Can the Relentless Bid be Stopped?

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The stock market defied its historical odds by surging in September despite concerns about a slowing economy, overvaluation, and tariffs. So what, if anything, can stop investors’ relentless bid on the biggest stocks in the market and ultimately slow this bull market down?

Kenny Polcari of SlateStone Wealth drops in with his perspective, predictions for a volatile fourth quarter and a delicious family-style recipe for the Fall. Plus, the labor market is back in the spotlight this week with the September payrolls report due Friday. Yet the threat of a government shutdown might mean we never see the report, which puts the Fed in another tricky situation.

Full Transcript:

Caleb Silver  

On the Express this week, stocks to buy the September swoon, but things are getting pricey out there. Do old valuation metrics even apply anymore? Our buddy Kenny puckery drops in for a family style throwdown in just a few minutes, the Investopedia indicator and what to watch this week, microphone, check one two. What is this? Investopedia express all up in your business. You

Thanks. Welcome back and welcome aboard. Happy Monday to all of you are winding down here to the final couple of trading days in the third quarter. Stocks rising on a Monday morning after kind of a rough, pretty, JUMPY last week, stocks ending the week higher, but we are a little bit higher as we start out the week again, two more trading days to go in the third quarter, and we’re going to finish up September in the green. Not very traditional September, one of the weakest months of the year for the stock market. Historically, there were walls of worry everywhere throughout the past month, but stocks just churned higher. And it wasn’t just Magnificent Seven powering stocks to higher highs. We had a couple of record highs last month, and probably a few more on the way, because they do come in bunches, all those worries, all those concerns about tariffs, all those concerns about a slowing labor market, what the Fed might do, what might not do, yet, investors still pushing equity markets higher and higher and just about one or 2% off of all time highs right now, looking in headlines right now as we start a Monday morning EA Electronic Arts, the big video game company, going private in a $55 billion deal. That’s the biggest leverage buyout in history. Shout out to our guys at barbarians at the gate, one of the great books about leveraged buyouts. This is a big deal, and this is just another example of a massive public company, a massive public company going private. Who wants to be public anymore? Shout out to you. Bahwa Yaga, thank you for joining the Investopedia Express. Shout out to all of our viewers and our listeners from around the world. Bawa wants real analysis on inflation and economy in an overview, we got that on investopedia.com but back to what’s happening in the markets today. Again, a big leverage buy out here, $55 billion Electronic Arts off the table, going to be a private company by being bought by the Saudi private investment fund Silver Lake, which just got the rights to buy Tiktok. Thank you very much. And another company, affinity, private holdings here. So that’s what’s happening right now. And as we look at the scores on the door so far this year, about three quarters in the books. Look what’s leading the market. Gold up 41% global stocks up 24% Bitcoin up 17% this year. Stock market itself up 12 to 13% the S&P 400 high yield bonds having a nice year up 10% the dollar down 9% and oil down 10% that may explain what that strength is in global markets around the world. But no matter how you look at the stock market right now, when you look at traditional valuation metrics, it’s over valuation nation. Everything’s looking expensive. Great debate going on within the stock market, among investors, is the stock market overvalued? Are we looking at the right things? Right? We got three flavors of overvaluation. We’re going to bring them here to you right now. Forward price to earnings ratio. That measures earnings going out 12 months, and that’s at 22 times. And that’s usually how that’s a as high as it’s been in many, many years, maybe as high as it’s been since 2021 but definitely since the.com bubble burst. The trailing price to earnings ratio that looks back at the past 12 months of earnings that’s at 28 times, also very expensive. 

