Is Playing It Safe Still Working? | June 2026 Market Recap

Is playing it safe still working? Branden DuCharme breaks down what happened across the markets in June and what the charts are signaling heading into the second half of 2026 — interest rates, the US dollar, Bitcoin, emerging markets, the Magnificent 7, and gold.

This is a chart-driven technical recap: trend, momentum, and price action across every major asset class, translated into plain-language takeaways for long-term investors.

In this episode:
- Why the 2-Year Treasury leads the Fed — and the setup Branden sees in cash and T-bills
- Mortgage rates and the "higher for longer" reality for homebuyers
- The US dollar breakout and what a strong dollar means for inflation
- Bitcoin's 50%+ correction and why nobody talking about it is a good thing
- The hidden semiconductor exposure inside emerging markets
- The rotation question: where does the money go when the chip trade wobbles?
- A stock-by-stock look at the Mag 7 — including Microsoft's 35% drawdown
- Gold's ~30% correction, the $4,000 level, and the gold-to-S&P ratio
- Bonus: how index funds absorbed the SpaceX IPO

Chapters:
00:00 Cold Open
00:18 Disclaimer
00:44 Welcome & What This Episode Covers
01:04 2-Year Treasury: Why It Leads the Fed
03:17 Bond Duration Explained
04:29 Mortgage Rates: Higher for Longer
05:31 US Dollar Index: The Breakout
08:48 Bitcoin: Nobody's Talking About It
11:44 Emerging Markets: A Hidden Chip Bet
14:17 The Rotation Thesis: Where Does the Money Go?
16:42 The Magnificent 7 (MAGS ETF)
19:21 Mag 7 Stock-by-Stock: Microsoft, Meta, Apple
21:46 Amazon, Google, Nvidia & Tesla
24:53 Gold: My Favorite Pet Rock
29:15 Gold vs. S&P 500: The Ratio Chart
34:18 Bonus: SPACE, IPOs & Index Gaming
37:23 Wrap-Up & How to Reach Us

Questions, comments, or topics you'd like covered? Reach out through the website or send a message on Instagram, X, or Facebook.

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DISCLAIMER:
Information presented on this program is believed to be factual and up-to-date, but we do not guarantee its accuracy, and it should not be regarded as a complete analysis of the subjects discussed. Discussions and answers to questions do not involve the rendering of personalized investment advice, but are limited to the dissemination of general information. A professional advisor should be consulted before implementing any of the options presented.

Encompass More Asset Management LLC is a registered investment adviser with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and only transacts business in states where it is properly registered or is excluded or exempted from registration requirements.

Transcript

Cold Open

Branden 0:00

Hey, hire for longer regime. If you need to buy a home, right? Buy the home. If you need to sell a home, sell a home. Um, probably not a good time to buy a home thinking you're gonna refi into a five or four percent mortgage rate um on the horizon. An update on uh my favorite Petrock here. Cool.

Disclaimer

Speaker 0:18

Information presented on this program is believed to be factual and up to date. We do not guarantee its accuracy and it should not be regarded as complete analysis of the subjects discussed. Discussions and answers to questions do not involve the rendering of personalized investment advice, but are limited to the dissemination of general information. A professional advisor should be consulted before implementing any of the options presented. Encompass More Asset Management LLC is a registered investment advisor with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and only transacts business in states where it is properly registered or is excluded or exempted from registration requirements.

Welcome & What This Episode Covers

Branden 0:44

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Talux Podcast. I am your host, Brandon Ducharm, and uh today we are going over uh what's going on in the markets, what happened last month, just a little bit, and what is the market trying to tell us right now. Or at least my interpretation of that. Um, so you guys know where I

