May 2025

A previous six week rebound rally had cleared many technical hurdles, burned lots of investor pessimism as fuel, exploited a ‘free pass’ on economic data and priced in more trade progress. And now?

S&P500 back in black for the year (as of 5/13/25)…Is it a sustainable trend or just a trading bounce?

For the record, weight of the evidence now suggests the Fed should focus more on growth risks, less on surface inflation effects from tariffs, opening a path to ease…Is there more room for markets to run or are the gains fully baked in?

Market back to the April 2nd low, traders keying on the ‘upside risk’ of steady tariff backtracking that could, maybe, prevent the ugly survey trends from spilling into hard macro data. Is the rally back, intact & lasting?

A stressed market can and will trade fast & loose to exploit technical/sentiment extremes and in search of buyers/sellers with conviction. What the action mostly reveals is the market’s strong and clear preference for the administration to unilaterally disarm to end the trade war it started.