Interesting TACs of the Week (August 4 – August 10, 2025)

Summary – A top-down review of interesting calls and comments made last week in Treasuries, monetary policy, economics, stocks, bonds & commodities. TAC is our acronym for Tweets, Articles, & Clips – our basic inputs for this article.

Editor’s Note: In this series of articles, we include important or interesting Tweets, Articles, Video Clips with our comments. This is an article that expresses our personal opinions about comments made on Television, Tweeter, and in Print. It is NOT intended to provide any investment advice of any type whatsoever. No one should base any investing decisions or conclusions based on anything written in or inferred from this article. Macro Viewpoints & its affiliates expressly disclaim all liability in respect to actions taken based on any or all of the information in this article. Investing is a serious matter and all investment decisions should only be taken after a detailed discussion with your investment advisor and should be subject to your objectives, suitability requirements and risk tolerance.

1. Markets Last Week

US Indices:

• Dow up 1.4%; SPX up 2.4%; RSP minus 84 bps; NDX up 3.8%; SMH up 22.8%; RUT up 2.4%; MDY up 71 bps; XLU up 44 bps; VIX down 26%; 

Mega Caps:

• AAPL up 13.3%; AMZN up 3.7%; GOOGL up 6.5%; META up 2.6%; MSFT down 39 bps; NFLX up 4.6%; NVDA up 5.2%; MU up 13.36%;

Financials:

• BAC up 77 bps; C up 98 bps; GS up 1.7%; JPM down 21 bps; KRE up 1.3%; EUFN down 6.3%; SCHW up 1.6%; APO up 2.7%; BX down 87 bps; KKR up 8 bps; 

Dollar was down 40 bps on UUP & down 47 bps on DXY:

• Gold up 1.3%; GDX up 10.7%; Silver up 4%; Copper up 65 bps; CLF down 5%;  FCX up 4.6%;  MOS down 9.5%; Oil down 5.3%; Brent down 4.5%; OIH up 1.1%; 

International Stocks:

• EEM up 1.6%; FXI up 2.3%; KWEB up 3.9%; EWZ up 4.4%; EWY up 4%; EWG up 3.9%; INDA down 1.1%; INDY down 1.1%; EPI down 1.1%; SMIN down 1.8%;

Fixed Income:

• 30-year Treasury yield up 4.7 bps on the week; 20-yr yield up 5.3 bps; 10-yr up 7.7 bps; 7-yr up 7.3 bps; 5-yr up 7.9 bps; 3-yr up 7.7 bps; 2-yr up 8.2 bps; 1-yr up 6.5 bps;
• TLT down 74 bps; EDV down 1.1%; ZROZ down 95 bps; HYG up 30 bps; JNK up 38 bps; EMB up 71 bps; leveraged DPG up 2.7%; leveraged UTG up 86 bps;

As we all have heard, more members of the FOMC seem to be inching towards a cutting-rates-in-September posture. That means the below! 

• The Market Ear – Plenty of dry powder to buy stocks – “…there is more than $7T in MMFs, suggesting plenty of dry powder to buy stocks especially if we do see the Fed cut rates, dropping the return on MMF assets.” (JPM)

How much of a rate cut is being priced in?

• Charlie Bilello@charliebilello – The bond market is now fully pricing in 2 rate cuts by year-end and 3 more cuts in 2026. That would bring the Fed Funds Rate down to 3.00% (lower bound). Video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=R_ZsO0U5GfU&t=780s

But what about earnings or more accurately earnings revisions, the favorite measure of Mike Wilson of Morgan Stanley?

• Mike Zaccardi, CFA, CMT 🍖@MikeZaccardi – S&P 500 Earnings Revision Ratio – best in about 3.5 years @WisdomTreeFunds

By the way, it was interesting to see Mike Wilson say (on Bloomberg, we seem to recall) that a new bull market began in April 2025. Now can a new bull market begin without a run by small caps?

• Mike Zaccardi, CFA, CMT 🍖@MikeZaccardi – BofA: Small cap earnings are on track to finally emerge from recession, +11% YoY (with earnings 16% better than analysts expected) or +4% YoY for the median small cap $IWM $IJR

How many speculators are Short Small-caps & what do they think they know?

