Limited meandering post-breakdown - as S&P slowly clawed back just a bit from amid continued and constantly shifting, tariff poker playing, appears as a continuation of the prior day's 'fade' dynamics; and it's seasonally typical too.

There's almost always a degree of patience and even frustration with volatility as you get into the 'weak' seasonal time of year. It's often more about stocks, as opposed to the Indexes, but it can be both. And it is both tempered as just exacerbated, but the flow of news related to tariffs and ideally not geopolitics.

Part of the lethargy relates to apprehension ahead of Earnings Reports from a slew of major firms; and part pondering the tariff-related 'Art of the Deal' may relate to what France's father of mercantilism once opined:

"The art of taxation consists in plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers, with the least amount of hissing."

- Jean-Baptiste Colbert (early French Comptroller under Louis XIV).

(And if pressed to talk about debt, I suspect tariffs (which predate income tax) are an effort of trying to whittle-down our National Debt, without alarming the US populace, which seems to be incapable of truly comprehending spending.)

So, this past week, there has been a bit of migration from momentum stocks backing-off into the so-called value stocks; and it's hard to pinpoint the 'driver' of these shifts. For the most part it seems like 'concentration' or 'crowding-into' the mega-cap leadership; and we talked about that early in the weeks.

Plus it's part of why a focus on small-cap AI, mostly domestic-centric and/or Quantum-related stocks; or general 'security screening' . All are primarily domestic-focused or likely to benefit under the increased intelligence, AI and drone trends in the U.S. of course.

Market X-ray: So Friday was interesting; Indexes came back some helped by portfolio managers' emphasis on expensive big-tech stocks. At the same time a number of AI and similar new-era stocks like Quantum (QUBT) surrendered recent gains. Perhaps money rotated back to mega-techs, which doesn't make much sense here; but it's Wall Street's Casino after all (Cramer ringing the closing bell emphasizes that . . haha); which I guess now that you can sports-gamble on Robinhood's App (if regulators don't temper that, it's not exactly any sort of plus for the big casino stocks; unless they demand and get equality), ties it all together perhaps too much so. You might check with your accountant as to assumptions about tax-treatment of 'sports betting' within a Robinhood App; or for that matter other online brokerages that may embraces 'sports betting'.

For the Senior Indexes; a meaningful downside follow-through would require stronger participation. And if that's not where tariffs or other news leaves us, we set-up to rally next week (perhaps back to AI), after a possible early dip.

Bottom-line: notably, there was little if any news catalyst behind Friday action (aside drones of course), suggesting daily moves were generally tariff-related technically sloppy, and part of of frustrating yo-yo characteristics that are normal.

A meaningful downside follow-through will require stronger participation; so if that's not where tariffs or other news leaves us, we'll set-up to rally next week and perhaps rotate back to AI and Quantum tickers; after a possible early dip.

P.S. Earnings begin with JP Morgan; Citi, BlackRock and then we have CPI. Those are Tuesday; Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, B of A Wednesday. ASML will be watched for the semi's on Wednesday also. The sequence starts and not everything gets impacted by slower Retail action; although some will.

More By This Author: