Market Pulls Back ahead of Good Friday as European Bank Stocks Soar. What's Next?

 Good Friday - Since markets are closed today, it's a good time to get caught up on my charting. 

Here was the clue that markets were likely going to pull back this week: 

We may have to wait until next week, so I'm only putting half a position on. Could see a Thursday rally idk

— Veteran Market Timer (@3Xtraders) April 16, 2025

That wasn't an easy call, because the NASDAQ had already started to break out on a weekly charts view, but  I wasn't too surprised to see stocks close near the April lows on April Options Expiration, since the powers that (shouldn't) be, needed to get paid on their bearish options. This is the main reason the $VIX continues to trade above 30.

I see other markets - including Canada - continue to rally higher,  after last week's monster rally.

 

Canada 

Canada must think they're off the hook, even after Trump said "nobody is off the hook".

'Nobody is getting off the hook,' Trump says 

 

President Donald Trump listens to remarks during a cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room

Isn't that a great picture of Trump? You'll never see the feces heads in the leftist lame stream media, showing such a great image. Instead you get a slideshow of shitty pics.  

Europe

European stocks continue to rally higher after last week's monster rally. Even European Financials which were boosted by last week's cut by the ECB.     

European Bank Stocks Soar 

As you can see on the chart above; markets love lower interest rates

Markets see door wide open for more ECB rate cuts on tariff hit

Isn't it funny that the ECB doesn't seem at all worried about inflation, yet Chairman Powell continues to go out of his way to use "inflation concerns" as an excuse to not cut the lending rate? 

Of course US markets could've continued to rally, If  only the Fed had done it's job, rather than side with the globalists... 

 To refresh your memory: 

The Fed stopped cutting rates while Joe Biden was still in office.

They even spiked the ball with a super sized rate cut, just ahead of Joe Biden window dressing season.

Jerome Powell then became fiscally, and politically combative, defiantly claiming that there's not a damn thing Trump can do about it!

Powell says he won’t resign for Trump, can’t be fired thehill.com 11/07/24

 What next? 

I think what next is the Fed is going to bow to political pressure, and cut rates, as they have in the past.

Of course, it could take some time for that pressure to build, and we may even hear calls to audit the fed.  

Trump Lashes Out at Powell, Says ‘Termination Cannot Come Fast Enough’ wsj 

Markets 

Stocks actually look great here, and the $VIX is 50% off the recent highs, and that means that the manufactured fear - propagated by the mass distraction lame stream media - is drying up.

The continuing consolidation probably pushes back a continuation of the rally - which started last week - a few more weeks. 

Memorial Day is only a month away, and money must be put to work before the summer break. Light summer volume should take care of the rest. 

 Short term I think we could see a rug pull, on Monday, or Technical Tuesday, but markets are typically hard to predict on such light holiday volume. 

Take Care, AA

Should you trade leveraged ETFs? NetFlix $NFLX $NFXS

  I think there's a place for leveraged ETFs, but just as if you're trading futures contracts, or Options, your risk is increased exponentially, and especially in today's pump 'n' dump markets. 

But even with proper money management, and discipline you will occasionally get burned. 

Examples of Leveraged ETFs being used to manipulate markets

$NFXS (NetFlix bear fund) - I believe this fund was only created in order to help the Mag 7 bulls create enough leverage to drive NetFlix to their $1000 target.  

This fund is constantly manipulated in order to set the bear trap, and if you watched CNBC Fast Money yesterday, then you know NetFlix (up 5%) is all they talked about for the first half hour of the show.

$NFXS is hammered back below trend, before it's hammered back below the 50 day ma. 

 

 

$NFLX breaks out to a lower recent high - reminiscent of a bear market 

Next Example 

$KOLD (2x leveraged Natural Gas Bear fund)  This one was absolutely destroyed starting around the time Trump was elected, and if you were trapped back in Dec., you will probably never be made whole.

That's the thing about these leveraged funds, once they break, they tend to remain broken, for a very long time.  However, if you have the patience to wait for capitulation, you can get back to even, as we now see see it back-testing the  27.77 level, after 2 months. 

Next Example

 $SBIT (Bitcoin 2X leveraged bear) this is a good example of why you shouldn't trade leveraged ETF's 

If you recognized where the rug was pulled back in November, and you cut your losses, then you lived to trade another day, but if you were trading on hope, you were wiped out. 

I could offer many other example, and just recently we saw the Tech bears destroyed again, as we trade on light holiday volume. 

 Of course they want to blame Trump for manipulating the market, but markets are manipulated - for sport - every day. 

Take Care, AA

$USD collapse, Gold & Silver miners continue to break out - Let's go to the Charts $GDX

 Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday, as Passover kicked off on Saturday, and I'm sure many traders have the next 2 weeks off, as good Friday, and Easter approaches. That sets up for an early April Option Expiration (Thursday).   

Short covering rally ahead of Passover. It's as easy as that to read the market. Cycles

— Veteran Market Timer (@3Xtraders) April 12, 2025

 Last time I blogged was last week, when Trump flip flopped on sweeping tariffs, after a meeting with Wall Street Banksters.

Trump Capitulates as the Bond Market Threatens to Collapse

Of course, that caused a 10% short squeeze across most sectors, and oh buy was the kleptocracy mad that Trump would encourage people to buy stocks ahead of time pbs.com      

Trump told investors to ‘buy’ on social media hours before his tariff pause rose stocks, raising questions about manipulation

 I believe the reason the teleprompter readers are so upset is because most of their close friends in Congress had large short positions on, when the market flash surged.