2-Year Treasury: Why It Leads the Fed

Branden 1:04

like to start if you've been following along. A lot of times I like to start with um the things people don't talk about as much. Um, the first one today is going to be the two-year treasury rate. So again, looking at interest rates. Now, remember, the reason I look at this is because it leads the Fed funds rates. So when people say the Fed is hiking or the Fed is lowering rates, oftentimes it's really just coming into alignment with what the two-year treasury uh yields or interest rates have already done. That correlation is really um uh strong throughout history. So looking at what happened last month, um, I had talked about and I've been talking about recently how I thought the two-year treasury would break out to a uh new relative high, breaking out of this wedge pattern it had been trading in, right? And we saw um that uh it had done that, it broke out okay back in April. The problem is now it has just gone so far, and the um interest rate market is now basically at this point, it's probably come off a little bit, but it it was um pricing in two rate hikes this year from the Fed. And essentially what that means is like where it had been trading in order for that to make relative value or relative sense, the Fed would have had to hike two times. The odds, in my opinion, that the Fed is coming to hike um into uh what is likely to be deflationary or disinflation, probably deflationary, um headline CPI or inflation prints as as energy prices have come down and rents have receded, um, is uh really unlikely. And so if you look to the the move to the upside and to your interest rates, um although I think they are going to go higher and be higher for longer, I think in the short term there's a potential um trade setup to take uh potentially some of your uh cash that might be in you know money market or six-month T bills and potentially roll it out into um you know, maybe two-year bills and pick up a little bit extra yield and see if you can't make a little bit extra money if those rates reprice down. Uh

Bond Duration Explained

Branden 3:17

a quick reminder on um bonds bonds have um a measure called effective duration. Okay, um, it's their measure of interest rate sensitivity. Uh, the rule of thumb around it is that if you take the uh change in interest rate times the uh uh inverse of the duration, so either the inverse of the rate or the inverse of the of the duration, that's how much money you'll make or lose on the bonds itself. So if a bond fund has 10 years of effective duration and interest rates go up 1%, you would lose 10% on your bonds. If interest rates go down 1%, you would make um 10% extra on your bonds. Now, as you get that change in the bond price plus whatever they're yielding. So right now, two year treasury, um, if you're yielding four point uh, let's just call it 4.2, okay, um, and the effective duration is one, it would take a lot of moving interest rates for that trade to uh go against you in a meaningful way. Um so in the institutional space, typically that's going to be done with leverage to make sure that you capture enough uh return on the underlying moves.

Mortgage Rates: Higher for Longer

Branden 4:29

Uh okay, uh mortgage rates. I think right here uh is the call out here is that when rates corrected down in April at this point, we can pretty clearly see that they caught a nice bid in uh momentum, stayed in a bullish uh regime. And they've only come down to really um kind of retest that that high peak of the April sell-off or March sell-off, sorry. Um, and momentum slowed down into that resistance. So I think that's confirming again. Hey, rates of ease on the mortgage side. Um, but I don't know how much more that they're gonna ease from here. Um, I don't know again that they're gonna explode higher, but again, this is indicative and tells a story continually that hey, higher for longer regime, if you need to buy a home, um, right, buy the home. Um, if you need to sell a home, sell a home. Um, probably not a good time to buy a home thinking you're gonna refi into a five or a four percent mortgage rate um on the horizon.

US Dollar Index: The Breakout

Branden 5:31

Next, I want to talk about um the dollar index, right? So the US dollar. Big call-up from last month that happened here is we can see that the dollar actually broke out of a uh basing pattern that it had started really um the second half of last year. So last summer it started, you know, it hit its relative low um and started kind of bouncing, you know, it'd kind of go up to 100, roll back down to 97. You see it traded in this range. Um, you now broke above that. I am uh it looks right now as we're early in the month that this month it will probably come back and retest that 100 um uh point breakout. Um, we'll see what happens there. The thing to watch on the dollar is that um dollar is a headwind for global assets. Um, however, it's actually a positive tailwind for US inflation in the sense that uh if the dollar's high and we live in dollars here in the United States, obviously, uh it actually costs us less money to import other goods, right? So all that stuff that we buy on Amazon that's made in foreign countries gets cheaper the stronger the dollar gets, right? Well, if it's cheaper to us, that means it's not driving the inflation prints higher. So if the dollar's breaking out to the upside, it's actually helping give cover for the Fed to not raise rates and keep some of the bond market and interest rates in check, potentially. Um uh again, a stronger dollar with good yields is gonna attract capital and help keep the bond yields suppressed. Um, and so uh it's not super you know constructive in the sense that typically when you have a rising dollar, there's things that that break, especially if it gets too high. But uh I wouldn't be surprised if we end up seeing you know a break up towards um price confluence areas like uh 104, 105 um in the dollar index before it it uh really rolls back over. So just something to keep an eye on is a dollar index. Um can be an interesting hedge in portfolios, certainly. Um, and again, just remind everyone that to be the long, to be like long dollar, there's a lot of different ways to think about it. But if you're long like the dollar index, really what you are is you're short the other currencies that make up the index, right? So you're short the British pound, you're short the euro, you're short Japanese yen, you're short the Swiss franc, the Swedish krona, right? Um, you're short all these other currencies. And um, what happens is those contracts that allow you to get that exposure, they're they're forwards, uh, they have the embedded yield essentially of cash rates in those currencies into the contract. And so if you're if you're in dollar, which has a higher um yield than those other currencies, you can get or you can get not only the differential, the change in um currency pricing, but you can actually uh as well get uh yield out of those currencies from the embedded yield in the um forwards. Uh

