>>>We’ll play 1DTE Roulette and look for the strongest trending stocks this week to see if we can find a cheap play expiring Friday, do some live trading and cover stocks making interesting moves — Profit Panel starts at 2:30 PM ET!<<<
Before Nvidia’s (NVDA) big earnings report gave the market some juice today, I spent most of the past weekend driving my wife nuts trying to figure out what the market is actually looking at right now.
And here’s what I came up with: There’s really nothing out there screaming “sell everything.” But there’s also nothing out there saying “buy with both hands.”
And that’s the problem.
When you’ve got no clear direction — no enthusiasm, no real catalyst — the market doesn’t just sit still and wait. It drifts lower. And I think that’s exactly what we’fe been seeing.
Part of the issue is we simply haven’t had meaningful economic data in weeks because of the government shutdown. No inflation print, no jobs report, no growth number — nothing traders can anchor to.
Markets hate that kind of vacuum. When there’s no fresh information, uncertainty fills the gap, and uncertainty always makes volatility pop. It’s not dramatic, it’s mechanical.
The Uncertainty–Volatility Connection
Here’s the framework that helped me make sense of it all: Uncertainty drives volatility higher. And when volatility goes up, markets mechanically go down.
Every trader knows the market would rather get bad news than no news. At least bad news provides direction. Right now we have day after day of policymakers talking without saying anything actionable. That’s the kind of environment where even small moves in the S&P 500 (SPX) get exaggerated because nobody wants to take a big swing without a data point to lean on.
SPX was sitting around 6,670 when I was sorting through all this — off its highs but not terrible. We’d just made a new all-time high the Wednesday before. But without a catalyst — like Nvidia’s big report after the close Wednesday — that momentum generally doesn’t hold.
What It Takes to Turn This Around
Someone asked me about earnings expectations, and I’ll tell you what I think: Unless we get absolutely blockbuster earnings that smash everybody’s estimates a la Nvidia, the market’s going to shrug it off and keep drifting.
You might even see one headline about how everyone’s bailing on AI stocks and calling the boom over. That’s the kind of noise you get in an uncertain environment.
But that’s not what’s driving the whole market lower — it’s just the story people latch onto when they can’t explain the real reason.
The real reason is simpler: No clarity equals no confidence. And no confidence means selling pressure even when there’s no obvious reason to sell. When traders don’t have new information, they default to reducing risk, trimming exposure, and letting markets come in until something forces them off the sidelines.
So that’s how I’m thinking about position sizing right now. Keep it modest. Respect the drift. And don’t expect the market to rally unless we get a catalyst strong enough to punch through this fog.
Geof Smith
Geof Smith Trading
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P.S. Is This the Time for Traders to Sell Gold — or Double Down?
Uncertainty isn’t just battling the stock market right now…
Even the Fed doesn’t have a clear direction on rate cuts going forward.
And that has investors anxious… Not only on stocks but gold too.
That’s why the No. 1 asset in the world has been taking hits for a while now.
This extended pullback begs the question…
“Is it time to sell everything or double down on gold?”
After a lot of brainstorming… I arrived at a conclusion I believe could mark a major shift for traders.
And at 1 p.m. ET this Saturday, Roger Scott and I are going live to give you the answer!
We’ll take a deep dive into the implications of this extended gold pullback on your trading.
I was lucky to nail the current supercycle for gold starting back in 2023. I also cut my teeth trading the precious metal, and I’ve been trading it for two decades now.
And while anxiety is still in the air, you’ll get a clear direction on what to expect next from gold… and the market as a whole.
You’ll also get my full forecast for gold as we go into the next phase…
If you’d like to save your seat so you don’t miss a minute, follow the link below…