And then the cyclically adjusted price to earnings ratio, the cape they call it, made famous by Robert Shiller, the Nobel Prize winner from Yale University, that’s at 40 times. That’s the highest since the.com bubble. But the other side of the equation is, on the other hand, maybe we’re looking at metrics that don’t really apply anymore. When we think about the companies that are driving the stock market higher and that are driving our economy higher, and there’s a lot of ways to look at this. If you look at price to sales ratio, this chart here coming up from our friends at bespoke, that’s at an all time high, 3.33 right price to sales ratio, only historically at an all time high. But when you look at the equal weight, s, p5, 100 price to sales ratio, that’s kind of in a 12 year range here. And that’s take that’s flattening out all the stocks by market cap. That doesn’t give you Nvidia at 4 trillion and Microsoft at $3/$4 trillion this flattens all the stocks out so they’re equal weight. That actually looks pretty normal, 12 times within the 12 year trading range of the equal weight. So the entire stock market, if you just wait it out, equally, looks pretty fairly priced. It’s the biggest stocks in the market that are making it seem more expensive, and that’s just valuation going. Going to the biggest stocks in the market that are churning out the highest profits and the biggest sales. Smart chart here from our buddies, the Carson research Sona Vargas put this out last week. Is it rational exuberance, as Fed Chair Powell kind of hinted at the other day, and we heard Alan Greenspan say that back in 1996 or is it just that these companies are just so much more profitable than they used to be. Profit growth has been driving the stock market returns since 2019 along with some favorable interest rates. But when you got companies churning out profits like the Nvidia’s, the palantirs, the Microsofts, the apples of the world, you’re going to get higher valuations. And that’s just the way things are. And that’s maybe just the way, new way to evaluate markets these days, just because we have this revolution going on and these companies aren’t churning out profit growth, looking at one year at a time, they are building $100 trillion AI infrastructure that’s going to take five to 10 years to complete, which is why some investors are like, forget the old valuation metrics. This is what’s going on right now. So let’s get into this with our good friend Kenny Polcari. He’s a partner and the chief strategist at Slatestone Wealth. He’s going to drop in for a couple of good minutes.

Kenny so good to see you. It’s been a minute since you’ve been back on the Express. It always good to see your face, and I follow you every single day. Thanks so much for being with us. Stock markets kind of defied all these concerns about tariffs, as I just mentioned, a slowing economy, slowing profit growth, potentially a weak labor market. There’s been almost no volatility. It’s been the quietest year ever. Despite all the noise in the economy, international stocks are crushing the US right now, gold continuing to make record highs, and everyone, including individual investors, are turning bullish all of a sudden. What if any of this surprises, Kenny?

Kenny Polcari  

We went from being so negative in April, when we had that Liberation Day and everyone was panicking and Oh, my God, the world’s coming to an end, and they’ve sold everything. They couldn’t sell it fast enough. And then suddenly, as people thought about it, and there was some more conversations about tariffs, you know, people started to take it in stride. Next thing you know, they’ve taken the market once again, to brand new highs, all time highs in 2025 and probably we’re going to make another one before the end of tomorrow, which is the end of the third quarter, right? And so I think that’s what’s really surprising, is that we haven’t it’s fine that the market rallied back. It’s fine that, you know, people calm down over the tariffs, but what it continues to do is continues to surprise to the upside. There’s been no breathing, there’s been no opportunity for stocks to digest the move. And while I agree with you, I’m bullish on America, I’m bullish on tech, I’m bullish on all that stuff, but I’d like to see the market digest a little bit, which it hasn’t done every time it tries to pull back, and we drop 1% or 2% and suddenly everyone comes in to buy it. And I think some of that may be because asset managers are so worried about the tariff thing that and investors were so worried that they weren’t sure. They kept a lot of money on the sideline, and now that they see the markets making new high after new high after new high, and it’s not coming in, and we’re talking about tech, we’re talking about it changing the world. So every time it backs off a little bit, they jump in. And so we may see this momentum continue, right? Which I think just concerns me a little bit in terms of people getting, you know, too, too bullish, or fear, or that fear of missing out trade. Look, as a wealth manager, we’re fully invested, right? So I’m not in and out of the market. 

We’re fully invested. But that doesn’t mean necessarily that we’re chasing we’re in tech. We love tech. We own tech. We’ve owned it. But up here, I’m not chasing it. We’re not chasing it. We’re going to let it kind of digest. There are other places to your point to be able to put money in the market, and the S and P equal weight points that out. If you look at the difference between what the S and P is, what the equal weight is doing, that points it out. So other parts of the market are, in fact, you know, underperforming where there is opportunity, energy, health care, basic materials, consumer staples, boring, for sure. But there are other but they are sectors that have that have underperformed the broader market, and in my view, present an opportunity.

