As of 4:19 p.m.

Closing Volume

- NYSE volume 3% above its one-month average;

- NASDAQ volume 16% below its one-month average;

- VIX Index: up 2.51% to 16.73

Breadth

Sectors

% Movers

Nasdaq 100 Heat Map

I have a brief (30-minute) research call at 3:45 PM.

I believe the tide is FINALLY about to turn on cannabis reform.

Here is an important OpEd in favor of rescheduling by North Carolina Senator Michael Lazzara:

North Carolina Senator Michael Lazzara (R) Publishes Op-Ed Endorsing Marijuana Rescheduling, Says "I Side with President Trump"

I am adding across the board to my cannabis holdings.

TerrAscend's Chairman Jason Wild on AlphaNooner:

#AlphaNooner - TerrAscend's Jason Wild and Sunburn's Brady Cobb / X

A well done interview and perspective on the outlook for cannabis reform and a review of industry fundamentals.

Another good one from Tech Nova:

TechNova

A BMR or a BMR?

Part 1

With the continued run in the markets, it is not an unfair question to ask wether this is a Bear Market Rally or a Bull Market Rally.

A Bear Market Rally makes this a counter-trend Rally that pulls buyers in, only to reverse lower and trap the last Bulls.

A Bull Market Rally, means the 15% pullback was nothing but a pullback in an otherwise continuing Bull Market.

This may ultimately simply be an exercise in semantics, best left for Dame Meisler, or Walt Deemer, but it should still be recognized for the conundrum that it is. If nothing else, to frame one's mind around our own positions and holdings.

If someone were to argue that a Bear Market Rally cannot possibly tag new highs, I wouldn't really disagee with that logic. Most Bear Market Rallies retrace dips quite violently, but then usually falter at new highs.

Yet, if someone were to argue that if a violent Bear Market Rally could edge out a few new points into the highs based solely on momentum and continuation and you were then to see a hard reversal, one could argue that the last push higher was the reversal marker that confirmed the bear market. Meaning, that last thrust of the 2000 Dot Com bust, was no longer a Bull Market but the initial marker of the Bear Market to follow.

To me, at this point, it doesn't really matter. You have to look at what is in front of you and simply assess wether you believe the momentum continues, or wether it peters and leaves you dry.

When the market pulled back on April 7th, it rebound very quickly to SPY 544 on April 14th. Many here said we were going to go right back to re-test the lows. At the time, I took a contrary position. I stated that I believe we would see a violent BMR (Bear Market Rally), and not just a dead-cat-bounce. We would not be breaking SPY 500 again.

What followed was a rather rapid move higher.

I remained Long during the entire move to $595.

Then I had to decide wether this was a classic BMR, or a new Bull Market. In my view, this was a classic violent BMR that was meant to feel like a Bull Market. So I put on some SPY and QQQ shorts, via Options (Puts) on UPRO and TQQQ. But I mentioned that I would not be funneling, growing this short, or expanding this position in anyway. That I would hold this as insurance against my longs with the belief that will we roll over and retest SPY $550.

That did not end up happening.

We pulled back to $594 and have now moved higher.

My options are for end of July and are deeply underwater right now (down 75%). I fully expect to have to rip them up. As one does with an Insurance policy after it lapses.

Right now Good news = Great News, and Bad new = Even Greater News. Real pronouncements = Market Up, and Fake pronouncements = Market Up even more.

This tells me that Market Participants don't care, and don't want to hear any news. They just want stonks to go up. In that environment, there is no reason to expect the continuation to stop.

In a world with no earnings, and no considerations, why shouldn't number go up?

Over the weekend we got 2 pronouncements on IRAN that should finally put this debate to rest : "Intercepted call of Iranian officials downplays damage of US Attack", and "UN nuclear watchdog says Iran could enrich uranium again in a "matter of months".

You can file this in the "we already knew this" column based on the clip of Donnie lying like a 7 year old at the NATO conference. But the real world implication is clear. If our Bunker Busters do not work for facilities like this, it means there will need to be boots on the ground. We currently spend $200M per day arming Israel in this conflict, we spent $1B bombing rocks, and there is no doubt now that Israel will have to go in and finish the job. Hopefully with a contained paratrooper mission, but should it not succeed, with a much larger ground plan that will no doubt involve the US.

No reason the Market should take this into account.

continued...

Part 2.

Last week Donnie said in all caps that "we signed with the Chinese". The deal was finally signed, sealed and delivered. A huge positive as it was the first signed Trade deal since the Tariff World War started.

Markets rallied.

