Interesting TACs of the Week (July 20 – July 26, 2026)

 

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 

1.1 US Indices:

• VIX down 80 bps to 18.62; Dow down 1.2%; SPX down 86 bps; RSP up 9 bps; NDX down 1.6%; RUT down 1.1%; MDY up 28 bps; XLU up 2.5%; SMH up 84 bps; SOXL up 2.5%

With the blue rally above, we have got to begin with Semis. And don’t Semis begin with GPU availability & such?

As he said to CNBC’s Dominic Chu on Friday:

• “our base case is that it probably lasts for a couple of weeks or so; when you zoom out, it could be perceived as a buying opportunity; … all things being equal, I liked to see these memory stocks rebound later in the day (on Friday)“

In a similar vein:

• Trader Z@angrybear168 – $SMH The corrective pattern since mid-June looks bullish. Another shakeout to trap some shorts wouldn’t hurt. Price can test the confluence zone of weekly 21 and daily 50 back. Watch for the reclaim of the anchored vwap as a great low risk long entry. Also watching squeeze momentum bars to print higher lows. Another 10 trading days could set everything up nicely.

In more plain-speak on a broader index:

• Finom Group@GroupFinom – Nasdaq 100 Bullish Percent just hit the critical OVERSOLD level (30). It can get worse, but has often been a clear Buy Zone in the past, and reward with significant profits thereafter. $NDX $QQQ $TQQQ $SPX $SPY $AAPL $NVDA $SMH

 

It is possible that some might see the above and argue that NDX has violated support. What other factor could they look at?

• Cam Hui, CFA @HumbleStudent – Jul 25 – 3 of 5 thoughts for the weekend – $NDX has violated support, but $NAMO is at or near levels consistent with past short-term bounces

And the below can’t hurt:

• Mike Zaccardi, CFA, CMT 🍖@MikeZaccardi – S&P 500 P/E ratio falls below 20x @dualityresearch

And more broadly speaking:

• Ryan Detrick, CMT@RyanDetrick – After one of the greatest two month rallies in history, stocks have simply consolidated those historic gains so far in June and July. Good to take a bigger look at monthly charts sometimes and doing this shows nothing is wrong with the overall picture. 🐂 💪

And,

• Trader Z@angrybear168 – $SPY weekly tension closed bullish.

 

1.2 MAG 7:

• AAPL down 22 bps; AMZN down 6.1%; GOOGL down 7.8%; META down 7.9%; MSFT down 3.1%; NFLX up 1.7%; NVDA up 2%; MU up 8.5%; IBM up 71 bps; IGV down 5.2%; CRM down 4.2%; PANW down 9.7%; NOW down 4.3%

It is good to see IBM up for the week. The CEO did a fair job in answering questions from CNBC’s Sara Eisen. We think he might have been smart enough to have slipped the questions to Sara Eisen before the segment. 

Speaking of Mag 7;

• Charlie Bilello@charliebilello – Meanwhile, the Magnificent Seven ETF is actually down 4% on the year. So investors are selling the companies who are spending all of the money on AI-infrastructure (depleting their free cash flow) & buying all of the companies receiving that money. How long can this continue?

But how terrific has it been?

 

1.3 Key Financials:

• BAC up 1.3%; C up 2.2%; GS down 37 bps; JPM up 3.6%; KRE down 1.3% ; EUFN up 65 bps;  SCHW up 40 bps; APO up 1.8%; BX up 2.4%; KKR down 1.6%; XHB down 25 bps; ITB down 25 bps; NAIL down 1.3%; IGV down 5.2%; CRM down 4.2%; PANW down 9.7%; NOW down 4.3%

Software stocks down again & hard. Does the below have anything to do with it?