Caleb Silver

Yeah, we just showed that chart of the equal weight price to sales ratio. It’s relatively normal, because these companies are relatively normal, and they’re not churning out profit growth at 50% or revenue growth at 50 to 100% like the NVIDIA’s of the world. They’re just doing business as usual, and earnings have been pretty solid. Kenny, so you, you, you were a floor trader for years, and you’ve been learning money and investing as a Market Strategist for years and years and years. So take us inside the mind of a portfolio manager right now, two days to go before the end of the quarter, two trading days to go before the end of the quarter. Everyone, as you say, was, was kind of bearish coming into this year, until maybe April 9, and then all of a sudden, everybody’s bullish again. Talk to us about window dressing and what that means to the market in general.

Kenny Polcari  

Well, I also think, as we came into, you know, in late summer, August, into September, tends to be on September, October, time period. Tends to be, historically, a week, kind of volatile time of year. And no one had any reason to suspect that this year it was going to be any different. But when September never backed off, when it never happened again, all these people that might be were waiting for an opportunity, and then all this cash are now realizing the end of the third quarter is coming, and they want to look like they’ve been in it all along. So you have this window dressing, which means that a lot of these asset managers, you know, they get rid of the losers, and they want to pile into the winners, so that when they send the report card out, you know, in a week and a half, and ask and investors look at how their portfolios are doing, they’re going to see, oh, just look, we own talent here. 

We own Nvidia. We don’t own anything, whether they’ve owned it for the whole quarter or not. It’s not the issue. All they’re going to know is that, right now, those names are in there, so that’s a good thing. And I think that’s also what’s been pushing the market up into the last into the last couple of days of the third quarter, has been that window dressing the asset managers and even retail investors trying to play catch up, right? But I think, you know, come Wednesday, which is October 1, it kind of wipes the slate clean, right? We’re now in the fir the beginning of the fourth quarter, and you’ve got three months for the market to react. And so you’ve got earnings season just two weeks away. You’ve got lots of more eco data. You get the ongoing conversation about the Fed. You got Beth hammock that came out, you know, she said it last week, but she reiterated again overnight on Squawk Box Europe, that, you know, the Fed’s in a very antsy place about trying to balance a supposedly weakening labor market along with a very strong economic data market, right? And so I actually think you might get, you might get that the narrative about maybe we shouldn’t cut so fast. Yes, we can still stay on a cutting cycle, but instead of two more rate cuts this year, maybe we only get one.

Caleb Silver

Yeah, does that matter as much anymore or have investors looked way beyond that. They look beyond tariffs. They look beyond whether we’re getting one or two cuts. They know we’re going to be have a dovish fed for the next few years and beyond. What do they care about?

Kenny Polcari  

Well, we hope the Fed is going to be dovish, because if the data continues to remain strong, how much more dovish can the Fed get right? The Fed would get dovish if it really thought it were trying to solve a problem. But if the economy remains strong, if unemployment doesn’t soften, then what’s the My point is, then rates may be actually at the right place, at four, four and a quarter. Maybe they go to 375, four, but much beyond that, unless something really starts to break, I’m not sure that we’ll that, that we should see them go lower, because all that will do is stimulate the economy. And I get it, there are small businesses that would love lower rates, and certainly the home builders want lower rates because they want mortgage rates go down and all that stuff. But if it doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t make sense. Look what they did in 1978-79 and I don’t want to go back that far, but you have to look at history, when the Fed prematurely cut rates because they thought they had slayed the inflation monster. And in fact, by cutting rates, all they did was stir up inflation. And remember, inflation surged, causing Paul Volcker at the time to have to force rates of 21% and bring the economy to a screeching halt over two years. I’m not suggesting I want to see that happen, but I think the Fed, I think Jay Powell is right, and I think other members are right. You have to be very cautious. We had 15 years of zero interest rates, which wasn’t normal either. So there’s this normalization process. And I think you have to be very, very methodical on on how they cut. So I’m in the camp that if we get one more rate cut this year, that that’s actually okay,

Caleb Silver  

Yeah, and rates are actually not that high right now, and neither is inflation. When you think about historical standards, people get crazy about it. Go back to the 70s, in the early 80s.