Bitcoin: Nobody's Talking About It

Branden 8:48

okay, let's jump to something people are not really talking about. Um and and that's Bitcoin. So um Bitcoin, I'm not uh necessarily a Bitcoin bull by any means, um, but I think it's an interesting asset, and uh I think it's uh one of those things that people when it's you know it's going hot, everyone's talking about it, and it's been really quiet. Um it's gone through a major correction here. So, you know, peaking out at a 126,000, uh, you know, we but we hit uh just over the weekend here, actually about 57,000. So you've gone through a more than 50% correction in the asset, uh, and people are no longer really talking about it. Um it's that's good. Uh and and the reason that's good is it means that people aren't chasing. So if people have really um sold, moved on, whatever have it, like it just had time to correct. And the price action is looking supportive and constructive to me. So um, this black line here up top, this is what we would call a positive divergence uh in momentum. So, from a momentum perspective, all of a sudden, hey, it's not going down as much as it's going down in price, right? Um, and so as we hit this new uh low here last month in Bitcoin, these new relative lows, uh, hey, the momentum didn't break down either. So the breakdown really didn't have uh momentum to it, if you want to think about it that way. You also have a lot of support in this gray box, so you're pretty close to a really major um chunk of support. And I would say the bottom side of that gray box is probably a little bit generous to the downside, but uh it looks constructive to me, right? Last week we had a bullish engulfing uh uh candle, just about. Um, we'll see what happens, but it remains constructive, in my opinion. Uh, so watch for a reversal in Bitcoin. Um, certainly uh I would say the the mark against Bitcoin here is that when you look at commitment to traders data, uh large speculators uh are very long Bitcoin and uh and the commercial hedgers are are very short Bitcoin. Uh I'd like to see that positioning the opposite for a really good bottom. And if you had that, it would essentially indicate that you probably have um a lot of uh rocket fuel under a rally where uh you know speculators that were short Bitcoin would have to cover. So, you know, that's always a great setup when not always, but it's usually a pretty good setup when you have um a lot of shorts that are gonna have to cover their their positions, which means they're gonna have to go out and buy and it exacerbates the upside move, really helping to cement the momentum and get uh you know any asset really going.

Emerging Markets: A Hidden Chip Bet

Branden 11:44

Uh so there's Bitcoin. Let's jump to emerging markets really quick. When we think about emerging markets in the US, we might think of you know uh Africa, or you know, we think of that totally undeveloped nation or you know, people making something in just austere environments. The reality is um, if you actually go look at what's in the emerging market index, it's pretty loaded up with tech and a lot of semiconductors, right? So Korea is uh South Korea is still considered an emerging market. Okay. So Samsung and SK Hynex are in uh the emerging markets index uh ETF. Pretty massive, you know, pretty big size. Uh it's an interesting uh uh practice, I guess. It's an interesting idea to just go look at the holdings inside indexes sometimes. Um but what you're seeing is this chart starts to look a lot like some of the semiconductor charts, right? Um and we're starting to see this really, this is what they call. So we just talked about a uh a positive divergence. This is what we would call a negative divergence. So as price has gone higher, right, the momentum at each one of those peaks has actually dropped and dropped and dropped and dropped and dropped. Um, so we shall see what happens. But I would certainly say that if we have um slowing momentum and divergences in uh the index, and you have a rising dollar as a headwind to emerging markets in particular, um, that's not a really constructive setup in the emerging markets. Certainly it's still the primary trend, is still up for long-term investors, for people that are um you know buy and hold and you're okay with more risk or drawdown. Um, it's definitely not a place to um, you know, puke or even rotate out of, but something to be aware of. And uh, and depending on how the correction shakes out, it might actually really just turn into a great buying opportunity. But sometimes what really um can help us understand that is um positioning and then really the path that things take, right? So slow grinds are just a different um type of correction than something that's really more of a crash, right? So um depending on how fast something sells off and how deep it goes, can help you understand if it's something that you want to just buy more of or let things uh you know settle, just let it be for a minute. Um

The Rotation Thesis: Where Does the Money Go?

