WARNING: STOCK MARKET IS ABOUT TO GET WORSE...

Happy Friday. What's going on guys? It's Ricky here with a super quick market update. Let's go ahead and jump right into it. The overall market has been incredibly active today and a lot of that has to do with some of the latest updates that we have here for you. So $680 billion was added back to the US market in just the last two hours after reports say that Pakistan is pushing to restart talks. Remember, Pakistan has been a huge player in being a mediator between the US and Iran. Initially, when this was released, markets did begin to kind of recover, right? We kind of found a support at 680 for QQQ. Guys, when I tell you, we are testing a very critical support range. Again, we are now at the lowest levels since the initial rally, right? Like we have not actually broken below 680 since we started and there's a huge gap down. Again, there's no reason to panic, especially if things don't escalate. I'm just making you aware. It doesn't matter how much those individual stocks are down right now. Overall markets are not down that bad. If overall markets begin to break support and actively sell off, like actually form lower lows and lower highs. I'm not talking about pullbacks and then recoveries kind of like we experienced for like the past two months. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about actual sell offs. Everything that's tech related, semiconductors, memory chips, AI, everything will start to drop. It doesn't matter if they're already down 30%. They'll drop even lower. SpaceX will drop even lower. Tesla, it will drop even lower. Unfortunately, even for Google, it could drop even lower. Overall markets, if they begin to actually break support, think about this. Again, testing previous resistance levels or looking at previous resistance levels and the lows that we hit today, that's an 8.4% drawdown, just 1.5% more and we would be in bear market territory. I'm just shedding light, not trying to instill fear. We have not broken that support, but if things do continue to escalate, then there is no question that things can get worse before they get better. This is just a reminder of, there's nothing wrong with buying the dip. I actually shared it with my LPP team yesterday. When it comes down to my daughter's account and my son's account, my daughter's four years old, my son is nine months old. I bought the dip on Tesla and on Google because of how much it sold off. Shoot, I don't even care for SpaceX. And my financial advisor encouraged me to just have some exposure. So again, we just bought a few thousand dollars worth of it. The big thing that you want to remind yourself is that things can get so much worse before they get better. Don't sell yourself the dream that they have to recover soon. The reason I'm okay with buying the dip for them and or for myself, especially knowing that things can get a lot worse, is that it's a fair enough price that even if things do get worse, I'll welcome it. I'll buy more, but it's a fair enough price that if it doesn't get worse, at least I want some exposure. And that's how I see it. But never with leverage, right? Don't borrow money to try to buy an opportunity or leverage yourself in an opportunity that might end up turning against you. Leverage is a terrible thing when direction turns against you. Please, I cannot repeat this enough, right? So I wanted to talk about the overall markets. I want to talk about what caused the initial rally today or effort in recovery, but it looks like it's just not enough right now. A lot of consolidation here. It looks like markets recovered back into the green, got rejected. And then again, now testing current lows of being down about half of a percent. Hopefully markets can begin to bottom and begin to show signs of recovery. But again, it's just not looking very promising based off of what we're hearing happening in the Middle East. So also a lot of you guys might've seen this series of different tariffs that are going into effect today. China warns the U.S. not to start trade wars following new tariffs. Again, Trump just announced a new wave of tariffs. Please look it up. That is not a good thing. This is the part that like, like you guys let me know down in the comment section what you think, but like the last set of tariffs, the U.S. had to pay back, what was it? Like $160 billion. What's the point? Like why put Americans through all of this and all of this market volatility as well, right? Americans aside, just this market volatility for what? Just so the U.S. can pay it back with interest. Like that's disgusting, man. Like I'm trying to think about what the edge is with that. Try to use it as a vehicle to leverage. I don't know, but like who wins with that? I don't feel like we're doing much better now than before tariffs. Inflation is beginning to creep back up. Oil prices are high. We've got tensions in the Middle East. Obviously there's always going to be different catalysts, different factors. It doesn't matter who's under the administration, but it's like, I just do not see