Kenny Polcari  

Listen, historically between four and 6% that’s really historically normal over the long period. Sure, there were times in the late 70s where rates were 20% not that. That wasn’t normal. And then for the last 15 years, from 2008 till, you know, 15 years, 2023 rates were basically zero. That wasn’t normal either. There’s a whole generation of people that think zero is normal. Zero is not normal. It’s not normal. So these people that want 2% mortgage rates, guess what? That’s not normal, right?

Caleb Silver

Speaking of not normal, let’s, let’s, speaking of not normal, Kenny, let’s look at some of the stock top performers in the stock market so far this year, three quarters in almost and there’s some surprise names on that. And there are some of these names make perfect sense to me. We got Robin Hood markets at the top there. That stock’s up 226% but you’ve also got some chip makers in there. And chip makers have been, you know, the chip makers are building the railroads for the next 10 years or so. But there’s a couple of surprises and a couple of companies out there where you say what, you know, besides Warner Brothers, which might be going through a breakup, and GE Vernova, which was split off, there’s some other companies in there that investors have just been flocking to. It’s not been the mag seven this year, as everybody thinks it is. It’s been a lot of these other companies busting out.

Kenny Polcari  

You know, it’s interesting, as I look at that list, named like Seagate and tech. Seagate technology and Western Digital that were big. Names earlier in the earlier in this decade, in this century, kind of quiet, right? Like you did. You don’t no one’s talking about Seagate Western Digital every day, like they talk about Apple and Google and Pelletier and video. Suddenly, though, if you look you see the massive outperformance that Seagate and Western Digital have this year. I mean, look at them. Up triple digits, 150%/130% but to your point, they’re right, because that’s part of the infrastructure, and people you know, and investors that bought into that are certainly benefiting as well, right? Robin Hood, though, you know, I get Robin Hood. I mean, I’m not sure why it’s up 200% I get what they’re doing and all that stuff. I’m not a Robin Hood owner. I never was. I certainly understand it, but I’m not sure that I see why it’s up 200% that doesn’t that’s a little bit off to me. I would not have, I would…

Caleb Silver

Risk on. I think that’s the ultimate example of a risk data variable.

Kenny Polcari

Completely. And maybe it’s because, you know, they reach out to all these people and make investing, quote, unquote, across the spectrum so easy that, you know, there’s your reason. But I was never Robin Hood owner. So, so, you know, I can’t speak to owning it.

Caleb Silver  

It just, it just tells you how hard it is to actually pick stocks in this environment. Because, right? No, you know, very few people had that top 10 on their bingo card this year. I would venture to say nobody did sometimes just easier to buy the index, the ETF or or go sector rotation to sector rotation. All right, give us your key fundamental your key things that you’re watching this year. I want a fundamental metric, and maybe a technical analysis metric, two things that you’re really focused on, if it’s not going to be rates, if it’s not going to be the labor market, what are you watching as a strategist?

Kenny Polcari  

So so I continue to watch the strength of the data, the strength of the economic data, not even so much the labor market data, but the broader economic data, the PMIs look the United States is a 75% services economy, not a manufacturing economy. So things that are important to me are things that speak to the service part of the economy. And if you look at the services PMIs that has been and remains in expansionary territory, right? We didn’t see that ever go into contractionary territory. Manufacturing did a tiny bit. Now, manufacturing is actually right on the cusp, probably going to tickle into expansionary territory this month. You know, we’re going to get it tomorrow. We’re going to get it this week, both manufacturing and services, PMIs and I also want to take a pay attention to, you know, average hourly warnings and personal consumption and personal spending, because those speak right to the health of the consumer. And guess what? Those numbers have been relatively strong. You do not see the consumer throwing in the towels. I can’t do it anymore, right? The last two reasons of personal consumption and retail sales were much better than expected. That tells you that the consumer, at least, by the data, tells you that consumer is feeling okay, which then argues, once again, to does the Fed need to stimulate it any further? And so that takes us right back in that circular conversation, right? I don’t think they do necessarily. Maybe one more cut, maybe two Max. But you know, are we going down another 125 basis points? I don’t think so. I don’t think we should

Caleb Silver

Yeah, no time soon. So yeah, we continue to spend. Retail sales remain, remain relatively strong. Earnings are still decent, right? We’re still outpacing inflation. We feel terrible if you look at consumer sentiment, but we’re still spending, and as long as we’re spending at 70% of GDP.