Not surprisingly, this too was a lie. There are still ZERO signed deals. But the markets are not looking to hold any data into account, they are looking to rally. Donnie knows this, and so we should not expect an end to False Pronouncements, I believe we should see an increase in those. If he is not held to account, and I was advising him, I would tell him "Keep doing what works, the people don't care".

So the main question now is what stops this desire from market participants to push the markets higher from here?

I personally don't see a catalyst. Wars, Tariffs, a Big Ugly Deficit Blasting Bill, things that would have sent shivers down the spines of investors, are entirely secondary to chasing returns and jumping on the rocket ship before it leaves you behind.

I am working on 2 longer missives. One based on my personal macro views right now, and another more closely based on Market Expectations in light of those views.

For now, I don't see why SPY cannot reach 6800 before running out of Oxygen. That is my current expectation for how high we can go. Beyond that, even lies and empty promises will not suffice as the oxygen gets thinner and thinner.

If all is so well, why is Gold up today? :)

I will not be shorting SPY or QQQ beyond my current insurance policy, but I will be building my GLD position to supplement by BTC hoard.

I don't want to be in anything that requires earnings in the back end of this year.

Good luck!

EOM.

Dan Nathan and Carter Worth were on this morning's Market Call at 11 AM. In today's broadcast Dan references (and discusses) my opener, thanks for the props!

Let's go to the recorded tape! All-Time Highs For Stocks... What's Next? | Stock Market Live Stream

I watch Guy and Dan daily — it's free.

I do so because their debates and discussions are fact-based and objective. Their respective experiences are different than most — Dan's background is in options and Guy is one of the better generalists around.

Importantly, unlike many, they admit when wrong — as we all are frequently.

And that is refreshing to me.

“Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes.”

- By Jack Handey Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey (Compiled) - YouTube

What do you call a market that embraces good news and shrugs off bad news? A bull market.

What do you call a market that achieves a buoyancy that exceeds the best news going forward? Dangerous. 

- NYSE volume flat to its one-month average;

- Nasdaq volume 23% below its one-month average;

- VIX index: up 6.37% to 17.36

Fed Speakers Today:

10:00AM: Fed Bank of Atlanta President Bostic (Non-Voter) speaks on the economic outlook and monetary policy before an MNI Livestreamed Connect Video Conference, London (Audience Q&A expected. No media Q&A. No embargoed text);

1:00PM: Fed Bank of Chicago President Goolsbee (Voter) participates in a moderated question-and-answer session before the Aspen Ideas Festival 2025, Aspen, CO (Livestream at https://www.chicagofed.org/publications/speeches/2025/june-30-aspen-ideas-festival. Embargoed text TBD)

Treasury Auction for Today:

11:30AM: Treasury hosts a $79B 3 and a $7 1B 6-Month Bill Auction

Economic Calendar for Week: 

Advance warning on tariffs have allowed firms to manage the process; Still lot of uncertainty where trade policy will go; Penciled in three rate cuts for 2026 on top of one cut in 2025

- Reiterates will take time before full clarity on trade policy arrives

- Business response to tariffs could extend into 2026

- Risk that tariff-related inflation will affect expectations is an open question

- Much of tariff pricing hasn't shown up yet in marketplace

- Needs more information to know what's next for monetary policy

- Uncertainty over outlook is more than just driven by trade policy - People don't like when monetary policy is volatile

- Fed has luxury to be patient as the job market is solid

- There are more tariff-related price increases to come; Question of "when," not "if"’

- Data suggest that firms will pass on tariff-related price increases to consumers

- Firms trying to avoid steady price increases when adjusting to tariffs

- Job market solid, but not as tight as it was; Low desire from employers to hire or fire workers

- Don't see expectation for dramatic job market weakening

- Normal for Fed to be criticized; Fed has to focus on its mission amid criticism

- Look-through may not be right answer (for Fed response) to inflation

- Still lot of uncertainty where trade policy will go

- Big debate on whether firms can fully pass on tariffs and what consumers will accept

Here are today's (early) things:

* I added to SPY $617.36 and QQQ $551.61 shorts

* I added to NVDA $158.90 and HOOD $86.72 shorts.

