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Dear Fellow Traveler: President Trump went on primetime last night, and instead of giving the market an off-ramp, he promised to bring Iran “back to the stone ages.” That was all it took to unwind two days of hope. Oil is up 9% this morning, with WTI at $109 and Brent right behind. Gold dropped $174 in a single session. The S&P is down about a percent and a half in the pre-market, and Asia got absolutely destroyed overnight... Nikkei fell 3.5%, the Kospi lost 4.5%. Everything we gained on Tuesday is gone. This is the last trading day before Good Friday, and the jobs report drops tomorrow morning while the market is closed. Nobody will be able to trade that number until Monday. Details and the full breakdown are in the show. Money Printer Pro after. Stay positive, Garrett Baldwin PS: The full transcript is at the bottom if you’d rather read than watch. Hey everybody, April 2nd, Thursday. I hope you’re doing well. And well, here we are — exactly what we expected. The market squeezed and then gave it all back, or is starting to give it back on Thursday as we look further and deeper into what we perceive to be the midsection of a 1% pattern. I’m going to walk you through what that means, but the United States president has effectively done what he does. This whole market is so heavily reliant now, so heavily focused on what President Trump is doing and saying, that we’re just stuck in this continued pattern looking for some sort of off-ramp. And we’re not getting it. Right now, WTI crude has moved to $109. This is where it’s going to get started. This is precisely what Bonner Private Research was writing about this week, saying this could be the last normal week in oil because deliveries around the globe are now drying up. We’re going to start to see the Asian markets become very impacted by the shortage of oil. You’re starting to see a large number of nations begin to ration in different ways. And we’re back into this pattern again where gold is selling off so that other nations can buy oil. So here you are, down 3.8% as WTI crude rises, and of course the dollar is rising again as well — the U.S. dollar moving higher as nations scramble to obtain dollars in order to purchase crude oil. The Dow is down 1.3%, the S&P 500 down 1.6%, and the Nasdaq down another two points. The VIX hit 26. We’re right back where we started, and this is where I have to say — I hate to say I told you so — but this was not a normal bounce that we saw. JP Morgan did come out and say this is nothing but a dead cat bounce from oversold, but the reality is there’s something deeper here. And we’re going to talk about this a little bit more so that you understand what this 1% pattern is for the markets, something we have seen going back to 2008. The big story, of course — President Trump had that primetime address last night offering really no de-escalation, saying “we’re going to bring them back to the Stone Ages.” Oil surged 8% to 9%, WTI at $109, Brent at $109, heating oil up 12.6%, and Goldman’s Paris office received bomb threats from an Iranian group. This is precisely what we were discussing — that Iran could start to threaten U.S. financial companies. They’re threatening U.S. tech companies at their Middle Eastern headquarters as well. S&P futures down, Nasdaq down, Dow down, Russell down. Asia dumped — the Nikkei dropping another 3.5%, reminding you that Japan’s problems can and will impact our markets. European markets are down as well. Gold and silver — the safe haven trade broke again. Energy is back. The only green names are Apache, Exxon, and Chevron. Amazon is talking about buying GlobalStar — who cares? Bitcoin dropping 2.5%, again raising the prospects and concerns around liquidity in the financial system. Today, jobless claims come out at 8:30, the trade balance as well at 8:30. We have some earnings reports, but this is the last trading day before Good Friday. Markets are going to be closed tomorrow. We have a jobs report that comes out Friday, and if this is not good — and we continue to have a lot of ongoing concerns about AI, which was the number one reason for job cuts in March — we are looking at a very difficult Monday if this market cannot get any good news right now. Again, really the core thing here is the S&P 500. As I have said, what I’m looking at here is this pattern that we have talked about in major financial events. I have said time and time again — we are in a financial crisis. We need to act like it. The last time we saw this pattern, it was smaller — a small selloff in the beginning of November into a dump where we went red, and then we got stimulus out of the Bank of Japan and saw a significant amount of insider buying. This is the simple 1% pattern. That’s what I’ve called it — could have called it anything, could have called it Dennis. We see a selloff. We start to see very little bidding. We move into oversold. We squeeze up and sure enough push toward our 20-day moving average. And then funds use that push back to that moving average in order to sell back into the market. And now all of a sudden, you have a bunch of bag holders who just believed that the worst was over. This is where it can get very dangerous very quickly. This is the selloff that happened last April. But I go back and I can show you this happened during COVID — same pattern. Squeeze, pop, drop. And then intervention, insider buying, markets start to take off. People don’t understand why they’re late to the game. We saw this during the gilt crisis. We saw it during the Silicon Valley Bank crisis. It’s the same thing over and over again. