The Stock Market Just Gave Us a Major Signal

Markets with an amazing recovery, but the question everyone is asking is will they actually hold at these elevated levels? What's going on, guys? It's Ricky, and let's go ahead and jump right into it. If you've been paying attention to the Nasdaq market, especially recently, you guys can see that it's been forming consistent lower highs and lower lows, and we're at one of the lowest points yesterday as Microsoft and Meta reported earnings. Shortly after the FOMC rate decision, as many of you guys saw, markets began to sell off aggressively. They sold off into the close. All of a sudden, buying pressure began to kick in. We got rejected again. We formed higher lows, and now we've gapped up. We are now above the levels that we were trading at yesterday and even the day prior. With that being said, Apple and Amazon are set to report earnings today after the bell. Is there enough conviction in the market to hold at these levels? And what could the market be celebrating? Now, this is something that our LPP team and I talked about as markets were selling off. This is why it's important to be invested in good companies, not using leverage, but so you can tolerate the downturn, and then when green days do present themselves, that again, it kind of alleviates maybe some of that stress. It reminds you of why you are invested. But do not be fooled. It definitely can get worse again before it gets better. And again, let's go ahead and quickly talk about what has unfolded today. Now again, massive bounce in memory chip stocks. As I mean, we can talk about SanDisk, SK HY, MU, INTC, you know, WDC, all of these. Some of the worst performing stocks in the past 2 weeks had a significant bounce today. Chip stocks were getting hit very hard. Check this out. Micron, up 15.5% on the day. I think at one point it was up 17%. An incredible move for Micron, but a very aggressive move. SanDisk up 22%. This is where it begins to get kind of hard to make sense of. This is why you can't be surprised that these stocks can crash 50% in short periods of time because they have moves like this. My main concern is that where is this buying pressure coming from? Cuz a lot of it happened into the market open. Are these leveraged buyers? And again, we've been down this rabbit hole. What happens with leveraged buyers? Well, again, what's going on in South Korea? Over 1.2 million accounts got hit with margin calls. An estimated 320,000 to 360,000 accounts were fully liquidated per Goldman Sachs. Around 3.4 of the adult population in South Korea have received margin calls. Now again, South Korea is a very aggressive has been experiencing a very aggressive move. All I'm saying is this should shed light that things can get worse before it gets better. This doesn't deter me from wanting to buy the dip. As many of you guys know, I've been very vocal about being okay with investing into Micron, but I'm doing it in a way where again, not using leverage and positioned well that if things did get worse before they got better, I can tolerate that time. My big concern is that people are going in too aggressive at the first sight of a green day. And we don't know what's going to unfold over the weekend. It doesn't look like things are de-escalating in the Middle East. And it definitely doesn't look like things are looking too good in other countries that do influence US markets. The BOJ yen intervention has started. If this continues to drop, markets could experience a similar crash to what was experienced on August 2024. Again, it's the carry trade all over again. A significant downturn within a short period of time. Tomorrow we're supposed to learn more about what the Central Bank of Japan is supposed to do. If they raise rates, again, this could be a shock for US markets. Also, two series of reports, what markets were initially probably celebrating during the pre-market session. Nothing super significant. June's PCE report came in as expected. Expectation was 3.7%. That's where we came in at. Core inflation came in as expected. Nothing crazy, right? This is the really odd part. US Q2 GDP came in at 1.5%. Expectation was 2.1. The US economy growth is slowing down. The last thing I wanted to share with you. This is the part that I found to be very interesting. Did Citadel just rug pull Leopold? For those that do not know, Leopold runs a fund called Situational Awareness. And to my understanding, it was one of the best performing funds of 2026. Because of the recent downturn to what is being shared, not sure if it's 100% true. They sold everything. And they sold everything to Citadel. And remember, Citadel Securities is the institution that shared the news that the Federal Reserve could possibly be raising rates in yesterday's Fed meeting. And what did we learn? They didn't raise rates, but markets still sold off due to the concern. So, the idea that's being thrown around is that Citadel planted a seed, forced Situational Awareness to get margin called as Fed left rates unchanged, Citadel came in to acquire the entire portfolio of Leopolds, and then now NBIS up 29%, BE up 25%, Sandis up 22, Irena up 24. When I see these moves, again, and please let me know your thoughts down in the comment section. When I see these moves of Oklo, companies running up 11%. NBIS running up 26%. You're telling me that 1/4 of its value was created in the past 12 hours? Bloom Bloom Energy 25%. 1/4 of its value poof just created in the past 12 hours. This to me, again, you guys know how I am. I always have I'm always optimistic about things being overhyped up and irrational. This to me screams irrational. I understand markets can stay irrational longer than we can stay solvent. I have no intention of shorting BE, NBIS, Oklo. I'm done with that, right? I don't care for those companies. But the concern that the reminder you should have is that markets have been selling off for the past week or two. At the first sight of a green day, everyone pretends like there's nothing to worry about. But all the concerns that we've had in the past before are still present. There is nothing that got announced today that injects certainty into the market. If anything, when we look at the larger time frames, let me go ahead and remove this. All we're currently setting up for is a possible lower high. A nice rip up to possibly get rejected again. Possibly, again, we could confirm and there's confirmation of reversal, that would be a different story. But we're testing a descending setup where again, if we get rejected again, where does that put us? Everyone that bought in, were they using leverage? Is this only going to be more selling pressure that kicks in if we do produce another leg down? And what is going to be that trigger? Is it going to be the South Korean market again? Is it going to be the Japanese market tomorrow? Again, this isn't to instill fear in you. It's simply to make you aware of what was of concern. And that although today markets are celebrating, not trying to put a damper on the celebration, right? A lot of our team bought the dip. I think that's great. But don't over leverage yourself up here. Know that things can get worse before they get better and that one green day does not mean that the market now has to make a full recovery to previous all-time highs. I hope that it does. But it's stepping stones, making sure that we can provide reassurance in the areas that were of previous concern. And Meta is still down 9.3%. That's the wild part. So, again, very excited to follow up and see how markets continue to trade. I'll do my part in keeping you guys up to date. Again, you guys let me know down in the comment section what you think. Do you think that this is the beginning of the bull run or just another lower high for another leg down? Let me know down below. I appreciate you guys' time. Hope that we're going to thumbs up again and hopefully we'll see you today for Apple and Amazon's earnings at market close. Take care, team.