• J.C. Parets@JC_ParetsX – Speculators in the futures market have on their largest net short position in the Russell2000 ever. What do you think these folks are so scared about?

Could anyone speak bullishly without invoking Signor Detrick?

• Ryan Detrick, CMT@RyanDetrick – Aug 8 – Our @CarsonResearch Proprietary Leading Economic Index has correctly said for years there wouldn’t be a recession, even as all the other LEIs did. It still says no recession and could be trying to turn higher right here.

Could anyone make a bullish comment without invoking the macho sector? 

• Seth Golden@SethCL – The Big Semiconductor Bang Theory🧨☄️ – 1st time Semis have expressed a 4-month win streak in more than 6 months. History informs that EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. this has happened in the past (n = 18), Semis were higher 6-months forward 💯 Average return = 13.5% 6-months forward💵  $SPX $SOXX $SMH $NDX $NVDA $AMD $MU $ASML $QQQ h/t @NautilusCap

Finally,

• The Market Ear@themarketear – Last time this occurred, the dollar caught strong bids.

 

2.  On the other hand,

• Ryan Detrick, CMT@RyanDetrick – 8-4 – Post-election years tend to peak right about now and bottom in late October. No, this doesn’t mean it has to happen this time, but some seasonal turbulence would be perfectly normal.

Is the positioning ripe for such a seasonal turbulence?

• Markets & Mayhem@Mayhem4Markets – 8-4 – CTAs are close to maximum long equity exposure here, per Deutsche Bank.

And,

• Seth Golden@SethCL – 8-9 – Time for a breather, and just at the right historical achievement? Leadership strength is waning in strength. $SPX $COMPQ $QQQ $SPY $ES_F $NDX $NVDA $AAPL $MSFT $SMH

Finally,

• Ryan Detrick, CMT@RyanDetrick – Great chart from @scottcharts in his note yesterday. Internal weakness is happening with less new highs and more new lows.

For those who worry about 2007ish thoughts, they should recall that the S&P rallied in to mid-October on rate-cut hopes & made a new all-time high in mid-October. The real sell-off began in early November 2007 on weakening labor & economic data.  

That brings us to now.

 

3. GDP, Economy & Interest Rates

• The Market Ear@themarketear – 8-9 – US GDP growth is headed towards zero.

And,

• zerohedge@zerohedge – 8-9 – Inflection Point? Goldman Fears US Growth Near Stall-Speed

Going back to August 2007, what did long-maturity Treasury rates do then? Make money for those who bought!

To make it simpler, what did TLT (20-+ Treasury ETF) year  do from mid-August to December 2007?

Today you can get higher performance ETFs that make you money as long maturity Treasury- rates fall. This week, we saw the following call from Steve Strazza of The Strazza Letter:

And on a supporting note, we recall hearing David Rosenberg say on air that his bond-duration model is now showing a buy on long maturity Treasuries.

We would like to add that our own Chuck Daly Dictum signal is in line with the above thinking of smart people like Rosenberg & Strazza. For those who may not recall him, Chuck Daly, the championship coach of Detroit Pistons, always kept running a play until the other team learnt how to stop it. And our version for years was buy Treasuries/TLT in July-August if they had sold off aggressively from March to June-July. 

Below is the 2025 chart of ZROZ

Those who like to play with fire of sorts might want to take a look at the same chart of TMF, the triple-leveraged TLT.

A very serious warning to those who might be tempted to play with the above fire – this is a highly risky trade & we strongly recommend stops & abundant caution. After all, Chuck Daly had Isaiah Thomas, Joe Dumars and Vinnie “microwave*” Johnson to run his plays. 

*microwave because Vinnie Johnson didn’t need time to get “hot”. He was instantly hot when Coach Daly put him in. 

Those who like to read big-name research articles should go to Bloomberg.com & read two articles published this week with obviously directional titles:

• Goldman Sachs Says US Yield-Curve Shape Looks Like Zero-Rate Era
• Bets on Fed Rate Cuts Are Sweeping through US Bond Market

Others may simply want to quickly run through the 19-minute clip below titled Goldman Sachs Just Issued Brutal Economic Warning with their favorite libation to their stock-market deity:

 

 

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