Kenny Polcari

Right? But that’s where the divergence is. You say you don’t feel good, right? In consumer confidence, yet, every time the spending numbers come out, you’re spending like there’s no tomorrow. So, so which one is, which one are you really paying attention to? In my mind, I’m going to pay attention to what consumers are actually doing versus what they’re saying, because you never know who they’re really canvassing when they’re when they call the poll and they say, How do you feel today versus, you know, so you get one set of data, and then when you get the actual spending numbers, you see it’s a, it’s a very different data point.

Caleb Silver  

Yeah, to my point, are we even measuring the right things, and who are we even asking when we’re measuring these things? All right? What could, what could stop the relentless bit here? You mentioned spending, you mentioned the health of the consumer. We know that’s a very big deal. Where services economy, how do things fall apart? If they fall apart?

Kenny Polcari

Well, so, so where I think it’s going to fall apart is if, in fact, they reignite inflation. And right now, it doesn’t seem like it is. It’s kind of stirring. There around 3% which, by the way, I think 3% is the new 2% look. We talked about it before, when, when it when inflation was up in the five and 6% they kept, they kept asking the question, are they going to raise the target? I think they, I think they have subconsciously raised the target. I think they’re comfortable with 3% I don’t think they, I think they realize they’re not going to get to 2% it’s gonna be very difficult to get to 2% so the Fed is happy with 3% but if you start to see it tick up from there, if you start to see unemployment, they keep saying the labor market softening yet unemployment is at 4.3%, which is at historically low levels. It’s basically full employment at 4.2%/4.3% which is what it’s expected to be this Friday. So I don’t see that nervousness yet, if you start to see that number tick up, and if my fear is, if it starts to tick up and it ticks up quickly, that’s going to be that’s certainly going to be a killer, right?

Caleb Silver

Yeah, we’re watching that pretty closely as well. All right? You know, we’re not letting you out of here without getting a fall recipe for my guy, Kenny Polcari, here one of the great home chefs. There he is, right there, favorite place. Look at you right there. Looking great, by the way. Give us a fall recipe. And you know, I want a wine pairing to go with it. And folks, you’re not following Kenny. You must follow him. If you don’t love the analysis, stay for the recipes. Stay for the wine pairings. Such good stuff there, Kenny, give us something for the fall.

Kenny Polcari  

So listen, it’s fall, right? So we’re coming into Thanksgiving, coming into the pumpkin season, all that stuff. I love this dish. It’s just a pumpkin risotto. So it’s delicious. It’s not difficult to make it all, but you got to make sure that you’re using pumpkin puree and not pumpkin pie filling, because there’s a difference. It won’t come out the same. So you know, you need the shallots, you need the rice, you need the white wine. You need pumpkin puree. You need a grated first grade parmagiano cheese. You need chicken stock, right? And you need a little bit of salt and pepper, very little salt, though, because the cheese is salty and so make it like you would make a regular risotto, right? Start with the butter. Melt the butter, do the shallots, brown the shallots in there, then put the rice and toast the rice. In this case, you want it. If you can get it, you really want to use carnaroli rice, which is a particular type of rice from a particular region of Italy. It works better for this. And toast the rice in the butter, in the shallots, and then once it is you start to add in the ladle of chicken stock, one ladle at a time. Add, First, add one ladle of chicken stock, let it absorb. Then add the white wine, stir it around, let that absorb. And then you’re going to add one more ladle of chicken stock. Once it absorbs, you’re going to add the pumpkin, stir it in, mix it up. And then you’re going to keep adding the chicken stock, as you would a risotto. You add it, you let it absorb, you taste it, till you get it just about right. Should take you 2025, minutes 

