Tariffs Are Back In Style
New Greenland tariffs on EU
Recap:
Equity indexes (QQQ SPY IWM) have been in melt up mode since April 2025. IWM has recently broken out from a 5 year range into price discovery. Overall, the market is starting to broaden out. 2026 will be a year of strong rallies alongside periods of volatility.
Tariffs did not crash the US economy.
Relevant Topics, News, and Data: Week of January 19th
New 10% tariffs announced on 8 European countries over Greenland (starting Feb 1, rising to 25% June 1)
New York Stock Exchange announces new tokenization platform
Earnings kick off with NFLX 0.00%↑
Institutions continue to buy MSTR 0.00%↑ which is in a severe drawdown from ATHs
ETH hyperliquid whale continues to hold a $880m leveraged position with majorly ETH
CLARITY / Bitcoin ACT not passed yet, continues to be pushed back
Government Shutdown Jan 30th
The week is packed with Trump, GDP/PCE/PMIs, and earnings. I am focused on shorting metals as tariff talks reignite while silver nears $100 psychological number.
Charts:
$BTC (Weekly)
We have exited the downtrend and held a demand zone. $85k is a great pivot, bulls must hold it. Real world adoption continues.
$VIX (Weekly)
Volatility is decently low…we do have some opportunity to see equities selloff, but I’d side towards vol suppression for a couple more weeks.
MARA (Weekly)
Pretty much all BTC proxies are on the lows. I don’t seem them going lower for the next few weeks as I see BTC rallying towards and past 100k in the coming weeks.
IWM (Weekly)
If I had to pick one chart to prove that we are no where near a cycle top in equities, it would be this. 4-5 year range now in price discovery while manuf. data still has not entered expansionary prints.
TSLA (Weekly)
This is such a highly contested topic. All I can see is “wait and see” while Elon goes full engineer with AI, robotics, and etc. I do not want to fade Elon. I am glad we got a sizable stake last summer.
QQQ (Daily)
Is it time to short? I don’t know. I really do not care. I definitely don’t think it is time to panic. Can we see volatility ? sure. It just seems like dips are for buying…even if they turn into corrections.
ALAB (Weekly)
Bullish engulfing candle, I cannot believe how this chart looks. It seems like one to hold on for dear life and let it ride during the AI boom.
Refer to the recent Substack for PATH and RR.
Watchlist:
SLV / GLD, Short overbought Metals
RR SERV, Long new Robotics
MARA CLSK, Long oversold BTC miners
BTC, accumulate $85-93k range for ATHs
Positions:
Big Account:
We have added PATH and RR recently while the last 6 months IBIT was accumulated since my last post in July 2025. CRCL and ALAB were added over the last 6 months as well. TSLA was bought during the summer of 2025.
Conclusion:
I haven’t written a weekly newsletter for about 6 months. It seems like a fitting time as US yields look like they want to go higher. If rates go higher, it will be in the basis of earnings expansion and continued overall equity rallies.
The Fed is buying again for the first time in 3-4 years. There will be a new Fed Chair in May this year and typically the US treasury market likes to bully the new chair by pushing yields higher.
It will be bumpy, but I do not see a real top in the risk-on market yet. ISM manuf. PMI is still not in a continuous expansionary data prints.
Cheers,
TraderHC
Reminder: Even though these are multi 6 figure size trades, they are still sub 3% of liquid AUM. I sometimes hold trades to nearly 0. My risk management is the amount I initially buy.
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