Monday Takeaways: Bull Market’s Third Birthday Brings Unwelcome Gifts

Shah Gilani|October 20, 2025

Make a wish and blow out the candles…

October 14 marked three years since the bear market bottom.

The numbers are staggering: Dow up 60%, S&P up 85%, Nasdaq up 118%.

But this anniversary celebration came with some unwelcome party crashers.

The warning signs are multiplying…

• Trump’s 100% tariff threats (even he called them “not sustainable”)
• Banking leaders falling despite record earnings
• Big tech showing “wobbliness” ahead of crucial earnings

Last week’s roller coaster is proof markets are caught between momentum and mounting concerns.

With AWS technical failures, Meta’s struggles, and Tesla’s make-or-break Tuesday earnings, this bull market’s next phase depends entirely on whether tech giants can deliver the goods.

I’ll break down why this three-year rally isn’t guaranteed to continue, what the banking sector rollover really means, and why the next few weeks of earnings could determine if we’re heading for new highs or a serious correction.

Click on the image below to discover what threatens this historic bull run.

Transcript

Hey, everybody. Shah Gilani here with your Monday takeaways. First thing – let’s take away from last week, of course.

First and foremost, because there were a few takeaways we’re going to touch on, was that it was the three-year anniversary on October 14th of the bull market. Yes, the bull market officially, by the counters of bull markets, began – well, the bottom, I should say, of the bear market was October 14th of 2022. So visually, here’s what that looks like. Now that’s a nice three-year run. Here’s the S&P. Now we’re talking about this downtrend here and the bottom being here October 14th.

Pretty much is really what the institute that measures these things called the bottom and justifiably so in my opinion, justifiably so on a technical basis.

And now we’re celebrating a three-year bull market. Just a little bit of perspective, this downtrend here, which is really caused by the Fed raising rates, we had inflation problems, and we had other issues. Mostly, as the Fed raised rates, markets tanked. The Dow was down 20%, S&P down 25%, and the Nasdaq was down 36% in a pretty short time. The rebounds have been spectacular with the Dow up 60% off of these lows, the S&P up 85% and the NASDAQ up 118%. So again, we went from there to a rocket ride higher.

Now, on a one-year basis, here’s what it looks like. Pretty strong bull market moving up in the middle of this uptrending channel. No major threat. The thing that happened last week that looked like it was a threat was, well there was twofold.

I’m going to go back to the previous Friday which was October 10th. We got another tariff tantrum based on a Trump tweet. So just for your recollection, the S&P was down 2.7% on Friday the 10th from the day before. Down 2.7%.

That’s a big drop in a day. Scared a lot of people. And of course, the president then walked back what he was saying. And therefore, last week we were up 1.7% on the S&P. A heck of a good move.

But looking kind of tightly here, you know, we get a little bit of scary action. Here’s the big down day and are we rolling over? No, but we’re just taking a breather in here. And that’s got some folks worried about what they were mostly worried about.

Seemed like it passed. And that was another potential banking issue or perhaps multiple banks might have issues. And in JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon’s comments on their earnings, he talked about kind of the old rhetoric of if you see one cockroach, there’s usually more. I’m summarizing it.

But he did – he did, how would I say, shower us with the phrase referring to cockroaches.

However you want to take it apart, basically saying there are other cockroaches likely out there. And of course he was talking about issues with Tricolor with the First Brands and then Zion Bancorp last week talked about having to add reserves because of a bad loan, one bad loan.

And everybody got a little worried about another banking issue. Are we going to have another dust-up? Are there other cockroaches out there? Are other banks going to have to reserve more?

How bad is credit? Are things deteriorating faster? That kind of passed pretty much by the end of the week because Fifth Third came out with good numbers. U.S. Bancorp came out with good numbers.

They didn’t have any of the same issues that Zion had. So is it a one-off? Well that’s the question. Is it systemic?

One-off versus systemic? We’re not going to know until more banks report, until we look into their earnings and their set-asides. If they are adding more reserves, then there’s some worry out there. But this could be the beginning of a turn for consumers, for loans, possibly.

We don’t know. I don’t see it.

It always gets a little scary when there are cracks in banks. And by cracks, I mean, they’re having to set aside loan loss reserves for future potential defaults – that’s a problem. But again, to me, I see it as a couple handful of one-offs as opposed to really a systemic issue. But that’s only hope there. Then what else?

Well, yeah, Trump turned around his threats, basically calling his own imposition or threatened imposition of 100% tariffs on China on top of the 35% that he’s already imposed.

He himself calling them not sustainable. I quote. That turned the markets around. So last week had a pretty good week in terms of ending up 1.7% higher on the S&P. And again, that’s a good thing because there was some nervousness out there and now we’re seeing a focus more on earnings.

Back to earnings, okay. So bank earnings were great but they didn’t do so great. The banks haven’t done so great. So yeah, I’ll actually give you guys another heads-up on how things really got a little dicey.

Because look at JPMorgan – had fantastic numbers and here’s what the stock did.