Branden 14:17

okay. If we think about uh merging markets and we think about it being heavy with tech and especially semiconductors, I think that's gonna lead in well into my next chart I want to share with you guys. Uh one of the things you have to think about is all money is that's uh there's uh uh the old saying, uh all money that's uh anywhere has to be somewhere, right? And so, hey, if money's in all the semiconductors and people have been chasing the gains, and there's a lot of you know data to validate that, and we're starting to get a ton of instability in the leveraged ETF complex around semiconductors, um, both not only here in the US but in uh Korea as well. Um and uh that inevitably is going to have um some kind of really nasty shakeout, right? Uh and when it does, where does the money go, right? So what do people rotate to? My speculation is if is if the story sort of dies on um this the memory trade or or or RAM, um I think money just ends up rotating back to relative safety, right? And so historically in markets, what we saw is like, hey, the S S P 500 got shaky, or maybe the tech sector or um communications sector, some of the higher beta sectors would get a little shaky, and people would rotate into the what they would call the lower beta or the defensive sectors, right? They'd rotate into healthcare, they'd rotate into utilities or real estate. And um so as you used to see, hey, you'd go from kind of uh riskier sectors of the market to more defensive sectors of the market as a form of rotation. I think if you think about the risk um appetite of a lot of the investors and traders out there right now, uh their idea of rotating back to safety, it'll be interesting to see what happens. But if you go, hey, man, this has been crazy and the volatility's gotten so crazy, I'm just gonna rotate back to just the index, uh SP 500, the NASEC 100. Whenever they just kind of rotate back into there. Um, remember that um this chart I'm gonna show you next is a massive, massive weighting

The Magnificent 7 (MAGS ETF)

Branden 16:42

of those large cap indexes. So that's the MAG 7 or the MAG ZTF here, right? So um Magnificent 7 makes up uh you know anywhere from 30 to 40 percent of uh the index, depending on what index you're looking at. And so as money flows into those indexes, it it's going to um from a passive flow perspective, uh benefit the largest names the most. Uh so what I'm looking here in the in Meg 7 is you actually have um you're pretty much flat on the year. Um, so you had uh a uh really brutal sell-off it right away in the beginning of the year. You had a really nice recovery early summer in May, and then you actually had a pretty good sell-off here in in June. Um four four almost four straight weeks of selling before uh slight recovery um last week. So you can see there's some some good price confluence down here is support, where it sold off into primary trend is intact. I would say you're definitely um still in a primary uptrend, which is important to identify the primary trend. Um, and uh your uh RSI, you have no major divergences that you're working with here after you kind of washed out and reset. So you re reclaim a bullish um regime. It's good. You sell off last month into a bearish regime. I think that shook a lot of people out. I think uh between making room in uh in the index for uh SpaceX and liquidating out other stuff in similar market caps, uh the rotation out of the hyper, what they they call the hyperscalers, oftentimes I make seven. Uh the hyperscalers and you rotate into riskier ends of the AI trade. Uh, I think that washed it a bit out. And uh we've since reclaimed uh a favorable momentum reading. And I think that we have um potentially washed out or uh kind of hit that that short-term uh low, looking to recover, and I think it's gonna go higher from here. Uh that will probably propel the uh broader indexes higher, right? Um, if if meg seven goes higher, um you would likely see the indexes go higher as well, even if there is sub-sectors of the market that you know maybe underperform. But between the broadening in some of the sectors uh and then uh you know what I would say is the Meg 7 coming back online here, if that uh follows through, be really constructive and a great tailwind.

