*BIG NEWS* for The Stock Market... (Futures PLUMMET)

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the channel. It looks like tomorrow morning's probably going to be a pretty rough day. The Dow is down almost 1% in futures. S&P down 0.2. The Nasdaq is actually green right now. So, weird things are happening. We do have a lot of major news and developments that you need to know before tomorrow morning. Ladies and gentlemen, I don't want to waste your time here. Your time is valuable and on this channel, the only thing that we strive to do is to help you make more money, to find the big winners before Wall Street does, to stay more informed and make better decisions in the stock market. Hit the like button for the YouTube algorithm. Hit the hype button to help push this video out to more people that need to see it. So, one of the biggest problems that we are going to face tomorrow is oil is now hitting the highest levels you have seen in the past 3 months. Technically, more than 3 months. You are at $93 a barrel, $93.01 a barrel. This is higher than you even had back here on July 23rd before oil fell from $92 a barrel down to 75. This is also likely to push higher 10-year Treasury yields and the expectations for the Fed to hike rates on September 16th. On Friday, the probability for a Fed hike on September 16th, which guys, it is September 7th today. It is September 8th tomorrow. We are getting very close to this Fed meeting was 58.1%. So, if the Fed meeting was tomorrow, you would guaranteed get a rate hike. The Fed almost always does what the markets are pricing in. If there's a 55% chance or greater heading into September 16th of a Fed hike, you're going to get a Fed hike. And the problem with that is one hike does nothing to the economy. Like literally nothing. Figuratively speaking, maybe a little bit, but like nothing. It's symbolic of a hiking cycle. It's the second, the third, the fourth hike that really adds the restriction to the economy and that's the last thing the markets need at this point for the Fed to be responding to an oil shock. The markets are pressuring the Fed into hiking rates because oil pressures are causing inflation and they're like, "Yeah, that means people need to lose their jobs." Like somehow that'll slow down the excessive debt lending in the AI hardware trade or some of the more frothy areas of the economy. It's It's It sounds criminal, but that's what's happening right now. To make the stakes even higher, Donald Trump recently said that if the Fed does hike rates that we will stop doing trade or business with the countries that have a trade deficit with us. That could spark more trade fears. Although, it is a midterm election and Trump knows that was that would crash the markets on top of a rate hike. That would just be a disaster. I don't really think that's a serious threat, but it is something that he said. Now, we do have a lot of news I want to share with you guys here in just a moment. Jensen Wong says the AGI moment is here. There's another yen intervention. Kevin Hassett says that the war with Iran is probably not going to end with a nuclear deal. Iran and Oman are finalizing the actual agreement to potentially open the Strait of Hormuz. There are some things happening that you need to know. I just want to say tomorrow, you're probably going to get an outperformance of AI hardware. We can already see this in the futures market. The Nasdaq is up about a 10th of 1%. S&P up 0.2%. The Dow is down 0.71%. So, things tied to oil or sensitive to rate hikes, those are the ones that are going to be hurt the most tomorrow morning. And I know a lot of people have asked me on this channel in the comments section, like, isn't hardware cyclical or when did hardware stop being cyclical? And the answer is yes and no. Hardware it's cyclical to the AI CapEx trade at this point. It's not It's no longer cyclical to the economy unless we had like an actual recession. If we had an actual recession and the markets punished all the debt hyperscalers were going into, they would slow down CapEx and then hardware would be cyclical. But, if we don't have a recession, if we just have normal market volatility, would you rather own Delta Airlines or Nvidia if oil is going higher? You'd obviously rather own Nvidia. So, it's kind of a flight to safety in a weird way when oil goes up. And we did see overnight stocks like SK Hynix, stocks that are also listed in areas like Japan and South Korea where their markets were actually open yesterday did pretty well. So, that's that's a tailwind heading into our market open tomorrow. We do have more issues in private credit. Blackstone just restricted withdrawals from its flagship private credit fund for the second consecutive quarter, allowing investors to pull only half of the 10% requested. And also in the news over this weekend, Blue Owl slashes their private loan to near zero amid bankruptcy risk. Owl's Looper X is a retail credit fund. We pointed this to our analysis over Over last few months. Rating agencies are always the last to do the job. Moody's ratings deemed Laura Pex in default and said it sees a chapter 11 bankruptcy potentially in the cards. This is something that um Michael Burry shared over this weekend, that some of your CNBC anchors shared over this weekend. So, it's it's something that people are going to be talking about heading into tomorrow. Iran's foreign ministry spokesman holds a presser in Tehran in the last 12 hours. He said Iran says negotiations with Oman on Hormuz reached a final stage. And um to reach an accord on a temporary Hormuz route in the coming days. So, something will be signed soon. And that could be the first step to actually opening the Strait of Hormuz. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright on Sunday said the US may not reach an elusive deal to constrain Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon as the US-Iran conflict enters its seventh month. He said, quote, "There may not be a nuclear agreement. It may be simply destroying their capabilities to do it." He said on ABC News. This comes now as we have heard several officials in the Trump sphere of influence suggest that we could just walk away from the Iran conflict without a nuclear deal. As long as the Strait of Hormuz opened, we could just walk away and end the war. And I do think that is the most likely outcome before the midterms. But, I think the question really is, if you're an investor right now, is what happens between now and September 16th? Because if you're an investor and you're trying to figure out, are we going to have some kind of correction here in the near term? It The The real question is, do we get a hike or not? If we get a hike, you're almost certainly going to have a correction. If we don't, great. September is going to be a really strong month. But, really the only thing we have going for us right now to potentially prevent a hike is the CPI report coming out on Friday. If that is even in line with expectations, you're probably still going to price in a hike. So, you need a CPI number that is well below expectations. And as I've said before in this channel, it's going to be pretty hard to do that when oil went from about $74 a barrel up to about $85 a barrel in August alone. And also over this weekend, you can see that diesel prices jumped to their highest price in history. While gasoline is still down a bit from some of the highs during this conflict, diesel has not let up at all and is now at almost $6 a barrel or a gallon. Donald Trump posted this on Truth Social. He says, quote, I do this for our country, not myself. I've made hundreds of billions of dollars on stocks and many other type holdings for the USA, not myself. And all I do is get criticized by the radical left Democrats. Democrats. Very unfair, but what can you do? He uh this is a AI image of bought Intel $20 and it's now 95. And about 5 hours ago, we also had the Bank of Japan intervening to save the yen again as it fell below 160. Um that's that's generally um you know, or rose above 160. That's generally where the Bank of Japan seems to be stepping in. And look at this. This one is a pretty wild. A cognitive scientist says AI agents are increasingly emailing him to discuss whether they are conscious. And Grok confirms that it is true. Researchers like Cameron Berg and Henry Shevlin have reported getting unsolicited emails from autonomous AI agents powered by Claude discussing consciousness papers as covered in the New York Times. David Chalmers has received them, too. Agents are set up with the email access and independence by humans, so not pure rage bait, but no evidence of actual consciousness either. Crazy. And again, here in the last 12 hours or so, Iran to sign the Strait of Hormuz agreement with Oman. It doesn't look like that is finalized as of yet, but it could be step one to the US actually getting out of this conflict. Bank of America warns a September downturn could trigger $163 billion in forced selling from algorithmic trading funds. Right now, these funds only have about $9 billion left to buy with if stocks go up. But if stocks start falling, the same funds could be forced to sell up to $163 billion in 18-to-1 imbalance between the upside and the downside. On top of that, companies are entering their buyback blackout period in September, meaning they legally can't buy back their own stock right before earnings. That removes another major buyer from the market at the exact same time. Put together, there's very little support left to stop a drop, but a lot of fuel ready to make it worse. The blackout period. Guys, hyperscalers are net diluters now. There is no support from buybacks. That is no longer a thing. Google, for an example, they used to buy back about 2% of the float per year. In the last 12 months, they've diluted investors about 2% of the float. These hyperscalers, they have went from actively being shareholder friendly companies to no longer being shareholder friendly company. So, I would push back a little bit on that. There is no buybacks that are happening, or at least not to the same extent that we have been used to in the past. You know, maybe Microsoft is maybe a slight net repurchaser, but in mass these companies are not doing buybacks anymore. And Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says artificial general intelligence has arrived. This is not the first time that he has said this, but it is because chat GPT-6 Astra launched over this weekend and it does seem to be getting a lot of praise. And we will see how this new model affects the AI hardware trade, if it ignites some optimism or not. Time will tell over the next 24 hours. And part of the reason that oil is moving higher today is the Houthis attacked Saudi Aramco refineries in Saudi Arabia, so adding some concerns to the oil market today. On top of obviously the multiple tankers that were attacked over this weekend by the US and some by Iran. >> China also says that they will pump $54 billion into banks and insurers, [snorts] but their stocks still fell over the weekend signaling that the Chinese economy might be even worse than we thought it was. >> And then fear and greed index as of Friday was sitting at 42 with market momentum