Week Ending 03_14_2025 Stock Market Recap

The valedictorian of investments has something to say to you this week. What that you ask? TUNE IN TO FIND OUT!

Episode Transcript

(00:37):
Hello and welcome to this week's edition of the Big Money Report. I'm
your host, David Boothe, President and Financial Advisor at BIG
Investment Services. That's BIG, Boothe Investment
Group. We're a full-service financial advisory based out of Dover, Delaware,
serving clients all across this great country. And

(00:57):
you can read all about us at abigplan.com. That's www.abigplan.com. I
like to put the show together once a week just to give you a recap of the week behind
and a peek at the week and weeks to come, trying
to keep you up to speed with you and your money. And we're glad you're
with us today. It is Friday, March 14th, 2025. Shout

(01:19):
outs to Don and Susan and just all the folks tuning
in week in and week out. So glad that you are taking advantage of
the program to stay on top of what's going on out there with, hopefully, what
you consider to be a reasonable and calm voice over
the airwaves here. So, let's talk about this week and what's going
on. The market beat down continued. Dow Jones Industrial

(01:41):
Average down 3% this week. The S&P 500 down 2.2. The
NASDAQ Composite down 2.4. And the Russell Small Cap Index looking
a little bit better this week, only down 1.5%. The Volatility Index down
this week, down 6.8%, but don't let that fool
you. It was a roller coaster ride of a week. The volatility index

(02:01):
was much higher earlier this week, pushing 30 actually
on the VIX. And it came down a lot here towards the end of the week. So
came off the boil. It's at a 21.7 right now. So
that's looking pretty good. Taking a look at the long-term bonds as
measured by the TLT flat on the week. not a whole lot
of movement there. And we'll talk more about the bonds in just a

(02:21):
moment, because bonds are saying something here. And I want to relay that
message to you. As far as the sectors of the market, a couple
of bright spots, semiconductors, which have really been taking a hit
here, up half a percent this week and utilities up two
percent. Energy was also up two and a half, energy doing
well. Everything else was down two to 4% on the week,
just kind of sloppy trading there. Gold was up. Look, I

(02:45):
mentioned a couple of months ago, gold was on the verge of breaking out. And
it did do that. It did break out. It hit $3,000 an ounce
this week. That's huge. Gold's the oldest investment on planet earth,
and it just hit an all-time high. Now, we don't have the actual metal
in our portfolios. We're using a gold mining company. I
like gold mining companies because gold, as great as it is, and the returns

(03:06):
have been pretty solid, it is a dead money investment, right? You don't get any
dividends. You don't get any share buybacks. It just sits there
and looks pretty. And you make money if it goes up in value. With
a gold mining company, that's a business operating with revenues and
profits. So we're getting dividends. We're getting share buybacks. And then on
top of that, When gold moves, the miners tend

(03:26):
to move two to four times the amount of the metal.
So we've got Ken Ross gold in our models. And just by comparison,
gold's up 13 and a half percent year to date. Ken
Ross is up 25 and a half percent year to date. So you get that outsized move.
Plus you get a dividend. All that said, I'm watching all that pretty close. And
depending on how things go here in coming weeks, I might be trimming them back a little bit. Silver

(03:49):
also up 3.7%, so metals are pretty strong. So
what's moving markets? Well, the same stuff that's been moving markets, but I got to
tell you, I think what's really moving markets more than anything right now is
the emotion of fear. The emotion of fear. All I've heard
all week long on the news, recession, recession, recession, the
big old R word, recession. Look, we have talked

(04:09):
to clients at our office that are absolutely terrified
right now. I mean, real fear. Now, listen, I've got frustration. I've
been very frustrated because, you know, when you manage hundreds of millions of dollars,
you'd like to have some clarity as to what the policy is going to be next week
or next month and so on. And right now we have no idea. And when you're
sitting in front of the screen and everything's flashing red and green, you're trying to decide

(04:31):
what to buy and what not to buy or what to sell, et cetera. It's very frustrating
when you really have no idea what the policy is going to be. But the fear
I'm sensing is just really off the chain. And we've really been
having to talk to people a bit just to kind of calm them down, right? Because
listen, regardless of what's going on with the political stuff,
Exxon is still going to be pumping oil. CrowdStrike is still going to be providing cybersecurity.

(04:52):
People are still going to go on Facebook. They're going to bank at Bank of America. The AMD
is going to put chips in your computers. and so on and so forth.
Comcast is gonna send your signal to your house for your wifi or
your cable. The world doesn't stop turning. And what I'm seeing right
now out of this market is not the beginning of utter destruction
or the pregame to a major recession. What

(05:14):
I'm seeing is a correction at the moment. And look, we'll say, David, why are you so
calm? The market is just getting hammered. How can you be so calm? Because
listen, the stock market is not that smart. That's how I can
be less calm. The bond market is
the smart one, okay? The bond market's a much larger market, and
it's a much smarter market. The stock market is

(05:34):
like the quintessential dumb jock. Now, I'm not saying that all
jocks are dumb, okay? So for you big athletic folks, don't
get me wrong, I'm into sports as well, but I'm saying there were
some that were dumb, right? Some of them were really talented athletic-wise, but
they were kind of dumb. So the market is like that, right? It can blow
through the offensive line or the defensive line or whatever's in front of it,

(05:55):
and it can score big, and it can make you feel great, and it can also drop the
ball and fumble and really mess things up as well. The
bond market is the valedictorian of the class, okay? You don't
hear much from it, not a lot of folks paying much attention to it,
but it's killing it behind the scenes. That's the bond market. The
bond market has got a message for you folks. Recession is