Caleb Silver  

Am I just stirring constantly? Because risotto you gotta…

Kenny Polcari 

Yeah, you have to stir it constantly. You have to stand at the stove and stir and make sure you get good Italian music playing like in any event, once it’s ready, you take it off the stove, you add a dollop of butter, then you add the fresh grated cheese. You taste it, adjust it for a little bit, maybe it needs a little bit of salt, and adjust it a little bit, and then with this, and then serve it, you know, in a nice, warm bowl. And then, if you you want to pair this, this would be something light, right? So you don’t want to hit if you’re going to drink red, you don’t want it to be a heavy red, like a Brunello di monto chino. You don’t want that. You want something like a Pinot Noir. Or you can go with a white, right? If you go with a white, don’t go with anything fruity. Go with something dry, like a pinot grigio margarita.

Caleb Silver  

Yeah, that sounds amazing. I don’t know, I went right to white in my mind.

Kenny Polcari  

Go either way. Beautiful. If you go with a light red, you’re good with it, yep.

Caleb Silver  

All right, we love that. Perfect for the fall. Great recipe, great analysis. As usual, folks follow Kenny Polcari on Twitter, on LinkedIn, on all the platforms. There, he shares his analysis every day bright and early, because no one gets up earlier than Kenny Paul Carey and his recipes. Good friend of Investopedia, thanks so much for joining the Express, my friend. Thanks for having me. Oh so good to talk to Kenny Paul carry and get his smarts and that terrific recipe. We’ll make sure we link to it in the show notes, and let’s get to a little money in motion.

So we’ve been talking about gold prices. Gold hitting yet another record high up about 46 47% this year. It’s the ultimate inflation hedge. We know central banks have been storing it. Individual investors have been buying it. I’ve heard strategists on Wall Street telling us to ramp up your allocations up to 20, 25% and gold has been on the move. But silver, one of the other precious metals out there, and what I have a particularly affinity for doing pretty good on its own. And Silver has actually is nearing record highs as well. It’s up 24% year to date, the spot price around $46 per ounce there. And why is that happening? A lot of the same reasons that you’re seeing this rally in gold, but Silver has more industrial applications. Are a little bit more widely used because it’s cheap. 

Because it’s cheaper, a lot of industrial demand. You know, it’s an inflation hedge. You know, central banks and big investors have been stockpiling it. The weakening dollar and lower interest rates that just props up the metals like gold, like silver, like palladium, and that’s why we’re seeing silver nearing record highs as well. What’s the outlook for silver compared to gold for the upcoming months, I think both of them are trending higher because we got concerns about inflation rising again. We got the dollar continuing to slide. We got all types of worries about tariffs and everything else that’s happening or not happening in our economy right now, and you’ve just seen this relentless surge in metal. So I think gold and silver got a trend. Trading in tandem, although you see gold outperforming silver by about 20% right now or so so by about 50% I should say, right now. But silver still something to watch, and some of the silver stocks have been gushing since this rally began. So look at the silver stocks and silver ETFs, if you want to look at the direction of the market, good question there. All right, we got a busy week coming our way, so let’s get into what to expect this week.

Well, first and foremost is the possibility and the real possibility of a government shutdown if Congress does not agree to these short term funding resolutions. We might very well get a government shutdown as of Tuesday night, which is kind of a pain and unnecessary and doesn’t really affect the stock market, but something we’re going to watch pretty closely. We do get pending home sales today, on Monday, we’ve got fed speakers on tour all week long. Fed speakers are talking left, right center. Everyone’s talking right now about whether we should lower, whether we should raise. You heard Kenny talking about it earlier, some earnings coming out this starting today, with Carnival Cruise Lines and Jeffrey’s bank to start things off. Tuesday, job openings and labor market turnover survey, the jolts report, one of my favorite reports of the year, of the year, because we get a pretty good idea of how many people are quitting their jobs, and how many jobs are out there and available consumer confidence for September, that number rolls in the Case Shiller home price index, we know home prices starting to level off a little bit, and earnings from Nike on Tuesday, just do it. And on Wednesday, the labor market data continues, if the government isn’t shut down with the ADP employment report, construction spending for August, S and P final US manufacturing, PMIs, of course, and on Thursday, initial jobless claims factory orders for August. How are factories impacted by tariffs? And we’ll get deliveries from the automakers, especially Tesla. Everyone’s got their eyes on Tesla’s delivery, see if that business has recovered. And then it all leads to the big jobs report on Friday for the month of September. We’re still looking at tepid job job gains month after month. We’ve only averaged 29,000 for the past three months. 

