enough. Really? By what account does the FED say, we need to get inflation down to two percent. Now they haven't even pulled the Fate hat out of the bag yet.

When they pull a fate hat out of the bag, we go Moon Because then it's going to remind the whole world that the FED isn't trying to get to two percent at a moment. they're trying to get to an average of two percent over time. Flexible average inflation targeting. Look it up if you haven't heard about it yet.

But beyond that, their own projection is we're going to wait until 2025.. So look, this is my perspective. Uh I Do think we might be a little overextended here in the short term before the next inflation report. We'll probably have some red days before that.

So like short term not doesn't matter. Long term, the Nike Swoosh is here I Strongly believe in it. Thank you so much for watching this video. I Really appreciate you.

Hopefully we'll see you in the next video and uh, you know, once in a while have some coffee out of a princess cup. See in the next one now! I Want you to know this when it comes to AI time is what's going to make you money, and if you can prove that value to an employer, you'll always be able to be employed. So this is another way of making sure that you don't get replaced. Foreign.