(06:16):
not imminent. Recession is not imminent. One
of the things that I pay close attention to is credit spreads. That's
the difference between the interest rates on high quality government
bonds and what we call junk bonds or high yield
bonds, your lower credit quality bonds. When those spreads are
narrow, that's a strong indication that the economy is

(06:38):
on solid footing. When those spreads widen, okay,
and you really see a big widening between high yield and
good quality credit, that's when you have to start getting concerned that
the bond market's trying to tell you something negative. On top of that, I'll tell
you this, the action in bonds hasn't been what you would expect. They've
done well year to date. Don't get me wrong. They're holding their own. But

(06:58):
it's not really what you would expect if there was this full on fear of
recession, right? The big money, the institutional money just
doesn't seem to be buying into that narrative at the moment. Now they
are buying into a market correction. The commercial traders, they
were like big time selling and even going short over the
week, et cetera. So that's just big money trying to take advantage

(07:18):
of the moves of the market. I think what we've got on our hands right now is a
correction. I think that right here, right now,
it looks pretty exhausted. The S&P Oscillator, the mark
charts, we talked about that last week. A lot of this just shows and
points to some exhaustion here in the selling. So
I would not be surprised to see a rally here in the next couple of weeks. All

(07:40):
that said, I do have some bad news. I was hoping the S&P 500 would retake 57.83 as
a level this week. It did not do that. That's a level
that if it had caught that and reclaimed it would have made
me feel a lot more comfortable. Because it didn't do so, we
kind of have like this confirmed breakdown here in the S&P. which

(08:01):
just means it could be sloppy for a while longer, right? A lot of times you get
these corrections and the market will have a bounce or have a rebound. And
then within weeks or maybe a couple of months, you'll have a retest of
those lows. You'll have a retest. It's very common. And
given the fact that we've got this confirmed breakdown, I
think that might be likely. Of course, here's another strange thing going on. Three

(08:22):
weeks ago, we had a confirmed breakout. So this is one
of the fastest 10% declines from an all-time high
in U.S. history. When you look at the other ones from the past, they
have had a tendency to shoot right back up
again because they've fallen for irrational fear.
Maybe it was COVID, maybe it was 9-11, not that

(08:44):
9-11 wasn't bad, it was, but again, the knee-jerk reactions.
A European debt crisis, that was a big one. So there's
been a few times the market has done this and it's turned
right back around and rallied right back again pretty quickly. So if
we're not slipping off into the abyss and complete total apocalypse as
a country, then we could see this thing rebound pretty quickly. I

(09:05):
like where we stand at the moment. We did some buying during all this weakness. But
right now, I think we just hold steady right where we are,
let things kind of unfold here. I might even want to do a
little bit of trimming. A lot of it's going to depend on where this market finishes at
the end of the month. To me, that's far more important than
where it is on a week-to-week basis or some of these levels

(09:26):
that are important, they're not quite as important as this month-end indicator
that I track very closely. I think things are set up
for maybe a good rebound into the end of the month. And if that happens, if the luck
of the Irish are with us, then maybe we'll get a little push higher. We
can finish above that indicator from March and I'll feel a lot more
comfortable about the medium term. But we could still have

(09:46):
a retest of the lows in the future, probably heading into the summer or something
like that. So just keep all that in mind. But for right now, folks, don't be
afraid. Okay. Market is hanging in there. America is
calm. He's looking okay. I think the GDP number is going to be pretty ugly next
quarter. I think we talked about that a couple of weeks ago. Look, all
the purchasing managers in America, they try to get as much stuff as

(10:06):
they could before the tariff started. We had the highest trade deficit
ever in the history of the country last month. Okay. That's going to
give us a negative GDP. But it should correct
itself the very next quarter when we have stuff
show up in inventories and whatnot. So I wouldn't get too concerned
about all of that. Everything else in the economy is mixed, some

(10:28):
mixed energy there, but nothing's really indicating that we're going off
the rails yet, folks. And the bond market, the valedictorian of the class. It's
saying, slow your roll, don't be too afraid, stay
calm and press on. So with all that said, I'm going to
go ahead and wrap up. But between now and next year meetings, you're thinking about your future, your
long-term goals, all the things you want to do with you and

(10:48):
your money. Maybe it's celebrate a huge birthday, Tom.
Hopefully you had a happy birthday this past week. Hey, maybe it is buy that second house,
quit your job, your regular job that you've had for
years and say, you know what? I'm going to go work in another country. I'm going to
do something I really want to do and take things to another level. Maybe it
is take that big vacation or pay for college. Hey, you know what your goals are. Don't just

(11:09):
think about them. Think big. Think B-I-G. And I
Thank you for listening to this week's edition of the Big Money Report with
your host, David Boothe, President and Financial Advisor at
BIG Investment Services. For more information on BIG and
how you can access their planning and investment management services, visit

(11:29):
them at abigplan.com. That's abigplan.com. Or
call them toll free at 866-946-PLAN. That's 866-946-7526. The
foregoing content reflects the opinions of David Boothe and Boothe Investment Group,
Inc., and is subject to change at any time without notice. There's no

(11:49):
guarantee that the statements, opinions, or forecasts provided herein will
prove to be correct. Content provided herein is for informational purposes only
and should not be used or construed as investment advice or a recommendation regarding
the purchase or sale of any security. All investing involves risk, including the
potential for loss of principal. There is no guarantee that any investment plan or