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. Doesn’t anybody notice this? Hope you got that reference. This is the Nikkei crash in 2024. Again, this is what I’m looking for — a squeeze and another drop, and for it to start to get very real now. And the reality is we already have all the same problems: private credit, what’s happening with Japan, the reserve concerns heading into tax season. We still have issues involving AI, concerns around joblessness, and of course recessionary pressures. Momentum never flinched. We never saw a move above any rating that would give me a lot of optimism that we might just see a pop. We have remained in that negative range with significantly more breakdown stocks than reversal up. So we squeezed, yes, on our reading, but we never went positive. We did see the cap push toward one, toward zero on the Nasdaq. But the more important reading — the S&P 500 reading — and the Russell weakness has persisted. This goes back to January 28th. We’re not anywhere near an end to this. I hate to say that, and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I’d rather just be honest with you. The U.S. dollar continuing to be in shortage. Bitcoin is telling us that liquidity issues remain at hand. And remember, this went negative back on January 28th. What bombed on January 29th? Bitcoin. We saw gold and silver sell off the next day. We’ve seen tightness and weakness in the financial system. And now the question is — how low do we go? When do insiders start buying? And of course, what action will be taken, hopefully by somebody, whether it’s the Bank of Japan or the Federal Reserve, or maybe somebody in Europe for all we know. But we are on the pathway to something breaking. It’s very clear. So once again, keep your head on a swivel, and the next move looks like it will continue to be down. This was President Trump’s speech — “back to the Stone Ages.” This was supposed to signal an off-ramp, and instead it signaled an escalation. He offered no clear timeline for ending hostilities and pledged more aggressive action over the next two to three weeks. Remember, those next two to three weeks lead us into third Friday on April 17th. That is a significant options expiration date that also coincides with tax day. We have seen large drawdowns in the money markets, large drawdowns in reserves in recent years around that date. So there are questions and concerns about available credit and the capacity to refinance in this environment. He renewed threats against Iranian electric plants, said the U.S. would only consider Iran’s ceasefire request once the Strait of Hormuz was open, free, and clear. Iran and Israel continue to trade strikes during the speech, and Goldman’s Paris office received bomb threats believed to be from an Iranian group. The markets had priced in de-escalation for two days. As we said, nothing is priced in here. The speech ripped the market apart in 20 minutes. He is grasping for an off-ramp. The market is realizing that we do not have one yet. The real story is WTI and Brent, because we are up the way that we are — $109.18. We talked a little bit about this to start the show, but the reality is this: this is where the problems are expected to really start, where that push toward $130 or $140 is very possible. We were waiting for some de-escalation. We also did not see the deliveries that effectively left in early March — they’re now starting to arrive and they’re going to start to end in the next week, week and a half, in the Asian markets, the European markets, and anything we’re pulling here in the United States. A lot of people have been asking a very simple question: why is oil not at $140 already? The reality is nobody wants to take that risk. And there’s another question — why haven’t U.S. producers gone out and started to produce more oil, turn on more rigs, try to capture this price? There are a couple of reasons. The primary one, I think, still goes back to the psychology of the market in 2014. The last time we saw this big oil boom, the shale boom, oil prices got up over $100, and then they just started to drill and drill and drill. And then all of a sudden it blew up, and within a year, year and a half, oil prices were down in the mid-$40s. From a recessionary concern about where the broader market sits and the deeper concerns around the consumer, there have been a number of energy desks that said oil should be down in the $40s and $50s. We’ve recently had this spike, and obviously that is problematic. Producers don’t want to put capital expenditures to work. They don’t want to take that risk. You have to compound that with the fact that President Trump — there’s a meme out there talking about investing in the 1980s versus investing today. In the 1980s picture, it’s a guy looking at fundamentals and analyzing balance sheets. On the right, in 2025–2026, it’s just a guy sitting at a computer watching a video of President Trump. That’s where we are. Trump is driving the market and it’s legitimately whipsaw knee-jerk reactions on a constant basis. Nobody wants to position themselves for $140 if Trump’s going to come out in three days and say we just had more progress on Iran, and now oil prices drop 20% in a day or two to three days. We’ve had those types of behaviors already. It’s very clear that fundamentals are out the window. This is a very knee-jerk environment and no one wants to get caught on the upside. Energy stocks are really the only ones on the board that are green right now. But over the last couple of days, we did see strength in materials — that’s fading this morning. Occidental is higher. SkyQ surged 30% on its Nevada refinery strategic value as Brent topped $110. Cruise lines, airlines, and autos are getting hammered — Carnival, Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, they’re all down. These stocks can move much lower, largely because they are primarily momentum stocks in the post-COVID era. They follow the WANT, which is the triple-leveraged ETF around consumer discretionary, and they will ebb and flow with our signal pretty well. GM reported Q1 sales down 9.7% and is getting hit further on oil demand fears. The helium story is coming back again — Iran’s war cut off about a third of the world’s helium supply from Qatar. Air Liquide, Linde, and Air Products are all in play. Helium is critical for chip manufacturing, and this is that next concern for the market — how is this going to impact all of the producers from Micron to Taiwan Semiconductor in the coming quarters. We’re going to be looking to hear from those executives when their earnings reports come out and from upcoming conferences. This remains a massive risk in the coming year. If we start to see a breakdown in the chip stocks, anticipate that the helium story is going to move toward the front page pretty quickly, even though it’s also a major liquidity story as well. The rally on Monday, the drift on Wednesday, the collapse on Thursday — that has been the pattern of this market. I continue to remind you, when it comes to Mondays, it seems like everybody gets together over the weekend and tries to figure out what story to tell the market. The month-long turmoil has thrown up a predictable pattern: starts the week strong, drifts sideways, and collapses every Thursday. And as I said, every crisis back to 2008 has