Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The Big Money Report. I'm your host, David Boothe, president and financial advisor at B.I.G. Investment Services. That's B.I.G., Boothe Investment Group. We're a full service financial advisory based out of Dover, Delaware, serving clients all across this great country. And 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, April 11th, 2025. Bunch of shout outs. Steve, Mike, Rochelle, Jackie, Dana, Wayne, Jeff. Oh, the list just goes on and on. Joan, so many folks tuning in. We appreciate it. Thank you for tuning in, keeping up to speed. Look, how about a big shout out to our producer? Jack over at Neon Siren Studios. I give her lemons and she makes lemonade every
single week. And we really appreciate all the work you do over there, Jack. Thank you so much. All right. So, hey, what's going on with the market? Well, it was quite a week, quite a rebound, but it was all over the place. Let me tell you the numbers first. I'll tell you how it played out and I'll tell you what we did and I'll tell you what we expect moving forward. So, first of all, we did have a rebound. Dow Jones up 4.9% this week. S&P 500 up 5.7. The
Nasdaq up 7.2. The Russell small caps up 1.8. Here's a shocker. We'll talk more about this in a moment. The long-term bonds, as measured by the TLT, got clobbered this week, down 6.4%. That's a bit alarming. We're going to talk more about that here in a minute. Volatility index did pull back a bit this week, down 17%, but look, it's still finished a week at a 37 and a half. Anytime it's in the thirties, it's extremely elevated. So still a lot of volatility built
into the market. When we look at the sectors, everything except real estate was positive. No need to go through all the details. They were all up and all up a lot. Gold was up 6.5% on the week. Gold is just on fire. And our gold miner continues to rip higher along with it. We've got Ken Ross Gold in our models and it was up 21.7% this week, up 55% on the year. So gold's just not going anywhere. And I think it's because everyone's afraid of everything except gold at
the moment. We'll talk more about that too. And silver's up a bit too this week, up 7.7%. So how did things play out? Well, I was hoping for a big washout on Monday. Didn't get that. I mean, it was down, the market was down quite a bit Monday morning, down significantly, and we started buying. We started buying, we bought quite a few things on Monday. We did a little bit of buying on Tuesday, and then we bought quite a bit on Wednesday morning, thankfully,
before the big announcement. So what did we buy this week? We bought some Shark Ninja household appliances, great company, the CEO, super sharp, very innovative. And we bought some Schlumberger, it's oil services. Trump administration wants more energy, that means more
drilling, that means good for oil services, we think, moving forward. Bought some Global Foundries, that's a chip-making company here in the US, based in the United States of America, They do a lot of chips for the internet of things, et cetera. We thought that was pretty attractive. Picked up NextEra Energy for all of you collecting a check every month and the income model. There's another energy company I like to pick up. Didn't buy that one
yet. Didn't hit my price target, but NextEra did. So we picked some of that. We also bought some Vertiv. This is a company that manages data centers. Data centers are huge. I mean, imagine a gigantic warehouse full of smoking hot computer servers that are just hot and running all the time. There's power management needs, there's cooling needs. Vertiv makes all that happen. So they help manage these data centers so they run appropriately and
smoothly. For the folks with the small accounts that don't have the individual stocks, I put some money into the S&P 500 technology sector, XLK. We did that again when the market was really flushed out. It was down 20% on the year when we bought it. Now it's only down 14% on the year. So that was a nice move. I also put a little bit of money into Pfizer this week. Now we have Pfizer in the models. I just added a
little bit to it. I mean, the yield's 7.8%. I also bought a piece of AbbVie, another drug company, which I like a lot. And for the smaller accounts, I put a little bit of money into the pharmaceutical index. Pharma stocks just got hammered hard. There's a lot of talk that tariffs are coming to try to encourage these companies to shift their manufacturing back towards the United States. And as such, they really took on the chin this week. And I think they're just overdone. I
