Monday Takeaways: A Triple Threat of Tariffs, Tech, and Trading Pressure

|February 3, 2025
Pressure cooker steam over cooking in a Kitchen

The market’s most widely held stock got thrown around like a 90-pound weakling last week as the world digested the news of China’s AI venture…

Meanwhile… the world is watching as Trump’s tariff negotiations could reshape global trade.

This week, we’ve got 100 S&P companies reporting, including McDonald’s, Google, and AMD.

And one tech titan’s chart is showing signs of trouble.

Tune in for your Monday Takeaways. Don’t miss what’s moving your money… NOW.

Click on the thumbnail below to watch.

Transcript

Shah Gilani here with your Monday Takeaways.

Last week was a bit of a mixed bag. Not all stocks rose, but the market generally did a pretty good job moving higher. The S&P was reaching for another record high. Didn’t get there, but things look good because earnings were good. We had some really surprisingly good earnings, which put the kibosh on the “oh my gosh, AI overspend is going to crush some of these stocks, some of these big names.” Look what happened with DeepSeek.

What a week it was. We went from DeepSeek selloff to “wait a second – deep spending isn’t hurting anybody.” It’s doing a lot of these companies a lot of good. So markets recovered, but it was a jittery market nonetheless.

It was also the end of the month, the first month of 2025, and it was a pretty good month. S&P up about 3%. Globally, it was pretty good. Europe was up about 8%. The laggard of the international markets was up 8% in January. Emerging markets were up. Everything was a pretty good first month of the New Year.

Then we had another weekend surprise – the Trump tariffs, or maybe Trump thumped, I’m calling it. Markets this morning, obviously, down. It’s going to be an interesting week.

So takeaway from last week, let’s have a look at some numbers and charts here because it’s important to figure out what we’re looking at. We always have to look backwards to see what we’re looking at going forward.

Here’s the S&P. Here we see it’s a beautiful chart. You know, you got your bumps. So what? I mean, we sell high. This is a pretty excellent chart as far as I’m concerned. Yes, buy the dip opportunities for sure.

S&P 500 Index

Now here we are again, probably like to see another dip. Are we going to maybe see a big enough dip worth buying? I don’t know. It’s a little shaky because this time is different for now because of the tariffs – 25% on Mexico and Canada, 10% on China.

This upends a lot of things. So this is where the S&P is right now, except we’re down in the premarket. But let’s take a look at some of the stalwarts. The most widely held stock in the world got thrown around like a 90-pound weakling on the beach by some pretty heavy-duty traders who dumped it, dumped it, dumped it.

This is the most widely held stock in the world. And look at this, people. People were expecting this is a great buy the dip.

Nvidia

Yes, I did buy NVIDIA. Note to sales, I sold out at a pretty much tiny, tiny, tiny loss. I was looking good for a day and a half, and then things started to turn, and I just dumped my position because I was hoping to fill this gap and ride it higher if the S&P was going to make new highs. But no, all of a sudden, I felt silly at the end of the week that I had sold. Now I’m happy that I did. I get a chance to buy back in lower.

That’s what was interesting about this opportunity. Traders looked at this and said, maybe this is an opportunity. So there are a lot of folks that maybe bought this expecting a bounce, and now they’re going to have to sell. So there’s more pressure on NVIDIA. Here we are in premarket. You can see down 3.72 in the premarket.

Another stalwart, Microsoft, another leader, pretty much it’s a little bit of trouble as far as I’m concerned. Microsoft, one of the, I think, go-to standard bearers. It’s a little worrisome. It’s a sloppy sideways chart trying to make, you know, get up here and just kind of get up to the $456 range. Maybe break out there and go back and try and test and make a new high. Didn’t have the energy and then, of course, fell down at the end of the week.

Microsoft

Fell down badly. Now we’re up to support here and it’s down 1.12% in the premarket. So likely to break this support here, we’ll see what happens.

So the takeaway from what happened last week was, well, overall, it looked good. Overall, you look at the S&P, it’s like, yeah, it had a pretty decent week. A lot of stocks really got beaten up in spite of earnings being pretty darn good.

Now looking forward, you’ve got problems going into today. We’ve got the tariffs. Will they actually come to pass? We don’t know. Why? Because Donald Trump has calls set up today with Prime Minister Trudeau. He’s got calls set up with the Mexican president. He’s got calls set up all over the place. And these tariffs, which are supposed to go into effect tomorrow, may not. Will the market react positively if there’s some headway made? Probably, because this is a knee-jerk.

But it’s existential. Twenty-five percent tariffs on Canadian exports from Canada, imports into the US, 25%, and Mexico said 25%. That’s existential, especially for Mexico, but for Canada too. So will they push back? Will they try and say, we’re not going to kowtow to America? We’re not going to kowtow to President Trump? No. We’re going to stand united. We’re going to do – or they’re going to just have to come to the table, which is what Trump really wants.

Going to be a very interesting day. It’s going to be an interesting day for the markets too. We also have an interesting and busy week coming up with earnings. One hundred of the S&P 500 companies report this week. This is like the fast lane this week. We’ve got McDonald’s this morning, and McDonald’s this morning is down about 1% in the premarket. We’ve got Tyson Foods. We’ve got PepsiCo. We’ve got Google on Tuesday after the close, and we’ve got Advanced Micro Devices. We’ve got a lot of very tough earnings coming up.

If they disappoint with a jittery market, I think the sell buttons are going to start to get hit because there’s still a lot of profits on the table. Take away from what’s happening this week – what happened over the weekend is be careful out there. Take away from the earnings from them – they better be good this week. If they’re not good, if they disappoint, if some of the big names disappoint, we’re going to see more selling.

Be careful out there. Is this a buy the dip opportunity? Don’t know yet. Don’t know yet. I took it as a buy the dip last week, bought some stocks, and I dumped out of them. And then at the end of the week with the S&P up on the weekend, I was like, oh, I should’ve just bit my tongue and held on a little bit.

This morning, I’m happy that I sold because everything that I bought is lower. I didn’t really lose much because I knew I was trying to catch a small dip. And when I do something like that – and here’s the takeaway for you all – if you’re trying to catch a dip like that, really tight stops because you’re either going to be right or you’re wrong.

If you’re right, yeah, you get a nice little pop higher and then maybe you raise your stops or you leave them, you come back and you end up at scratch if you don’t make anything. But if you’re going to go the other way, you just want to get out because at that moment, you’re trying to catch something of a tiny falling knife. It’s a pen knife. It’s not a big knife, not a sharp knife because we didn’t fall far enough.

I hope we fall further, honestly, because I want to buy more. Got a lot of cash on the sidelines I want to commit. Tariffs might be the opportunity to do it. So takeaway for this week is look for opportunities, but make sure if you’re going to buy anything that you put a tight stop in because things might go lower or be committed to buy lower to average down.

It’s going to be an interesting week. Be careful out there.

Shah Gilani
Shah Gilani

Shah Gilani is the Chief Investment Strategist of Manward Press. Shah is a sought-after market commentator… a former hedge fund manager… and a veteran of the Chicago Board of Options Exchange. He ran the futures and options division at the largest retail bank in Britain… and called the implosion of U.S. financial markets (AND the mega bull run that followed). Now at the helm of Manward, Shah is focused tightly on one goal: To do his part to make subscribers wealthier, happier and more free.


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