followed a similar pattern as well — a sell, a pop, and a drop. Policy, insider buying activity, and then we take off. So we’re going to be looking for that. There is no market open tomorrow, so that will put a lot of stress on this market today. Hedge funds got beaten up badly in March. Positions are still getting unwound, and that’s one of the major things I remind you — funds that did not dump, funds that were behind, they look for these moves back up to that 20-day EMA as a place where buying algos step back in, buying patterns step back in, and they sell right back into that pressure. It’s exactly what has happened multiple times going back to COVID. AI was the number one reason for job cuts in March — very significant. That Challenger report saying 60,260 layoffs in March, a 25% increase since February. About a quarter of those were AI-related, all in one quarter. This is a very bad market for young people coming out of college right now looking for work. The war is killing energy-sensitive jobs. AI is killing the rest. Hiring plans did pick up a little bit in March — that is a mixed signal. Companies are cutting humans and hiring different humans or machines. Payrolls come out tomorrow. Markets are closed for Good Friday. I will have an article and probably a short video out in the morning covering the jobs report — look for that probably around 10 o’clock on Friday. Weekly jobless claims at 8:30 today will be the last labor signal before the long weekend. This is a tough setup: war plus oil plus jobs heading into a three-day weekend. The final thing — steel and aluminum tiers, 100% on some medicines. That’s what we’re looking at now. While everyone’s watching Iran, the tariff machine keeps running. Trump is now preparing a tiered regime for steel and aluminum — 50% on many products, lower rates on others. This is an attempt to simplify the process that has been dogging American companies for months. The bigger headline is the 100% tariff on medicines being considered for companies that haven’t struck deals guaranteeing low U.S. prices. That’s pharma, that’s supply chains, that’s inflation. The war is the crisis. Tariffs are a chronic condition. Both have an inflationary impact on markets, both are happening at the same time, and the Fed cannot cut into this. They can’t hike into this either. They are frozen — monetary policy is not going to have much impact at this very moment. There’s going to be a big focus on the Fed. I continue to encourage you: don’t look at what they say, look at what they do. If something breaks in the credit system, they are going to have to step in. What to watch today: jobless claims at 8:30, oil through $110 and what the next leg up could be. European diesel is already sitting at $200. If Brent clears $110 and holds, this is a new price regime, and we’re going to continue to see weakness in airlines, cruises, autos, and consumer discretionary. Energy becomes the major trade. Focus on spreads around it. Continue to focus on momentum. I wrote that article over the weekend where I said watch the OILU — if it cracks under that 20-day, that’s where this would have been really risk-off for the entire sector. We’re now seeing a squeeze higher this morning, and it is very reminiscent of the gold and silver run-ups that we saw. I anticipate some reckless speculation in the oil space, so keep tight stops. I’m actually looking for the OILU to hit new highs as soon as next week if there is no resolution. The long weekend setup — markets closed for Good Friday, jobs report tomorrow, nobody can trade it until Monday. That’s a lot of sitting around for a couple of days, but it also gives central bankers and regulators a little bit of time to assess things and consider when and if they want to do something about this market. As always, Money Printer Pro is available to you — we cut that video after this. We’re going to be going through the usual focus on breakout stocks and breakdown names, talking about different types of trades. And once again, our signal did not crack. We did not follow into this squeeze. We simply sat on our hands and waited. That is sometimes one of the hardest things to do in the world, but we continue to stress discipline and risk management. This platform is always available 24/7, and we have Triples and a number of other tools for our elite members. Right now as we look out into this market, Entergy is our number one stock on momentum. And we’re seeing a lot of real estate and consumer defensive stocks continuing to break down. All right everybody, I hope you have a great day. If you have any questions, obviously that’s what the comment section is for. I will be back tomorrow with a very short video to cover the jobs report. I hope you have a great trading day. We’ll catch up on the other side. Stay positive. About Me and the Money Printer Me and the Money Printer is a daily publication covering the financial markets through three critical equations. We track liquidity (money in the financial system), momentum (where money is moving in the system), and insider buying (where Smart Money at companies is moving their money). Combining these elements with a deep understanding of central banking and how the global system works has allowed us to navigate financial cycles and boost our probability of success as investors and traders. This insight is based on roughly 17 years of intensive academic work at four universities, extensive collaboration with market experts, and the joy of trial and error in research. You can take a free look at our worldview and thesis right here. Disclaimer Nothing in this email should be considered personalized financial advice. While we may answer your general customer questions, we are not licensed under securities laws to guide your investment situation. Do not consider any communication between you and Florida Republic employees as financial advice. The communication in this letter is for information and educational purposes unless otherwise strictly worded as a recommendation. Model portfolios are tracked to showcase a variety of academic, fundamental, and technical tools, and insight is provided to help readers gain knowledge and experience. Readers should not trade if they cannot handle a loss and should not trade more than they can afford to lose. There are large amounts of risk in the equity markets. Consider consulting with a professional before making decisions with your money.
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