really think it's a bit overdone. So we added some money to that. So we did all that buying. And then here on Friday, I made one more buy. I put some money in India. I've been watching India really close, but I want to buy it for a while. It's been a bit overheated over there, but it's really come off the boil here, pulled back very nicely. And I think India is really in a good position. in regards to all of the tariff controversies. I think that they're sitting in
a pretty good spot. They're friendly with the U.S. They're not really being abusive to us and there are good negotiating opportunities will avail themselves with India and they have a huge service economy there. So we did add some money to India this week as well. I think it just looks really attractive here. So yeah, busy, busy, busy. Thank goodness we had our pencils sharpened and we were ready to go at the open of the market on Monday morning because that really
was the best buying opportunity so far. The market was hitting its lowest points in there and we were able to jump in and we picked up some good deals on some great stocks. So really happy with that. Now everything we bought except for India, everything we purchased was really starter positions. All these individual stocks we bought, we just bought starter positions so we can buy more as
they go lower. And we still got some money in there, don't get me wrong, about 1% in each one of them, but we wanna buy more of these stocks if they go lower. And I do think that's gonna be a pretty good probability. Okay, so, Whew, what happened? Well, remember we talked a few weeks ago about the valedictorian of the investment world, the bond market, and we mentioned that the bond market was not yet indicating recession was imminent. Now, since then, it's deteriorated a
little bit. Credit spreads have widened some, but they're still not at a level that looks recessionary at this point in time. The bond market's a very powerful force to be reckoned with. And this week, not only was it the valedictorian, it was WWE. I mean, it was Worldwide Wrestling Federation. It was like Hulk Hogan. It just body slammed the policies that have been abound here in the last few weeks and caused capitulation.
So what I mean by all of this, look, folks, the 10-year treasury was getting hammered. That's a Sabus investment on planet Earth. Listen, we're obligated by law. You know, if you talk to someone in the investment industry and you ask them what the safest investment they can buy is, do you know they're obligated to tell you United States Treasuries? It is touted as the safest investment you can buy. Well, it was getting absolutely decimated And
it doesn't make any sense. There's a problem here. There's a bit of a problem here, and let me explain. When there's fear, when there's fear and people are afraid, markets are getting hammered, traditionally, investors run to treasuries. They run to treasuries. They hide out in treasuries, and bonds go up in value. Interest rates come down in value. That's not what was happening earlier this week. Bonds were getting obliterated.
They were being sold, and they were being sold hard. Now, there's a lot of controversy as to why and what monetary mechanics were making this happen. Some folks say that it was related to the hedge fund industry. I'll tell you this, other folks were worried
that was China. China holds almost a trillion dollars of our long-term bonds, and if they wanted to really use the quote-unquote nuclear option in this trade war, they could sell those bonds, spike our interest rates, and they could really hurt us badly. But the flows did not show it was China doing the selling, but there was a lot of selling out of Europe. And here's something that a lot of folks don't know. China shifted a lot of their holdings to European entities.
A lot of their U.S. Treasury holdings. They did this back when Russia went into Crimea and we froze assets. And then there was more freezing of assets with Ukraine. But the big move happened back with Crimea quite a few years ago. And when that happened, some of our foreign counterparts got very nervous and they shifted their treasury holdings out of their own country into Europe. There was a lot of selling of our bonds coming out of Europe earlier this week.