• Jeffrey Gundlach@TruthGundlach – Announced after hours on a late-July Friday: the Co-CEO of a $78 billion private credit fund resigned…four days before the announcement. 🤔

 

1.4 – Dollar & Metals

Dollar was up 88 bps on UUP & up 74 bps on DXY:

• Gold up 1%; GDX up 5.5%; Silver up 3.8%; Copper up 1.8%; CLF up  28.6%;  FCX up 7.2%; MOS up 77 bps; Oil up 8.9%; Brent up 10.4%; OIH up 3.3%; XLE up 3.4%; PBR up 4.5%;

Copper stocks did great on earnings. Is Copper about to break out or reverse back vs. Gold?

• Otavio (Tavi) Costa@TaviCosta – An important reminder: Despite copper hovering near record highs: The copper-to-gold ratio is only now approaching a major breakout. https://tavicosta.substack.com/p/weekend-notes

 

 

1.5 – International Stocks:

• EEM up 6 bps; EMXC up 12 bps; FXI up 1.3%; KWEB down 1.9%;  BABA down 2.5%; EWZ up 1.4%; EWY up 26 bps; EWJ up 80 bps; EWG down 10 bps; INDA down 1.8%; INDY down 2.2%; EPI down 1.5%; SMIN down 2.3%; IBN down 84 bps; HDB down 11.9%;

EM has been hit hard!

• Mike Zaccardi, CFA, CMT 🍖 – @MikeZaccardi – 7-25 – Intense multiple contraction YTD in EM and APAC (ex Japan) JPMAM

 

1.6 Treasuries & Interest Rates 

• 30-year Treasury yield up 10 bps on the week; 20-yr yield up 12 bps; 10-yr up 13 bps; 7-yr up 14 bps; 5-yr up 15 bps; 3-yr up 15 bps; 2-yr up 15 bps; 1-yr up 13 bps;
• TLT down 1.5%; EDV down 2.1%; ZROZ down 1.9%; HYG down 53 bps; JNK down 61 bps; EMB down 93 bps

Where could the 10-yr yield go in an “extremely normal” scenario?

• Mike Zaccardi, CFA, CMT 🍖@MikeZaccardi – It would be extremely normal for the 10yr yield to rise to its 56-year average of 5.97% JPMAM

OMG! How much would the 10-yr price have to fall for that? We don’t know about 5.97% but the below tells you about the fall to 5.70%!

• Mike Zaccardi, CFA, CMT 🍖@MikeZaccardi – Even if the 10yr yield surges another 1ppt (from 4.7% to 5.7%), that’s only a -3% total return This isn’t 2021 anymore JPMAM

It is not 2022, either!

• Mike Zaccardi, CFA, CMT 🍖@MikeZaccardi – 7-25 – It may be a bad year for bonds, but 2026 is a far cry from 2022; $AGG – YTD: -0.5%; 2022: -13%

 

2. Spectacle of Last Week

Man, doesn’t that protest look spectacular, especially when you hear about it from US organizations of the left inclination. Frankly, we got interested when, passing thru YouTube, we came across a woman named Yalda Hakim who expressed delightful surprise in saying people in India contacted her about the Youth Protest or the Gen Z protest as she and her gang called it. As we understand, Yalda was born in Afghanistan. She is now in Australia & doesn’t speak of her religion except to say she is “Secular”. 

We owe our search for facts in this case to Ms. Yalda & our stunned surprise at her total ignorance. Any journalist type one who knows anything about India knows that the word “secular” is used to express the speaker’s anti-Hindu prejudice, or worse hate. But we will come back to Ms. Yalda, a Persian name that reportedly means “birth” or “rebirth”. Hopefully, she may experience a rebirth as a “fair” human without what we see as religious bigotry in her. 

Before we get to what we saw, below is a fair & unbiased report from a youngish man who had heard about the JaiPrakash Narayan movement and attended the Anna Hazare movement himself. So he went to the Delhi protest to see this protest. Below is his unbiased view of what he saw:

Getting to our views, first we come to the main purpose of this massive spectacle. 

