Image Source: Pixabay
 

If you decided at the end of March to curl up in bed and sleep for the entire month, you would have been spared a lot of unnecessary trauma. I present to you, shaded in green, the change in the SPY for the entire month of April. Zilch. Bupkis. Dick. De minimus. Take your pick of the term representing nothing.
 

Not to say that nothing happened. A captivating book could be written about the financial events of April 2025 alone, as the monthly candlestick chart strongly suggests. That long, long, long shadow on the candle isn’t there for nothing. It encapsulates, in one thin line, an entire month of multi-trillion-dollar mayhem on a nearly daily basis.
 

Let’s walk through ten ETF charts on a MONTHLY basis, to cut out all the noise. I’ll just say a few words about each one.

We began with the EFA, which has broken a wedge much like it did many years ago (left side of chart). Here’s hoping that failure is the start of something bigger, as I’m short this fund.
 

Closer to home, the DIA tagged (and dipped slightly below) its multi-decade price channel. Bulls could argue this is a launching point for new highs. Considering how insane this market is, I wouldn’t dismiss them.
 

Precious metals have been doing well for a long while, and the miners had a powerful push higher as illustrated by GDX. The trendline shows important resistance to the upside. I think there’s plenty higher prices that could come, but this is due for a breather.
 

Gold itself, by way of GLD, could use a ‘breather’ as well. I’ve added volume to this chart to highlight the growing interest lately in trading the metal.
 

Very few big shorts survived the final lurch higher at April’s end, but one of them is IWM, which decisively cut through support. This is by far the weakest of the major equity ETFs. I’m much more comfortable being short IWM than, let’s say, QQQ.
 

Speak of the devil – here’s QQQ. Even at its weakest, it did not violate its multi-decade trendline. Prices certainly “probed” lower, but the strength we’ve seen through this earnings cycle is fairly jaw-dropping, and permabear though I may be, I am not touching anything tech-related with a ten-foot pole.
 

Which leads me to semiconductors, SMH. Some probing and exploring was done here, too, as AI fever broke and NVDA slumped badly, bottoming (with just about everything else) early on April 7th.
 

If I wanted to pluck out one chart to make the best bullish case, I think it would be SPY. It's low for the month, perfectly tagged its very long-term price channel, and this could be interpreted that even in a “worst case” scenario (massive worldwide trade war), the index did not break its overall uptrend.
 

Just about the only asset class that survived the month in a truly bearish fashion is energy, represented here by USO. I have been writing ad nauseam about the failed right triangle, and oil’s failure has been rolling along pitch perfect. Indeed, as disappointing as trading was on April 30th, I still wound up with a profit for the day thanks to my energy shorts.
 

Weakness in energy is also illustrated nicely by XOP, the oil produers fund. This head and shoulders pattern is a beauty, and I think prices could have much, much farther to fall, in spite of the “drill baby drill” administration we are now so blessed to have.
 

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