You can’t – you’re not impressed with fabulous numbers and the stock absolutely rolling over. Not good. And you got a little bit of support down here and some support down here. If JPMorgan breaks down a little bit, and that’s up a little bit here in the premarket on Monday morning, that’s a problem.

Goldman Sachs, hit it out of the park, kind of like Shohei Ohtani did. Oh my goodness. In game four, that man won for the record books. Maybe the best baseball player, dare I say, ever.

So if anybody, you didn’t see any of that, you might want to check out what he did in the last game of that series. Unbelievable. But look at Goldman. Complete rollover.

Fabulous. Insane.

Just record-breaking, record-beating numbers and the stock rolled over. That’s to me a bit of a worry. Wells Fargo actually had the best action in terms of price action on its earnings. And let’s have a look at where it ended the week.

And the problem with what I’m seeing – let’s pull that up here if we can. The problem that I’m seeing with the banks is when we have had such good news and bank stocks – over here is fabulous news, then comes right back down. This is on other worries of other banks. And again, to Zion, back to other issues that some private credit funds had and other banks had with the likes of Tricolor and First Brands, etc.

So worries are out there. It’s not a great way to end the week after a spectacular move on earnings here. So banks are starting to worry me a little bit because they have been a leadership group in this rally. And looking at the financials through the prism of the SPDR S&P Financial Sector ETF, the XLF is a complete rollover.

And again, there’s some support down here. Let’s hope it holds. Otherwise, the market might be in for a little bit of, shall we say, bumps and bruises ahead. It’s really going to be about earnings.

We’ve got big tech earnings coming up. As they unfold, the market’s going to be keying in on that. What’s the AI spend look like? What are the prospects of monetizing that huge amount of spend?

What about the revenue sources they have coming in? Are they still steady? Are they still building cash? Are they starting to impact their cash positions?

Are they borrowing more? So there’s going to be a lot of questions about the big tech, the big cap tech leaders, how they’re doing and based on their AI spend, how is that impacting their margins. So going to be a lot of neat stuff coming up. And believe me, if they are good the market is going to keep rocking higher.

If they are dicey, if there are forward guidance questions, if there are forward guidance issues, then the market could wobble a good bit because a lot of it is hanging on this AI narrative. And again, just look at some of the leaders.

Amazon has had a little bit of a, shall we say, little dicey action. AWS is the second largest cloud business in the world.

Number one is Microsoft’s cloud in terms of enterprise. But this morning we had an issue with AWS.

You’re not seeing it in the stock in the premarket, but AWS – people will call it a technical failure because that’s what Amazon is calling it, a technical failure this morning. A lot of stuff was down, inaccessible, problems. And this is not a good look, not just for Amazon, but for all of us relying on the cloud, in particular AWS. But again, the stock’s not showing any negative impact from it because it seems to have passed.

But all that being said, takeaways are we’ve got issues there. And the tech names are going to have to be stellar in terms of earnings and guidance for the market to move considerably higher on a sustained pattern.

Here’s Meta. Wow. Again, not a good look.

Microsoft, not a really good look. You can’t say this is an absolutely stellar picture, it’s going higher and nothing’s stopping it because these big cap names are showing a little bit of wobbliness. And yes, we’re looking flat and a little bit of a dustup yesterday or last week. Yeah, people are still eyeing this gap. I don’t know if we have to worry about that. It’s a good ways down. If we get down there, there’s a real problem in the market, not Microsoft, but the whole market.

So again, this is a heck of a move. A lot of sideways action hasn’t been able to break out of that. And again, big cap tech earnings matter more than anything. So takeaways from all that is it’s really the problems, the tariff tantrum, once again, thank you President Trump, seems to have passed because the threat is not sustainable according to the president himself.

And as far as the banking issues last week, well, it looks like we are moving past those. So we’ll keep an eye on those. But I think we’re over them for the most part. Doesn’t matter.

There may be other cockroaches out there. So it’s just something that investors are going to be looking at. And last but not least, got Tesla on Tuesday earnings. I don’t know if that’s going to be – Tesla’s not a bellwether anymore.

Stock has done fabulously well.

It’s off something like – it’s up about 7.5% year to date. But don’t forget for those of you big Tesla fans who’ve enjoyed the ride higher, Elon Musk had warned, has been warning loudly enough if you’re listening that the numbers aren’t going to be good because they’re going through changes. And again, they’re going from a car company – of course, they were always a technology company and leaning more into AI, more into robotics, more into the autonomy and the early rollout of the robotaxi, humanoid robotics, etc. And this is this big move higher.

So they better have some decent earnings and they better – Elon Musk better have a good story in terms of forward guidance as far as the company’s prospects because this is kind of out there on a limb and could easily roll over. So that’s it for you on Monday takeaways. There’s a lot going on out there as there almost always is. And that means you have to keep an eye on a lot of stuff.

But your general takeaway is we’re in a bull market.

It’s mostly risk on.

Just got to watch out for shall we say, falling rain.

No snow, thunder showers. No lightning.

But rain because it’s raining where I am and it may start raining on the markets if earnings don’t hit it out of the park. I’ll catch you guys next week. Cheers.