And that just kind of makes you go, hmm, was that China unloading some of our treasuries? Either way, here's what happened. Treasuries got crushed. Interest rates spiked and the Trump administration, they capitulated. You just don't want to mess with the bond market, folks. It all begins and ends there, okay? And the bond market forced the hand here to kind of change policy. A 90-day reprieve was announced, and the market had one of its biggest days
in U.S. history, one of the 10 biggest days ever. Now here's what a lot of folks don't talk about. The other eight or nine of those days happened in some really ugly bear markets. Markets like 08, 09. Markets like 2000 to 2003. COVID. How about 1987 crash? So there's something to be a little concerned about there. I mentioned to you last week that some of the most insane rallies will happen in the midst of bear markets. And this was an insane rally. I mean, make no mistake about it. It was off
the chart. And you know, is it capitulation? Is it worse behind us? Or is it a really nasty bear market rally? We'll have to see. We'll have to see how all this shakes out. I'll talk to you more about levels that we're watching here in a moment. But I tell you one thing, that whole rally on Wednesday goes to show you, remember when I said last week that, oh, David, why don't you just sell it all, park it under a rock and wait till things get better? I said, it's about the
dumbest thing that you can do. I didn't mean to be rude by saying that, it just is. If you miss just one or two of the best days of the year, your returns get cut in half. It's just not the way to do this. No one can time the market perfectly. Anything can turn this thing around and can turn it around quickly. So you don't gamble, all right? You don't bet the farm on anything when it comes to investing. That's gambling. Look, if you want to gamble, go to the slots, go to the racetrack, go
play cards. You'll have more fun. You can have a drink. You can have some good music and you can lose your money that way. instead of losing in the market, which is no fun at all. So anyway, my point being, days like that are proof that you want to stay balanced in your approach, lean into your convictions, lean out, but don't bet the farm all one way or the other. It's a loser's game to play. And that's why we don't do that, okay? So anyway, lesson learned for those that don't believe me,
you wanna stay engaged with markets, you never know when they can turn. All right, so where do we go from here? Look, I don't think we're out of the woods. I just don't on numerous levels, okay? First of all, a lot of damage has been done. Corporate confidence has been shaken. Consumer confidence has been shaken. There is a high probability we could actually be slipping into recession right now as we speak and just don't know it yet, okay? You usually don't know you're in
a recession until you're out of a recession. So it's very possible. I'm not gonna say it's a given that we're gonna have one. I would put the odds close to 80%, but I do think the odds are elevated. Look, there's a lot of things that haven't changed, folks. The economy was weakening before the year even started. The stock market was stupid expensive before we even got into 2025. These things haven't changed. The market's still expensive, there's still weakness in the economy, and
corporate earnings have to do a lot of heavy lifting to support these valuations. So there's still issues there. And if the economy continues to weaken, we could slip into recession. The market may not be over yet. As a matter of fact, it could go down a lot lower. That's why we're still sitting on a ton of cash. We didn't put it all to work. We were really purposeful and surgical in the decisions that we made this week. Let's say we don't slip into recession. Let's
say that the worst really is over. Then I will say this, I still think there's wood to chop because look, traditionally, when you have a move like this, there's always a retest of the lows. Do you remember a couple of weeks ago when the market had been down, it bounced back up, it was going back down again? And I mentioned that everyone on TV was talking about it being a retest of the lows, but the lows had only happened a week before. That's not usually how it works, okay?
A retest of the lows usually comes a month to four months later. So even if recession's not in the cards, even if things really stabilize, we're probably in store for a retest at some point in time. I think it's going to be a horrific earning season. I don't think corporate America is going to know what to say. Now, we had some banks that reported this morning. They had good numbers. The market liked
it. But I think that as we move forward through earning season, you're going to a lot of CEOs that are going to just take advantage of the uncertainty and not give good guidance, right? Set
the bar really low, make it easy for them to beat next time. One of the things you'll be watching for with this is if companies report bad numbers or bad guidance and they don't go down, and hear me again, if they report bad news, bad guidance, and the stock doesn't drop, if instead goes up, on bad news, that's a very good sign. We'll be watching for that very closely. We'd love to see some of that happen. I'm also watching key levels. We're in the middle of a rally right
now. That rally should, at a minimum, get to about 5,500, okay? We drew a line on the charts there at the office just this past week. I said, here's the line, 5,500 is the first stop. Above and beyond that, you can see 5,780 on the S&P 500. So 5,500 first, 5,780 second. I really don't believe we're gonna get past those levels. I think there's still too
much going on. The tariffs, okay, they're not what they were on Tuesday of this week, but they are still the worst tariffs that we've had since Smoot-Hartley back in 1930. And let me tell you, that did not go well. So there's still substantial tariffs on our trading partners. And there's a lot of wood to chop, there's concerns about the economy.
