Mind The Gap.

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Our View

The ES and NQ started out where they left off—going up. After a minor downtick on Globex, the ES traded 5717.00 and opened Monday’s regular session at 5782.50, pulled back to 5776.00 and then a Trump headline came out saying that he was going to play nice on the scheduled April 2nd tariffs. That sparked a rally up to 5815, From Friday’s low to yesterday’s high, the ES has rallied 174 points, and from Friday's 5720.00 high, 104 points.

The bottom line is the ES and NQ have come a long way over the last two sessions and are now posting two-week highs. I think Trump is trying to calm market fears over the April 2nd deadline and that some of the countries he has threatened will possibly receive exemptions or reductions from next week’s tariffs, saying, “I may give a lot of countries breaks

I guess he's catching on that a lot of US-friendly countries are canceling their purchases of the F-35s ($2 trillion), like the EU, Canada, Portugal, and Switzerland. My own opinion is that many of these countries are tired of being pushed around and are calling his bluff. I get that he thinks he's the king of the art of the deal, but it's just not working.

The other thing I want to talk about is Social Security. The Trump administration is now targeting it. My wife told me to wait, and now the program is said to run out of money by 2033 or sooner. I'm not even sure what to say about that, but I know it's going to hurt a lot of people who depend on it.

I read a few articles on it, but I found this in the WSJ and I think it's worth reading:
Dealing With Social Security Is Heading From Bad to Worse

If people are not pissed off now, especially those who have lost their jobs due to DOGE, they will be when this starts to go down. My guess is a lot of folks—like me—are going to get on the phone and get it going ASAP. At the end of the day, it is what it is, but this is going to cause quite a stir.