As of 4:19 p.m.:

Closing Volume and VIX

- NYSE volume 19% below its one-month average

- NASDAQ volume 22% below its one-month average

- VIX: down 8.29% to 19.90

Breadth

S&P 500 Sectors

Nasdaq 100 Heat Map

With S&P cash -73 handles I am covering my very small index shorts (for a small loss):

* SPY $568.27

* QQQ $482.08

I have too much on my plate over the next 48 hours.

With S&P cash +79 handles I am moving to very small in all of my trading long rentals from last Thursday.

I am no longer net long.

S&P cash is now +71 handles.

As we continue to move up to the upper end of the downward-moving S&P channel, I am expanding my short exposure (but in a very modest way):

* SPY $568.10

* QQQ $481.83

Wolf Street on the Fed's comments.

With S&P cash +47 handles, I have taken small trading short rentals in the indices:

* SPY$565.43

* QQQ $479.71

The context of the Fed decision was in line with expectations.

There is a lot of uncertainty — market and economic.

lonestar

I might have missed it but Gunlach's most recent video below.

In his market and macro outlook recorded March 11,

00:00 DoubleLine CEO Jeffrey Gundlach reprises a theme he has been talking about for the past three years: Americans should diversify part of their investments “away from all U.S.-only investments.”

02:08 A review of risk market valuations, with U.S. risk assets, especially U.S. equities, which entered 2025 grossly overvalued relative to history, versus more moderate valuations on non-U.S. equities, notably European equities. These relative valuations and U.S. dollar weakness helped set up eurozone stocks for unusually high outperformance out of the gate in the new year.

06:06 With the exception of energy, commodities such as copper have shown strength in the first months of 2025. Gold has continued its bull run. “I see a lot of funny forecasts. People say gold’s going to 3,000, which is not much of a forecast when you’re starting out at 2,900 and change,” Mr. Gundlach says. “I think gold will make it to 4,000. I’m not sure that’ll happen this year, but I feel like that’s the measured move anticipated by the long consolidation at around 1,800 on gold.”

07:15 [we’re going to put] Performance year-to-date (YTD) of investment grade bonds, as measured by the Bloomberg US Aggregate Bond Index, versus prior YTD performance for the index over the past 49 years. “It’s a top-decile year so far on performance.”

10:10 A new indicator for anticipating moves in the 10-year Treasury yield. As a forerunner of moves in the 10-year Treasury, the copper-gold ratio “stopped working once the secular declining interest-rate world of disinflation was replaced by a rising secular interest-rate world, which is what I think we’re in now.” The price of crude oil, which Mr. Gundlach says has been working in recent years, “suggests that yields remain high relative to crude oil.” Another indicator, the U.S. Dollar Index, a trade-weighted index of the dollar against currencies of America’s major trading partners, also suggests the 10-year yield could decline further.

11:45 Treasury yield curve steepening, with the yield curve now de-inverted, suggests the odds of recession are increasing. A key signal could come soon if the 12-month moving average of the spread of the 10-year Treasury yield over the two-year yield crosses above zero. Mr. Gundlach thinks the odds of a U.S. recession in 2025 are at 60%.

17:30 [Here is something else…] The “disturbing trend” of federal deficits getting larger every year. Those deficits now have driven the amount of Treasury issuance in the last year to match the extraordinary amounts of buying during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

19:15 Breaking the Keynesian bargain: 1960-2017, Washington ran large deficits to stimulate during high unemployment and shrank spending when people went back to work. Since 2016, even amid low jobless rates, Washington has run large deficits. While Mr. Gundlach does not support the Trump administration’s tax cuts, he says, “I do support the DOGE thing. I would like to find at least $1.5 trillion of (spending) cuts. We’ll see. That seems like a pretty heavy lift.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0ntNYbkuyY

I'm selling some Citigroup C, Bank of America BAC, Wells Fargo WFC and Morgan Stanley MS.

I am pressing my BABA short.

After a spectacular three-day run in private equity I am reducing my positions now.

I am also reducing Goldman Sachs GS, JPMorgan Chase JPM and American Express AXP after good gains.

As the S&P Index moves towards the high end of the clear (downward-trending) channel, I will be taking off my trading long rentals (which I established Thursday afternoon).