Mag 7 Stock-by-Stock: Microsoft, Meta, Apple

Branden 19:21

Uh if we flip through some of the charts really quick, like on how bad the damage is on Meg 7, it's actually um somewhat astonishing, right? So, like uh if we flip over um to Microsoft, right? Um hey, like you had a channel up at the top, and then you took a massive drawdown for quick reference, you know, hey, that is uh 35% drawdown. And what people would oftentimes, you know, tell me is hey, that that must be one of the safest investments to make because Microsoft's not ever going anywhere, right? Okay. Um, it still just lost over the last you know six, eight months 35% of its its value. Um, however, if we hit a double bottom here, triple bottom, we bounce off that po again positive, that positive divergence in momentum. You've got a lot of good support here. Um, so you know, again, results take time to measure, but I would just say Microsoft's already sold off a whole lot. Remember, that's one-seventh of the index itself. Meta again has had a slow grind down since last summer. So Meta Facebook, for those of us that remember, uh has sold off really hard. Again, coming into that sort of double bottom area, a lot of good positive price support. Um, so we'll see what happens. Certainly, I'd like to see Meta reclaim a favorable momentum reading. And if you could break out this trend line to the upside, that'd be really constructive as well. Um, but the setup is, I think, reasonably constructive. Um, Apple um had sold off and uh kind of hit a nice price confluence area and looks like it's gonna you know go on another tear here. Uh one of the call-outs I'd say is although it did when it sold off stay or hold its bullish um its bullish reading on uh momentum, what it looks like it may now do, depending on the strength over the next couple of just days here, um, is it could put in a uh a divergence on momentum on the upside. So um, however, if Apple you know grinds higher, that's really what counts. Price counts with divergences um don't always count. It's just an indication or a clue, um, if

Amazon, Google, Nvidia & Tesla

Branden 21:46

you will. Um Amazon, again, finding that price confluence came up in this support, um, you know, found the support and maintained its um bullish uh momentum ratings. Again. I perceive that to be very favorable. Um you know, not to say that it's a a roar and buy. I'm not recommending the stock in particular. I'm just saying the setup is certainly um there, that nothing under the index um on the Mag 7 front is already overbought, overdone, um, super vulnerable, anything like that. Um building my case there again. Google recently, you know, like gone through went through a healthy correction, I think found its price support at a at a point of confluence, held its positive momentum readings, primary trend intact. You know, uh that's that's good. That's that's what we like to see here. Um NVIDIA, you know, everyone's favorite here. Again, you find you go all the way back. That is that is uh price support going all the way back a year. Um and uh again holding its positive momentum. So we'll see what um trades through on that. Um, but again, it's it's looking to be favorable. Um, nothing's guaranteed though. And then the last is Tesla, which had um, you know, actually really monster day. When I made my notes over the weekend, I did make this note here. Like, I don't have a read on Tesla at all, um, particularly right now. I just said like it's the it's in the too hard bucket, right? Sometimes you just have to put stuff in the too hard bucket. Um, here's a good example though of what happens on those. So price goes higher, momentum comes down, that's your divergence. And then you got this correction, right? That you know went from uh the beginning of the year all the way into the the essentially the March lows in Tesla. Um now as it's um tried to regain its footing, what you'll notice is it hasn't regained or reclaimed its favorable momentum readings really um uh until today, but we're still midweek on that candle. So, you know, for the classical technicians out there, it doesn't count yet. Uh so being said, I think Tesla is potentially the the not the greatest looking setup, but if you actually pull back and you just say, well, what has happened is you you do have this really big base going all the way back to the the highs in 2021. And so I think Tesla over the next several months could become in a really interesting favorable setup if you break out to new all-time highs. Um so watch for it to reclaim momentum, watch for it to be constructive, and and watch for breakout would it would be what you want to do. Um but you know that's those are all the components that again make up the you know the Meg 7 ETF. And it's just really tough for the market to go meaningfully higher if the largest constituents