* And Cramer feels the speculative runway may continue for years to come (much as it did in the dot-com era)

* Investor optimism is spreading and is infectious, as elevated price earnings multiples are ignored and set aside by a growing number of bulls

* As another example, in a CNBC interview on Friday, Dan Niles says investors must 'forget about' valuations, names favorite stocks and why he still expecting good Q2 earnings season with markets at these levels 

* Market optimism has intensified as the consensus has adopted the notion that a new Bull Market leg (and an extended economic expansion/boom) has commenced - reminiscent of the ill-timed Wired Magazine column (during the dot-com boom) entitled 'The Long Boom: A History of the Future, 1980–2020'

* Though many of the risks are better known today , the market issues and economic fundamentals (the bad data lies ahead) have arguably worsened since we hit the previous high in January, 2025.

 * It feels like deja vu all over again... but will we face 'The Curse of the Long Boom'? 'When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated, but as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance,' said Citigroup, CEO Chuck Prince in July, 2007

I wrote my column alongside Jim Cramer from 1997-2021 on TheStreet. In 2021 he formed his Investment Club and began to work full-time for CNBC.

I thoroughly enjoyed my partnership and collaboration with Jim on TheStreet during those 25 years. We didn't always agree, but we respected each other. (Jim even wrote the forward in my book, Doug Kass on the Market: A Life on TheStreet.)

My admiration of Jim Cramer is well known and has been chronicled over the years in my Diary on TheStreet Pro. Every holiday season I wrote a tribute to Jim (Jim Cramer's Pool).

Here are some good examples of columns in which I expressed my respect and admiration for Jim: 

* "Our Romeo, Jim 'El Capitan' Cramer, Departs Today" TheStreet Pro (September, 2021)

* "Out of Site But Not Out of My Thoughts" TheStreet Pro (December, 2022)

* "A Tribute to Jim Cramer: 20 Years of Mad Money" TheStreet Pro (April, 2025)

Jim's reservoir of investment knowledge is staggering. He is one of the best Bull Market players extant. Perhaps more importantly he is a great dad, husband, educator and philanthropist.

But, like many market participants, he can get overly enthusiastic -- as he did at the peak of the dot-com boom in early 2000. 

From Wikipedia:

In January 2000, close to the peak of the dot-com bubble, Cramer recommended investing in technology stocks, and suggested a repeat of the stock performance of 1999.[46] In February 2000, the year in which Cramer said he produced a 36% return, Cramer said that there were only 10 stocks he wanted to own, and he was buying them every day. These stocks were 724 Solutions, Ariba, Digital Island, Exodus Communications, InfoSpace, Inktomi, Mercury Interactive, Sonera, VeriSign, and Veritas Software. He also dismissed the investing strategy of Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, and said that price–earnings ratios did not matter.[47]

Here is an example of Jim's enthusiasm at the dot-com peak -- 25.5 years ago:

"The Winners of the New World"

And here are some excerpts of another example of his unbridled enthusiasm from a Street.com article on Jan. 1, 2000 entitled 'To The Moon" -- again, just as the dot-com boom busted:

To the Moon

James Cramer

January 1, 2000 12:00 A.M. EST

Can this NASDAQ lunacy continue into next year?

That’s the question everyone on Wall Street keeps asking. And I have an answer that seems as hyperbolic as the stocks have been parabolic: you bet it can. In fact, it could accelerate in January, dwarfing some of the gigantic moves we have already seen...

But the dotcoms and their Net-infrastructure brethren have proved immune to higher rates. How else can you explain the NASDAQ’s 80% increase, the greatest uplift in any U.S. average’s history, in light of the major interest-rate rises of 1999? Put simply, any Fed moves to tighten may set off a further stampede into the hottest stocks around...

Too much Pangloss? Frankly, as a performance manager who gets paid by what I make, I can’t afford to take the gloom-and-doom position that has enveloped so many managers who appear on television and pontificate about how the good times must end. Those are the same people who mouthed the same warnings last year. Had I listened to them, my investors would have saluted my caution and conservatism–right before waving goodbye.

That’s why this year I am spending more time worrying about missing the upside than worrying about the potential declines of those stocks that have shot up at a velocity normally reserved for cheetahs, not bulls, and certainly not bears. We all know what followed - the speculation in technology ended abruptly as the Nasdaq fell by over -80% in the next few years.

A generation of investors were wiped out -- not to return for years.

Fast forward to April, 2025 where until recently, Jim warned investors on CNBC about the speculative market backdrop:"Industries like tech may become attractive again in the future but should be pared back for now ..."

"Jim Cramer: Investors should follow the post-dot-com-bubble playbook"

Of course, since then the market has climbed parabolically and Jim, like many others, has dramatically changed his cautious tune.