 

I suspect we could see a repeat of that scenario on Monday, as President Trump continues to lift tariffs...

and that might help explain why the lame stream media is being so quiete about the latest development, as not to trigger buying programs, ahead of the market open on Monday. Another group we don't see celebrating Trump's latest move it the hedge funds who constantly spam twitter/ X, with thousands of fake bot accounts. If these globalists were Net long you would see quite the opposite.   

Trump exempts smartphones, laptops, and semiconductors from new tariffs techcrunch.com

Is the $USD really crashing?

 

Since we know all the media streams do is lie about the state of the economy, we have to pull up a chart

 

$USD - trades in a range, and is not falling any harder than it was back in 2023    

Note the broadening patterns are described as "highly emotional", and that fits with what we're seeing in Gold markets. 

The breakouts in Gold, Silver, and even Natural Gas (which I recently covered) are all being fueled by false narratives, identical to the one I recently documented in Natural Gas.   

Wall Street Journal Lies In Order To Make Trump Look Bad  

Have you seen Natural Gas lately? lol 

$BOIL (the 2X leveraged Natural Gas bull) 

Not only does the lame stream media kleptocracy lie about Donald Trump every 5 minutes, but they also lied about the state of the US economy for 5 years! 

 

$TRAN (the Dow Transports) The proof is in the pudding  

You don't hear much about Silver or Copper anymore, for obvious reasons

$SPV - silver - for example 

 

Speaking of Silver

 

At this point you should see a trend developing, where every alert to a breakout, if followed by the smart money selling.

$GDX Gold Miners 

Of course the latest sector to be juiced in a Friday short squeeze is Gold miners - many of which ended up 20% for the week. 

 

CNBC Fast Money Recommends Gold Miners 

From the same pot head who set the snare in cannabis stocks. Recommends gold miners after several gaps up, on a short squeeze Friday. 🤡 pic.twitter.com/h1hRuh7shB

— Veteran Market Timer (@3Xtraders) April 12, 2025

 

 

This guy certainly takes the cake for greatest contrarian

Cannabis, I mean Gold miner stocks to watch this week include:

 Top $GDX holding AEM.TO - making new all time highs

I found a great sector specific trade; while charting over the weekend, and it has plenty of room to run. 

PM me if you're interested:

I just found a super bullish trade and it's not in Crypto lol
$250 gets you all the charts you need until summer.
If you don't make at least 4 times that amount back.. I'll even refund your money. https://t.co/ZGWeDhFNlp

— Veteran Market Timer (@3Xtraders) April 12, 2025

 

Take Care, AA 

 

 

 

Trump Capitulates as the Bond Market Threatens to Collapse

 

Yesterday was apparently the 2nd biggest percentage gain for the NASDAQ in trading history (Wikipedia), and l loved every minute of it. Of course those who were heavily leveraged on the short side, had a white knuckle moment and it just goes to show what can happen at $VIX 50+ 

To be honest I think stocks were poised to rally into the Easter holiday, even if Trump hadn't given signal, as I reiterated a couple days ago (my bullish call linked).

Scott Jennings Defends Trump's Advice to 'Buy' Stocks Before Tariff Pause  - Newsweek 

I saw "Be Cool" trending on twitter, and that's a term I've used before to tell traders not to panic, but I missed the context of Trump's tweet. 

Proof Trump's people have been following me for a long time: 

Here I am using the same phrase during a market pullback in 2018, and 2013: 

 

 And here I am again; doing the same thing during the 2020 crash: 

We're gonna be cool... like Fonzie #NoFear https://t.co/vqlh6gc7D6 via @YouTube

— Veteran Market Timer (@3Xtraders) February 20, 2020

Notice the hashtag #NoFear 

Yesterday 

Be Cool https://t.co/yW8LonwCFR

— Veteran Market Timer (@3Xtraders) April 9, 2025

 

I don't panic at the bottom, I panic after I find myself up over 40% in 1 day, and I can assure you, I sold everything, and even pulled my wife's 401k...

 To give you some idea of the gains we saw in the beaten down stocks, I told you to own only 3 days ago

 

Legendary!

So now what? 

So now we're left with more uncertainty, and the short sellers are trapped going into another long holiday, and I'm in no hurry to put on another trade. 

After the massive moves we've seen recently; stocks need to settle, and that gives me time to get caught up on my charting. I've gone from trying to find a bottom, to pinpointing resistance levels, and today we're trading somewhere in-between, and as usual I'm not giving away any targets. 

I think the market can rally higher, now that the bears are trapped, but I also think we could see these gains quickly disappear, and that's why I panic-sold at the top. 

This I can tell you; Chart patterns that used to work, are broken, support is broken, and I'm afraid of what may happen to global markets over coming weeks/months.

The bond market did finally roll over, but this is nothing to be alarmed by. 

Stocks, Bonds, Real Estate, Even Gold needs to correct, after the ridiculous liquidity bubble that's been inflated over the past several years.    

Both Trump and Biden own this bubble; each trying to outspend the other; in fact after the last blog, in which I questioned if we could trust Trump's judgement, I came to the conclusion that he did indeed crash the market in order to force the Fed to lower the borrowing rate, so that he can pile on massive amounts of debt, just as Ronald Reagan did during his presidency.  

Trump proposes spending more on defense, taking a page from the Ronald Reagan playbook. Some of us are old enough to remember the star-wars campaign, aka the SDI https://t.co/QC7wZ9cx9n

— Veteran Market Timer (@3Xtraders) April 8, 2025

I believed Trump was going to make some historic trade deals, and that the bubble could continue, but now the chart patterns have changed, I'm left with a lot of uncertainty, and many broken charts.     

Take care, AA