Question is, does the unemployment rate hold at 4.3% or does it shoot higher? But the big question around all of this is, do we get data at all this week, if the government shuts down, one of the first places that will stop collecting and issuing data and issuing releases is the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which means maybe we don’t get the jobs report on Friday, maybe we don’t get the inflation report in another couple of weeks. So that’s one impact of a government shutdown, not to mention a lot of supply chain disruptions throughout government. Maybe people not getting their medications, people not able to enroll for Social Security gets pretty messy out there, and hopefully this is resolved before the end of the week. They usually are, but still, that could be a mess. All right, the indicator of the week, what am I keeping an eye on this week? Well, as we talked about with Kenny and at the top of the show, individual investors are suddenly as bullish as they’ve been all year. Where you been right? We were looking at the AI sentiment survey for the past week, there’s more bulls and bears now, first time all year, there’s more bulls than bears as far as individual investors go. And we Investopedia have our sentiment survey in the field. We’re going to be debuting that tomorrow night on CNBC. Every two months, we survey the smartest readers in the world to see how you’re feeling bullish, bearish, fearful, greedy, and the AI Sentiment Survey is a pretty good tip off indicator for that. So why are we so bullish these days? That’s something I am keeping a very close eye on as stocks dance near record highs and two other bonus things that I’m keeping an eye on this week. Last week, maybe you didn’t hear about it, but FINRA, which is basically an industry consortium, financial industry. 

For the financial industry just relax rules on pattern day trading. It used to be, they used to have 20 used to have to have $25,000 in your account if you were going to day trade make more than four trades a day. Well, they’re relaxing that rule. So now you’re not going to necessarily need to have $25,000 in your account day trade. That’s going to encourage a lot of risk. And folks, if you’re thinking about trading for the first time, if you’re thinking about jumping into this market headlong as we dance near record highs and all of a sudden, there is no limit on how much you need to have in your account to pattern day trade. I suggest you, and I urge you strongly, to learn how to day trade, to learn technical analysis, to learn risk management, because about 95% of day traders lose money. And if you don’t know what you’re doing, and if you don’t have rules, you are going to lose money as well. So this is very interesting relaxation of the rules by FINRA. And one other thing that caught my eye over the weekend, smart article by The Wall Street Journal about hedge fund managers becoming so big that they need their own agents. Yeah, they’re having their own agents, just like athletes, just like entertainers. They’re making so much now that they need to have agents who negotiate their deals, who plan their activities. This, my friends, if anything could signal a top in the. Market when hedge fund managers need agents. Anything Goes right now and no rules on pattern day trading, we are living in a brave new and peculiar world. So be safe out there. And thanks to all of you for joining the Express live every Monday at 10 o’clock and on demand on your favorite podcast networks. Shout out to our good friend Kenny Polcari carrier for joining the show. You gotta tune in to Kenny. He is one of the smartest, most entertaining people in our industry. I love, uh, reading and listening to his analysis, plus those recipes, cyber script profiler. Thank you for joining the show. Thanks to all of you. He’s on YouTube as well. That’s right. Strategy sessions. He’s on YouTube as well. Find Kenny Polcari there there every day. Bob Baldwin, phenomenal. You are phenomenal, my friend. You have a great week. Romania is in the house. Shout out to you in Romania. Love to have you here. Hope for two months of green. Hey, I hope for 12 months of green. Savage God, let’s go. Let’s keep doing this. Yes, stocks are overvalued, and some are still overvalued, absolutely. And that’s the beauty of investing. You got to find those pockets of places where you think value can rise higher. Top flow. Peace out to you, my friend. Thanks to all of our listeners and viewers from around the world. We love having you join the Investopedia Express. We love your comments, and you just keep them coming, because you are the smartest investors in the world. We will talk again a little further on down the line.