Gold: My Favorite Pet Rock

Branden 24:53

of the market are not participating, right? So uh for what it's worth, that's um what I think is going on in market cap land. Uh okay, last um last chart that we're gonna get into here is um an update on uh my favorite pet rock here. Gold. Uh here's the deal. Gold has gotten uh has had a brutal sell-off from the January highs. Now, if you've been investing in gold for a couple of years, you're probably feeling really good about it still. But for uh the newcomers, like um just charts sometimes can be deceiving on how small they are. So here's the deal Um gold just went through a near 30% correction. Um that's brutal, it's painful, it sucks. Um you know, no one likes going through that. But um what we can see is we broke down below a 60-week moving average. A 60-week moving average is a pretty common um long-term trend that you're looking at in uh in markets. Usually in a in a in a good trend in a bull market, you can find um a lot of supporter on the 60-week uh moving average. Not to say you have to, but seeing on the last couple weeks what has happened as momentum has slowed to the downside, you find price support right in this 4,000 level, a key level, right? A key psychological level from a number perspective, right? Um, so you find that right at 4,000. You get multiple dips and sell-offs below 4,000. They happen overnight, they happen short in duration, and they're relatively deep and they recovered quickly. To me, that's favorable. Those are washouts, in my opinion. Um, and you happen it, it happens right at that 60-week moving average. And we have now, um, today, actually, again, still, hey, it's early in the week. Um, so you know, listen, a candle isn't uh legit until it's done and closed. So this candle on a weekly chart won't close until the close on Friday this week. Um, but right now it looks like we're back above that 60-week moving average, and we've been trading in what I would say is now this um triangle. So uh if we get a if we get uh support on momentum, on price, on trend, and uh and and we break back to the upside, I think you're gonna see um some really good movement and favorable movement in gold. Now, all that to be said, if it breaks down further, there's gonna probably be some further downside and there'd be some really um significant damage to the chart in the sense that um you know, hey, if we're over here, if we're over in uh October, uh, you know, October time frame and we're trading down at 3400 on gold, A, for long-term investors, it's gonna be you know, it's gonna be painful and very annoying. Um, but B, you would you would have to ask yourself, you know, okay, what has really changed? Um at this point, you have a lot of the central banks sold the gold that they needed to to defend their currencies during the oil shock with the Iran war, um, from just a macro perspective. And um data now suggests that they've started rebuying, right? So you had a lot of selling happening, you're which you're gonna now have demand from the buy side coming back in. Hey, price is cheaper. If you like gold at 5,600, um, you know, uh look or at 5,000, sorry, you ought to really probably like it at 4200, right? Um I again I I have thought, you know, my quick basic thesis around gold is that look, um, gold is is gonna prove me wrong here um as soon as Congress stops spending money, countries stop printing currencies, and um, you know, take fiscal responsibility at all levels of government. And and I and I and I really mean that, right? So

Gold vs. S&P 500: The Ratio Chart

Branden 29:15

um I I again gold's uh got an interesting story. If I was gonna give you one teaser chart, like I would just check in on uh check in on on this, which is the gold to um you know SP 500 uh ratio and uh just pull this back out to a monthly chart here. And uh and check this out. So when the chart's going up, and I've talked about this before a number of times, when the chart is going up, that means that gold is outperforming the SP 500. Okay. When um when it's going down, the SP 500 is outperforming gold. Um I am going to adjust my stand really quick. Okay. Um okay, so again, remember, here's the deal. Um hey, massive bull market in the 70s in gold, massive correction mid-bull market. Um, again, dropping right down below its 60-week moving average, ironically, in terms of uh on this relative road uh chart. Okay. Uh, but you see, hey, you have this long, massive trend. Then you when you peak out in 1980, you've got a long, massive trend where gold actually sold off really hard. Um, the stock market had its ups and downs, but gold underperformed massively all the way until 2000 at bottom. Um trend changed, trend turned. It came up, and gold actually outperformed the stock market from um, you know, its lows in the 2000s all the way up to the peak in 2011. Okay. That's when you had the last really beginning of the gold bear market. And you can see shortly after that trend, that long-term trend changed as the stock market began outperforming with the birth of the new. You had two things, right? The birth of the new bull market, I think we, you know, still are arguably in. Uh, and then uh you had you know gold selling off significantly as well. Um and those lows got put in in 2021. Um, stock market and and the and gold both did poorly in 2022. Um, and uh and the trend has just now really started to change to the upside. Um, what I'd like to call out here is on a relative um chart here, this base that you've built. If you if we uh you know, if I if I drew you a base here, right here, okay, that base is right in line, sitting above that that prior base. Okay. So this base is a definitively a um higher low in the relative performance. Now, what that tells me right now is that gold is likely to outperform the stock market. Um, how long, I don't know. Over what time frame, I don't know. But I've can I will I continue to say it's not about stocks or gold, it's about stocks and gold. Having gold in a portfolio as a diversifier for most people makes a lot of sense. Think about how you want. What I look at most is price. Can't spend valuation and you can't spend theory. Price is what pays, and that 60-week moving average is just really starting to tick up. Obviously, it got way out extended, you know, second half of last year, and it's come back in. But when it comes back in, you're starting to find areas. Um, again, hey, uh, this is looking a bit supportive. You know, if I drew uh you know a nice channel here, again, maybe it goes a little bit lower. Maybe maybe gold you know lags and doesn't do a whole lot while the market continues higher here. Um, but I think we're retesting the bottom of the momentum on this trend. And just like I've showed you in several other charts, when that momentum kind of tests that that bottom, you have that slowing momentum, that's when you get reversals. So um it's an interesting setup to watch still. Again, I'm an advocate of gold. If you've been a gold investor and you've gone through the correction to this point, um, you know, I'd encourage you to stay the course uh and follow your financial plan, right? Um, if uh if you've been underperforming the stock market uh you know over the last several months because of this relative performance, uh hey, just hang in there and remember that it's about your financial plan, not about your you know, portfolios last couple months if needed. Uh so that's my my my recap