I was just informed that a friend has passed away unexpectedly.

As a result, I will be posting infrequently for the rest of the day and I will be out of the office until Monday.

Thanks for understanding.

- NYSE volume 33% below its one-month average;

- Nasdaq volume 34% below its one-month average

- VIX: down 4.06% to 20.82

Private equity stocks are total monsters since the Thursday lows.

Here are my trades thus far:

* Added to technology - GOOGL $161.30, META $585.20, MSFT $384.98, AMZN $193.70.

* Shorted BABA $144.83,

Some sell-side research on my ideas and positions:

Oppenheimer downgrades Goldman Sachs GS to Perform on delayed M&A rebound As previously reported, Oppenheimer analyst Chris Kotowski downgraded Goldman Sachs to Perform from Outperform. Coming into this year, the firm was very optimistic about a major rebound in M&A activity. There is, however, thus far no visible sign of this M&A rebound, with announced M&A up just 2.4% year-to-date and ECM 2.7%, Oppenheimer argues. Moreover, the firm fears that the current uncertainty over tariffs, a fiscal "detox" and the general upheaval of 80 years of trade and security arrangements is likely to cause a pause in M&A activity.

Nvidia NVDA remains 1-2 steps ahead of competitors, says JPMorgan JPMorgan analyst Harlan Sur reiterates an Overweight rating on Nvidia with a $170 price target after the company hosted its keynote at the GPU Technology Conference. Nvidia provided updates on its accelerated computing products and announced it is on track for a second half of 2025 ramp of its next-generation chipset, the Blackwell Ultra, targeting datacenter acceleration with a 50% improvement in compute performance versus its current generation Blackwell platform, the analyst tells investors in a research note. The firm believes Nvidia's "aggressive roadmap" is driving better economics and that the company continues to remain 1-2 steps ahead of its competitors.

Nvidia continuing to deepen competitive moat, says BofA BofA maintains a Buy rating and $200 price target on Nvidia shares following the product and partner announcements made yesterday at the company's flagship GTC conference in addition to post keynote meeting with the CFO that the firm says demonstrates Nvidia "continuing to deepen its competitive moat." The firm is "excited" by the structural uplift in demand in part fueled by over 100-times greater compute intensity for inference, evidenced by 1.8M Blackwell packages shipped/ordered to date versus 1.3M Hopper units total in 2024 across the top four cloud cloud service providers, the analyst added.

Nvidia GTC keynote highlights 'very strong roadmap,' says Morgan Stanley Morgan Stanley says there were "no big surprises" in the keynote for the Graphics Technology Conference, which is aimed at developers, not investors, but argues that Nvidia "made a strong case" that there will continue to be multiple waves of AI scaling requirements, that they are delivering product leadership through 2027, and that near term cloud demand is strong. Strong Blackwell commentary, details on the roadmap through 2027, and technology commentary "all frame what we see as a positive investment picture," adds the analyst, who notes a discussion of very strong demand from top four cloud customers going from 1.3M Hoppers in calendar year 2024 to current demand for about 1.8M Blackwells in 2025. The firm keeps an Overweight rating and $162 price target on Nvidia shares.

Winnebago WGO price target lowered to $43 from $51 at Citi Citi lowered the firm's price target on Winnebago to $43 from $51 and keeps a Buy rating on the shares. The firm cites reduced confidence in a recreational vehicle industry recovery amid heightened macroeconomic concerns for the target cut. Recent RV industry retail unit trends have been "solid but not spectacular," and Citi expects the industry to continue to "bounce along the bottom" pending a more meaningful trajectory of interest rate cuts or a more confident consumer.

Bidding for more FRPT.

Shorted an overbought BABA at $144.83 on opening -- it's a trading rental.

