Creating Tariff Panic?
Lately, the financial media has been stuck in a doomsday loop, repeating the same fear-driven narratives until it all starts to sound like background noise. When the panic reaches this level, I start to think the market might be hitting a short-term low.
I rely on a couple of technical indicators—the 200-day Moving Average (MA) and MACD (Moving Average Convergence Divergence)—to get a sense of where we are in the cycle. These tools may seem scientific, but at their core, they just visualize investor emotions—fear and greed. Looking at them now, the MACD is at one of its lowest levels in the past year, suggesting we might be near a bottom.
A good way to gauge sentiment is by checking my own emotional reaction. Over the past week, I’ve heard the word “tariffs” repeated so many times that I hit my own capitulation moment. By 10:30 this morning, after seeing the S&P 500 down 100 points for the third time in four days, I decided enough was enough. I waited an hour, bought some weekly Nvidia calls, and sure enough, the market started to bounce.
To be clear, I’m not saying tariffs don’t matter—they’ve been a major reason for the recent sell-off. But markets move in cycles, and it feels like we’re due for a short-term rebound. Whether it lasts a couple of days or more, we’ll have to wait and see.
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