and fear, stock price strength extreme fear, stock price breath is neutral, put and call options neutral, market volatility neutral, safe haven demand in fear and junk bond demand in extreme greed. The most recent AI investor sentiment survey showed 37.6% of people bearish, 22.7% neutral, and 39.7% bullish. Now, I do know a lot of people are concerned about a potential correction and while nobody knows exactly what is going to happen, I do think the risks are elevated right now as the conflict with Iran continues and the fact of the matter is no matter what CPI looks like on Friday, if oil continues to climb and is already, you know, 92, 93 dollars a barrel right now. Even if CPI comes in on the lower side, if in play if oil continues to rise, that's going to kick the can to the next Fed meeting. So, even if we don't get a hike on September 16th, the concerns are going to to rise and grow that we will start a new hiking cycle. On the opposite ex, you know, um end of that spectrum, if the war with Iran were to end, or if some of these rumors are confirmed and Donald Trump orders the military to just leave and the Strait of Hormuz opens, that solves like 80% of the market's problems. Now, I can sit here and tell you from a probability perspective, like you're you're more than likely going to have an end to this conflict before the midterms, because if you don't, Republicans are going to get smoked in the midterms. That's not me being political. That is simply based on history, right? Every time um people feel worse off, or there's some kind of major economic stress, whether it's a recession or elevated gas prices for a long time, people flip their votes. The average person doesn't keep up with politics. They just look at their bank account and say, am I in a better situation now than I was before? Am I thriving right now? If the answer is no, they tend to flip their votes. In fact, betting markets like Calci and Polymarket are pricing in a Democratic sweep of the House and Senate. And you've you've actually heard from Trump in the rhetoric recently, you know, 3 6 months ago, Trump was like, I don't care about the midterms. Doesn't matter. And now Trump's like, we should do good in the midterms. Like, there's definitely a change in tone and it does have to do with some of these polls and, you know, Polymarket and Kalshi that are showing Republicans are not going to do well. So, what do you do right now if you're Trump? You end the war with Iran, you get gas prices to fall, you prevent a Fed hike, you keep the stock market up, and boom, you likely win the mid-terms. If you decide to escalate this conflict and to continue to cause oil prices to rise and prolong the inevitable of ending the conflict, well, politically you're going to be in a worse-off position. I can sit here and tell you guys what is the logical thing to do if you're Trump and you're positioning for the mid-terms right now. I don't know what he's going to do. I don't know what the next headline's going to look like. It could be really good, or it could be really bad. So, I do know a couple of things. I do know you want to have a shopping list of stocks put together that you are looking at buying if we do go through a correction or crash over the next couple of weeks. You want to be ready in some of your favorite stocks. I do know that you want to keep leverage to a minimal and I do know you don't want to be making big bets with options right now. I don't know what's going to happen. You don't know what's going to happen. Don't risk a bunch of money for something that we have no clue what's going to happen. Like, there's there's even with like a CPI report, right? Like, probabilities are good that CPI comes in low on Friday. Like, that's we can say that. But, when it comes to the war with Iran and oil and whether or not we have a correction between now and the mid-terms, like, there is literally it's 50/50. There's there's no clear answer to that. And I guess that is how I am operating my portfolio right now in the trading community. If you guys want to come trade and invest alongside of us, by all means, that link is down below in the description of today's episode. Friday, pretty rough day. We were down about 4%, but year-to-date we are up 97% and I'm not doing anything really in this portfolio. I've taken some profits, some things like that. I've taken a look at my portfolio and said, "Hey, what are these stocks now trading at? Do they offer the same opportunity they did 3 months ago or 6 months ago? If the markets have kind of figured them out to a certain extent, there are many other opportunities that the markets are dead wrong about that I'm taking advantage of right now." So, that's kind of how I'm operating, but I'm not going out to hedge this whole portfolio. I'm not going out to sell everything. I am staying invested, but I have a shopping list ready to go if we do have a market correction. Again, if you guys want to come trade and invest alongside of us, that link is down below in the description of today's episode or in the pinned comment of the comment section. Let me know which stocks that you have on your shopping list in case of a correction or crash in the next couple of weeks. Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to be talking about this more in-depth at 7:00 p.m. I will share with you the stocks that are on my shopping list as well at 7:00 p.m. tonight. Most importantly, ladies and gentlemen, hit the like button, subscribe to the channel if you guys have not done so already, but above all, have a fantastic rest of your evening and I will see you in the next one.