We might be in such a condition now:

Upside:

-CRGX +19% (further reducing workforce by ~90% to preserve cash and maximize shareholder value; Anup Radhakrishnan appointed interim CEO to pursue reverse merger or other business combination)

-MDWD +19% (earnings)

-SIG +15% (earnings, guidance)

-ATER +12% (earnings, guidance)

-AEVA +10% (awarded a development program for its next-generation global vehicle platform from a global top-10 passenger OEM)

-STNE +10% (earnings, guidance)

-VG +6.8% (US President Trump to approve LNG exports from Venture Global CP2 project)

-RNXT +3.7% (announces Abstract Presentation at the Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) 2025)

-VRPX +2.5% (receives positive Probudur results for dose range study moves towards next steps in IND)

Downside:

-HQY -15% (earnings, guidance)

-IMVT -14% (weakness following Phase 3 study results in Myasthenia Gravis)

-WALD -9.8% (earnings, guidance)

-GDS -8.7% (earnings, guidance)

-ABSI -5.2% (earnings)

-PGR -4.5% (reports Feb net premiums written)

-ROIV -4.2% (weakness following IMVT Phase 3 study results in Myasthenia Gravis)

-GIS -3.5% (earnings, guidance)

-GILD -2.7% (Trump Administration considering major cuts to domestic HIV prevention funding)

-INTC -2.6% (reportedly, according to Taiwanese official, TSMC's board of directors has never discussed taking over Intel's foundry division)

-GSK -2.5% (Trump Administration considering major cuts to domestic HIV prevention funding)

-TNXP -2.5% (earnings)

Premarket percentage movers at 8:35 a.m. ET:

Most Active ETFs as of 8:14 a.m. ET; Note that QQQ and SPY rank bottom of active list:

From Peter Boockvar:

A few things before the Fed/BoJ still has hiking bias

While the Federal Reserve is becoming less relevant in terms of its ability to influence events and is sort of frozen in time in its ability to react, it's still always an interesting day when their economic projections are released along with the statement and presser. The obvious thought is that their GDP estimates are trimmed, its inflation projections are tweaked higher (if tariffs are a one time step up in price, then inflation forecasts should be one time stepped up this year) and the 50 bps jump in the U6 unemployment rate seen for February should lead to an estimate shift upward in their estimate on unemployment. It all points to a stagflationary set of forecasts.

That said, the two more expected rate cuts seen in the December projections (a median fed funds rate of 3.9%) I don't think will change as I believe there is still an easing bias within Powell and the institution's thought process. Overall though, visibility is extremely limited as we all know and maybe we'll need a word count from Powell today on him saying "I don't know."

The Bank of Japan did as what was anticipated and that was nothing but Governor Ueda still sounds like one who wants to continue to raise rates. The timing though remains uncertain because of the newly instigated trade war. Ueda said "Japan's wage and price conditions are on track, possibly stronger than expected. But the uncertain US and global outlook makes it difficult to assess the potential impact. As such, we would like to look at upcoming data in early April to reconsider our forecasts. As for the pace of rate hikes, that would depend on upcoming data and information."

He acknowledges that with a base rate of just .50%, with inflation running well above that, and even with the rise in long term rates, he's still too easy. "In terms of the impact on the economy, moves in short and medium term rates are biggest and they are still deeply in negative territory in real terms. When looking at the entire yield curve, their levels are still underpinning economic activity."

The bottom line from Ueda on where policy goes from here, "If the economy and prices move in line with our forecast, we will continue to raise our policy rate and adjust the degree of monetary support as current real interest rates are very low."

While the 10 yr JGB yield was little changed, the hiking bias expressed led to a 2 bps rise in the 2 yr yield to .84%. The yen has been all over the place today but currently is down a touch, just below 150 while the Nikkei was lower by .25%.

I still believe what the BoJ does from here is hugely influential on global capital flows and watching the JGB market and the yen should be part of one's day as what happens there doesn't stay there.

Out of Japan came too its February trade data where the rush to procure goods before possible tariffs was evident with an 11.4% y/o/y gain in exports, about as expected.

I mentioned copper's record high price yesterday and it's up again today by 2/3 of a percent.

Bonus — Here are some great links:

Does Strength Beget Strength?

Jazzy Jeff's and Larry Williams' 2025-27 Strategies

Rising Credit Spreads: Market Correction or Recession?

Rising credit spreads — market correction or recession?

Credit Spreads on the Rise

Wolf Street on who is funding our ballooning debt load. 

The S&P Short Range Oscillator is less oversold at -2.49% vs. -3.31%.