the benefit of this. Like that does not make sense to all of these different countries. But again, time will tell. The other thing that I do want to share with you is the AI CapEx boom is draining free cash flow. So from hyperscalers and pouring it into chip makers. So for those that do not know, again, kind of like Google for the first time ever in its history, in the company's history, it's actually negative in free cash flow, right? So this is what it's showing you of what the hyperscalers, how much they're pouring into it and what they have in free cash flow. And again, just huge. I mean, they've gone negative, right? Versus a lot of these semiconductor companies are breaking it in. So you can see kind of like why, you know, there is a bet being placed on a lot of these max seven companies because of how much they're investing. But then you can see why it just makes more sense to kind of just ride the wave of those that are actually making the money and then maybe rotating back into these companies once that certainty is there. I'll do my part in continuously trying to keep you up to speed. As of right now, I'm just letting you know, market direction is not super clear. If you're thinking about taking a trade, I would say that it's as of right now, a curveball. If you want to buy the dip because you think that it will recover, I love that for you. Just again, make sure that you can tolerate the time that it's going to take to recover and don't use leverage. There are two companies that reported earnings today. Verizon reported earnings, great earnings came out better than what was expected up 3.71%. American express reported earnings, not so great down 5.25%. I want to follow up with Intel. Remember we live streamed this one yesterday. If you didn't watch our Intel earnings live stream, I live streamed it for free. I opened up a short position in the live session and we actually bought to cover yesterday. They went from being up over 13%. There are some people poking fun. Again, this is why you don't talk while you're ahead, right? They weren't taking profits. They were up 13%. I opened up a short position just knowing what has happened in recent events with now and with Google, it started off green and then it gave it back because market sentiment is a little bit weak. It gave it all back. Now I didn't carry that short overnight, so I didn't go from being the 13% all the way down to the 4%. That would have been incredible. But again, you can't predict the future. I wanted to take profits while I was ahead. I made $5,800 in my short with Intel yesterday. I'm very grateful for it. I got in, I got out, I made my money and I bounced. Now obviously there's a lot more downside. I could have never predicted that it would have continued to sell off, right? I got in, I made my money and I bounced. Another great reminder when you're in profit and if your intention was to trade it, don't be greedy and take profits during very volatile and uncertain times. It's all about your intention. If your intention is to invest, then maybe don't worry about the intraday market volatility and swings, right? If you're into it as a trade, then that is your main focus. That is the bread and butter. What are the lows? What are the highs for the day or direction in your favor? And if there's any indication of a reversal forming, get in and get out, make that money and bounce. So I'll do my part in continuously trying to keep you guys up to speed. It looks like semiconductor stocks are getting hit pretty hard today. A lot of them, again, like we said, micron technology is currently down five to 6%. We have APLD. This one's down 6.5%. Marvel technology is 5.9%. SMCI down 1.6%, 1.7. SpaceX is currently down 5%. And then we have, what is it? Rocket Lab currently down 7.6. And then I'm pretty sure we have SanDisk. I thought we had SanDisk here. I guess not. Yeah. 7.7%. So not the best day for semiconductors, but you can't really blame them. They were in the green yesterday and markets were red. So now they're finally selling off and probably making up for what they didn't give up yesterday. And I'm happy to see it, right? So a nice dip by opportunity for those that prepared for it. And I'm very excited to see what next week has to offer. Like I said, I'll do my part in keeping you guys up to speed. I trade live every morning. Today we had a really good live session, not because we made a ton of money, but there was a mistake that I made in today's live session that we kind of just worked through and spoke through. And a lot of the beginners that just joined LPP shared great feedback based off of what they learned from that live stream. Because again, the idea is to learn from what it is that's being shared in those sessions, not just to blindly copy. So again, if you are part of LPP or you plan to join, you can always rewatch these live sessions. And it's the second link in the description down below. I appreciate you guys at the time. Hope that we're in a thumbs up. And like always, let's make sure that we in the year on a green note, take our team.