This dramatic change of view was vivid in an uber-bullish exchange between Jim and David Faber on CNBC three days ago:

Cramer: Its a thing. Do you think the home offices and hedge funds are buying? ... I am just saying in 1995 the older people did not know and they ignored buying. Greenspan's irrational exuberance was wrong so was Yellen's concern about biotechs was also wrong. I am not willing to be a tyrannosaurus

Faber: What year is this?

Cramer: I think 1996.

Faber: We still have three more years of this?

Cramer: Yeah, partner.

Hours later on Mad Money, Jim reemphasized that the young investors are changing the investment landscape -- as they embrace risk and risk equities and We have a runaway bull market right now, says Jim Cramer:

"We have a runaway bull market now. In fact its a bullish jailbreak, for heavens sakes. "

Jim's view is apparently infectious. Here is Dan Niles' similarly euphoric market view: 

"You have to forget about valuations for now..."- CNBC, Dan Niles Interview (Dan Niles: Still expecting good Q2 earnings season with markets at these levels) 

Bottom Line

"Nothing like price to change sentiment."

- Divine Ms. M (Helene Meisler)

There are many dissimilarities between the dot-com era and today.

But there also a number of similarities (that are currently being dismissed).

As I will discuss in tomorrow morning's opening missive, a 24-times price earnings ratio is a poor launching pad for future investment returns.

Though many of the risks are better known, the market issues and economic fundamentals (the bad data lies ahead) have arguably worsened since we hit the previous high in January, 2025. 

Investors and the business "shows" no longer pay heed to political, geopolitical, social, economic and other potential market threats -- as shorts are scoffed at. Panelists brush aside cash positions as the stronger an individual's stock price momentum, the more they seem to want to own it. 

Many of today's bullish practitioners were among the most emotional and increasingly cautious in late March/early April at the market's nadir. (On the Sunday night at the market's low in early April Jim cautioned that S&P 4000 could be in sight). Now, with the S&P Index having climbed by more than 20%, many of the same actors are once again emotional (but this time bullish).

Perhaps, as Benjamin Disraeli once said, "What we have learned from history is that we haven't learned from history."

And, perhaps, especially in the face of the aforementioned headwinds, the type of unbridled enthusiasm expressed by Jim Cramer and others (which is ignoring high valuations and other headwinds), is precisely a condition in which investors should consider cashing in their chips. 

Just as it proved to be in early 2000.

Upside:

-BMNR +48% (announces $250M private placement to initiate Ethereum treasury strategy)

-MNTS +30% (awarded NASA contract for In-Space power system demonstration)

-HPE +15% (HPE and Juniper Networks Reach Settlement with U.S. Department of Justice)

-BE +12% (momentum from US Senate bill implications)

-GMS +11% (confirms to be acquired by The Home Depot’s SRS Distribution for $5.5B at $110/shr)

-RUN +8.5% (hearing RBC out with constructive commentary on updated US Senate bill implications for company)

-JNPR +8.4% (HPE and Juniper Networks Reach Settlement with U.S. Department of Justice)

-FSLR +8.1% (hearing Wolfe Research positive US Senate bill implications for company)

-ORCL +7.2% (bullish revenue commentary from CEO)

-STEM +6.0% (convertible note exchange and new issuance)

-PLTR +4.8% (Palantir and Accenture Federal Services join forces to help federal government agencies reinvent operations with AI)

-TYRA +4.0% (doses First Patient in Phase 2 Study of TYRA-300 in Low-Grade Intermediate Risk Non-Muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer (SURF302))

-MRNA +2.5% (announces positive results from a Phase 3 efficacy study (P304) evaluating the relative vaccine efficacy (rVE) against influenza illness of mRNA-1010)

Downside:

-INMB -62% (MINDFul Phase 2 data in early Alzheimer's did not meet primary endpoint)

-UNCY -22% (receives FDA CRL for OLC; plans rapid resolution via alternate manufacturer)

-SHLS -12% (lower off US Senate bill implications)

-NXT -11% (lower off US Senate bill implications)

-GRRR -9.5% (files to sell $105M registered direct offering)

-ZS -3.0% (files to sell $1.5B of Convertible Senior Unsecured Notes due 2028)

-TEM -2.9% (files to sell $400M Convertible Senior Notes due 2030)

-ENPH -2.4% (lower off US Senate bill implications)

Charts from 8:24 a.m. ET

From 8:43 a.m. ET:

Bonus — Here are some great links:

Fly Your Flags

Freedom Wins Again 

Almost All Aboard

Checking the Boxes

International Revenues

The S&P Short Range Oscillator climbed to 2.23% vs. 1.99% — that's more overbought.