the sp500 was down 4.14% to begin the first week of September last week so far we're up almost 1% today so it appears that the markets are trying to make a little bit of a comeback whether or not this will continue is a whole other discussion that we will have here in this video the markets actually started off strongly today with the SP Rising about 1.5% at the highest point of the day apple is down about 1.12% after revealing the iPhone 16 which is expected to have all of these AI capabil ities the iPhone 16 is supposed to be a super cycle and generate a lot of demand for the device but Wall Street appears to be a little concerned about the pricing of the iPhone 16 the iPhone 16 plus is $8.99 while the iPhone 15 Max Pro or whatever it was was like $1,100 I believe that's why Wall Street is not happy about this or more specifically why the AI features and capabilities this phone is expected to have will prevent Apple from selling it at higher prices this phone is expected to be better than the previous phone but it is priced significantly lower which means that Apple can't sell many of these units at higher prices instead they must lower the price to instinctively meet their demand Bank stated today that you would likely receive a tweet from Wall Street journals Nikki timberhouse indicating either 25 or 50 basis points for markets following Wednesday's CPI report that costs a lot of money Deutsche Bank says Powell will tell people in the Press who know what they're doing If the Fed decides on 50 basis points watch out for Nikki leaks over the next few days the FED cut rates on September 18th which is 7 weeks 1 day 23 hours and 48 minutes from now however analysts Banks and hedge funds have lately said that you should likely sell the first fed cut the markets are likely to be against the first fed cut especially if it is a 50 basis point cut so it shouldn't come as a surprise if the markets start to price in what a sell the cut could do to them this means that we could actually sell into the first fed cut on September 18th at the moment a 50 basis point cut is only 28% likely while a 25 basis point cut is 72% likely the CPI data from this week is the last big piece of data we'll get before the first fed cut on September 18th this will help make it more likely that 25 or 50 basis points will be the first fed cut FS now for the fun part ideas about x mark Newton head of technical strategy at FX research says that things could get much worse from here on out if we don't see a clear recovery in fact the markets are up almost 1% today which could be the start of a big recovery however I would be cautious about putting all my eggs in that basket the Strat mainx account says that fear grows when the economy is weak and the markets are caught off guard I think that progress will slowly but surely start to go down on many time frames usually September is not a good month for the Federal Reserve to cut into an economy that is getting worse if I may say so the yield curve is still backwards on Friday it was down six basis points and to day it is down three basis points most of the time markets don't gain from getting this naked steepener there are other unknowns about the election that might be put into our markets in September and October as well earnings for Q3 are also coming up and I think that people have too high of hopes for them there are actually a lot of things going against the bull thesis right now even if it turns out to be true in the end you can see that I don't think the time between now and the election will be good for stocks to date the da is the better performer up 1.2% while the Russell 2000 is only up 0.5% Goods of the day don't have a lot of risk today which is what you'd want to see if we're going to have a soft landing and the first fed cut a small amount of danger here would be a great sign for investors who aren't rushing to the defensives in general you don't want the Dow to lead the rise back to normaly since the Dow is defensive and the Russell is risk-taking as the first fed cut gets closer the recession trades this doesn't make a lot of sense to me and it doesn't immediately mean that the market is going up the market vix is down almost 11% and is now just below 20 it is clear that markets are going through a downturn so it is best to bet on a lot of different things he also says that the tech business is still strong While others find it hard to time fund plans with bull market Peaks X account gives six reasons why we think the sp500 will end 2024 strongly even though there will be problems over the next six to eight weeks the discussion for president on Tuesday night at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time will be a big event this coming week we think it's important to keep in mind that stocks could end the year strongly in the second half of 2024 for a number of reasons I think the most important one is if the economic data starts to settle and get better and the economy really is going downhill we can also see that jobless rates have gone down a lot that people are spending more and that the total number of real estate deals has gone up all things considered I'm feeling better about the end of the year as a whole it might be a good month after the election in November if the market keeps getting better I think we'll have a great end to the year today some data came out including new inflation predictions from the New York fed these raised people's expectations for inflation from 2.97% to 3% in this case December might be a good month in August threeyear ahead expected inflation is 2.5% up from 2.3% in July this means that threee ahead expected inflation just went up expected inflation for the next 3 years in August stays the same at 2.8% but families are more likely to have access that can't be changed that doesn't sound good and it might even be helping the markets a little there were 0.2% more wholesale stocks in the US in July than expected the estimate was 0.2% to 0.3% however wholesale trade sales were better than expected and better than feared these two things are making the Atlanta feds Q3 GD predictions go up from 2.1% to 2.5% we are also getting information that shows wage growth got better in August with employment spreading back up to 53.2% since a few years ago the trend hasn't moved much however the chart has been slightly going up for the last month or two which is about where you were before the pandemic this is also how Wall Street is right now people may have to wait a few years for their wages to catch up to the real cost of living before they feel safe spending more money or having the ability to spend more money this is why speeding up wage growth is a good thing in August the average hourly wage went up by 3.8% over the past 3 months in the last few years the trend has slowed down but growth is still higher than the past few decades according to the household poll the number of jobs Rose by 178,000 in August compared to 19,000 in July these may also be some of the things that are affecting how the market is acting right now an AI investor poll done not long ago found that 45.3% of investors are bullish 29.8% are neutral and 24.9% are bearish about 3% more stocks are trading above their 50-day moving average now than they were a month ago this means that 3% of all stocks are breaking above their 50-day moving average or 47.2% of all stocks are trading above their 50-day moving average the CNN fear and greed measure is now at 42 up from 39 on Friday which makes sense since fear isn't as high as it was then even if the markets are doing well today I don't think everything is clear in fact Mark Newton of fun Strat doesn't think everything is clear until there is a clear and significant upswing in the markets Market momentum is approaching danger severe grade put in call options with severe fear stock price strength is greed volatility in the market is neutral Safe Haven demand for trash bonds is neutral for dim extreme fear and some data being crunched today from Bank of America indicate that a higher tax rate of 28% versus 21% today is estimated to be a 5% hit to EP this is one of the reasons that October in particular may be a difficult month for stocks because it will impact earnings estimates for 2025 regardless of whether you're looking at higher corporate tax rates or hire tariffs from other countries you