Bonus: SPACE, IPOs & Index Gaming

Branden 34:18

on gold. That's officially the end of the market recap. I'll give you a freebie for anyone listening. Uh not really a freebie. I just like to hear myself talk. Um, SpaceX. I talked about this um back prior to IPO and what I thought could potentially happen with just index gaming. We saw uh a fair amount of it, right? So this is chart of SpaceX, not a lot of candles, hasn't been uh trading for a lot of days. Um quick reminder um IPO price was down here. If you look, that's uh June 11th. Now, uh you'll probably think, well, you can't you couldn't trade at June 11th. Yeah, because by the time it actually opened up and traded, it was already trading at 150 bucks. And so even if they say, well, you know, price now is this and the IPO price is 135. Well, great. If you didn't get the IPO, then you know you never got it at 135. Um, but certainly, you know, ran up. Uh then it had, you know, came right back down the other side and it found support right at where the IPO price had actually opened up. Um, so we'll see what happens here. Um, what stopped the sell-off, in my opinion, here, is that it got picked up by the CRPS index um funds. So the funds that a lot of people are familiar with that track the CRPS index is specifically the total U.S. market index and the U.S. large cap growth index by uh CRPS is actually VTI and VUG. Um, so listen, if SpaceX goes on a tier, be a great trade. Um if uh SpaceX continue to have have uh you know goofiness to it, it'll be interesting to watch. So uh listen, if you're an index of hunt investor, that's not uh that's not a bug, that's a feature. The index was doing what it was supposed to do. Those indexes in particular actually never did um change your rules as far as I know to include SpaceX. That was really just standard to their rules as you know, total market indexes. If a stock's trading on the market, gotta sort of put it in the index. Um now tomorrow, I'm filming this uh filming this after the close on the 6th. Tomorrow, I've got it flagged here. Um so it'll be interesting by the time this comes out. Uh, everyone can go double check and sell what happened. I'm filming this Monday. It starts trading in the Nasdaq on Tuesday. So this so Nasdaq 100 portfolios have to buy it um, you know, tomorrow uh and this episode, I think, come out Wednesday. So uh everyone can go out and see what happens. I don't know what's gonna happen um for sure. I would have to think that it's probably favorable and you probably get an upside move in uh SpaceX simply because of the buy demand. Um, again, that's my theory on what you know this buy demand is what put the low in already. Um, and uh if you stop the bleed out of it, people certainly don't get scared. Um, people that bought SpaceX are, you know, they thought they were long-term investors. Hopefully they stay long-term investors, they continue to hold their stock.

Wrap-Up & How to Reach Us

Branden 37:23

And so um we'll see, but I think that probably creates some buying pressure. So we'll see how it uh reacts in price. Maybe we can check in on that next month or uh in a couple months here. Um okay, that's what we got going on. Uh, questions, comments, concerns, jokes, uh, hate mail, we take it all. Uh you know, comments, email, contact us through the website, however you want to get a hold of me, message me on X, Instagram, um, wherever you're at, always happy to chat. Um, and uh uh, you know, if you have questions about what's going on in the market, about uh financial planning topic, uh how those two things interact, maybe sometimes uh feel free to reach out those questions. Happy to address them on the podcast and uh and do so. Again, appreciate everyone's support. Uh, and we will uh see you guys all out there.