Now, all of that said, there's also some indicators There's a mix in the indicators, but let me tell you this, there are indicators that have flash signals that we have only seen in the absolute worst of times, the bottom of 08-09, the bottom of the tech crash in the 2000-03 bear market, the bottom of the 87 crash. one of the indicators we haven't seen since the Great Depression, and they're all flashing on the screens. And when you look out 12 months later, the market has had huge, huge
returns almost 100% of the time. So you can't discount that this could be a short-lived situation and we could be back to rock and rolling pretty quickly. You can't discount that. On the other hand, there's also some indicators I know it's a mess out there. There's also some indicators that when we've seen these numbers, there's been some more pain to come in the short term. So we've got to keep all that in perspective, all of it in perspective. And that's why
I say we don't want to gamble with this market. It wouldn't take much to light the fire back underneath of it and get it moving forward again. But I do think there are some concerns that still lie ahead of us. We're not out of the woods. Don't think we got the all clear. You're going to see this market go higher. I think we mentioned last week, you know, we could probably see a pretty nasty bear market rally. I say nasty, it means it goes up a lot and people get caught up
into it. Another thing that concerns me, retail investors are still buying aggressively. They're buying very aggressively. All the data suggests that they're still piling into the market. that's usually not a good sign. Usually these things don't end until retail investors get bludgeoned and just give up. Speaking of being bludgeoned, I apologize. My wife says that I talk too violently on this podcast when it comes to the market. But
you know, it's violent. If you watch this stuff all day long, it's a violent business to be in, let me tell you. Anyway, retail investors are still piling in, and that's not a good sign. That's another strike against this being over just yet. So look, bottom line is this. We were in a great position for this collapse. We pulled out tons of money out of the market on January 3rd of this year. And then we pulled out tons and tons more, 20 plus percent on
March 31st and April 1st before this major meltdown. So we've been in a wonderful position to buy and pick up things. That's what we're doing. And I think we've got a really strong game plan going forward. Look, if a recession develops, if this market fails and breaks down, here's the other thing. So I told you about the levels to the upside. We're looking at 5,500, okay, that's the first stop, and then probably maybe up to 5,780 if we clear past that, and then we'll see what
happens there. On the downside, 5,075, okay, that's a really important number on the S&P. Others are saying 4,982. These are really important levels. Here's what I'm gonna say. If they don't hold, we're going down to the 200-week moving average. That's like 4,600 on the S&P, and I think that's where we could end up. If we go down below that, we're talking about a whole nother ball game. We're talking about the beginnings of a secular
bear market. If we slip down below that 200-week moving average and stay there for any period of time, then we could be looking at a different scenario developing, and that's okay. Look, you can make plenty of money in secular bear markets. You just need dividends and bonds and things are gonna pay you. We did it from 2000 to 2013. That was a 13-year secular bear. We have no problem doing that
again. But that's a level I'm watching very, very closely. I think if the market is going to have a bigger flush to the downside, I think that 4,600 or 4,800 range in the S&P, 4,600 being that real strong, super strong floor of support that I have a hard time believing will break through that, at least not for very long. So I'll be watching all that close. So 5,500 to 5,780 on the upside, 5,075 to the downside. You
break through that, you're going lower. Right now, we're in a great position. We're not going to do anything. We're just going to sit on our hands now. We still got cash and I love how the portfolio is coming together. If we get some more opportunities here throughout this earning season or the market
starts to act up again, we're ready to buy. And look, even if we don't have the worst case scenario develop, if we get that retest, I'm going to be kind of holding out for that retest so we can kind of jump back in and pick up some more shares of the stuff that we love here. Okay. Whew. All right. Well, that's it. Exciting times. I say exciting because look, this is when you make your money. You make the most money in stock market crashes if you keep your head about you and
you have cash to buy. And we're keeping our head about us and we have cash to buy. So I'm excited for you. I'm pumped up for you. I hope the market goes a lot lower because we're ready for it and we'll buy and we'll make money. So I'm gonna wrap up. Between now and the next few minutes, you're thinking about your future, your long-term goals, all the things you want to do with you and your money. Maybe you should retire a little early. Start that new
business. I've got a lot of business owners starting from scratch, doing their thing. Hey, you know what your goals are. Don't just think about it. Think 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 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 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