2.1 Almost Perfect Regime-change operation 

The election of Narendra Modi in 2014 proved to be a washout for the Congress Old Guard who essentially ran a racket of corruption & power grab. Their political apparatus was a bevy of English-speaking political commentators whom the US & European media almost always chose to “explain” India. 

This regime was uprooted & discarded by the election of Narendra Modi who thought like a true India loyalist about the several thousand years of India’s heritage. More importantly, PM Modi proved to be absolutely remorseless & hard on the old lick-European-boots collection of Congress & AAP supporters. The AAP party was established, at least in name, to speak & fight for the Aam Aadmi or the Common Man. 

The AAP still runs the State of Panjab but is essentially a non-entity in the rest of India. In the process, their original creators & message leaders have been cast by the wayside. Prominent among them, is Yogendra Yadav who was thrown out by the AAP leader. Now he was seen on TV as advisor on the Delhi riots to the Congress Heir apparent & prince Rahul Gandhi & his sister.

Read his own words of what this protest is for or watch his state the below in his Facebook comment.

• “Democracy will run from the streets, NOT Parliament; it will not be decided by elections but by resistance…  what we are seeing is a glimpse” 

Everyone knows the formula by now. Recently it was used in Nepal to compel the weak government to resign via violent protests in Nepal’s capital. Before that it was used in BanglaDesh to instill a violent riot in Dhakka to compel the elected Prime Minister to escape to India. If you go back a longer way, this was the way to get rid of an elected leader in Kiev, Ukraine. 

We are not kidding about this being objective if what Yalda called “Gen Z protest”. Watch 14 seconds, from min 2:00 to min 2:14 of a July 22, 2026 clip in which a guy in a white t-shirt yells into the camera:

• “Sansad Bhavan Ukhaad diya jayega, Ukhaad diya jayega, Nepal ban jayega, Nepal banega” (Parliament House will be uprooted; uprooted; we will make this into Nepal; it will become Nepal“). 

When you watch this, you will see that this man is kinda of a leader based on the way he walks across the “protest” area & you might also notice that he is much older than a NEET student (18-21 yrs of age). Think for a minute. If you are a leader of protest for NEET students or even other college students & if you get a chance to yell into the camera, wouldn’t you yell about justice for the students. No, this leader-type guy is ONLY focused on forcing India into a Nepal like regime change. 

If we can find this guy & his goal for the protest, why couldn’t Yalda Hakim find him or many like him? Because it is so much more lucrative to shout about Gen Z protest & Youth of India instead of just using her eyes & ears.  

2.2 The Real NEET problem

NEET is a mandatory exam for entry into a medical college. It is administered across the country. So this is very big deal for students & their parents. As medicine.careers360.com informs, NEET test was leaked in 2015, 2016, 2021, 2024, 2026. 

What happened in 2026? The website says:

• “According to investigation reports a courier employee allegedly provided temporary access to question paper trunks.  Portable scanners were used to create digital copies and then files were routed through “shadow servers“. A 150-page “Guess Paper” PDF containing around 410 questions was distributed through Telegram and WhatsApp groups. Out of this “Guess Paper”, 140 questions were exactly the same as asked in the official NEET 2026 question paper.”

So what did the NEET authorities do? The website says – On May 12, 2026, NTA officially announced the cancellation of NEET UG 2026, which was conducted on May 3, 2026.

A nationwide retest for NEET-UG 2026 was conducted on June 21, 2026 in 5,440 centers across 551 cities in India and 14 cities abroad in which nearly 20 million candidates appeared out of which 1.1 million candidates qualified. The results were published on July 16, 2026. 

So you have 18.9 million candidates who were broken-hearted on July 16. Did the CJP protestors begin the protest spontaneously or were the CJP organizers were prepared to use these broken-hearted candidates to launch the protest?

If you were one of the unsuccessful candidates, your hopes for a medical career were broken on July 16. And your parents & relatives were broken-hearted as well. And, as news sources says, 12 unsuccessful candidates committed suicide. 

2.3 The Pain of Young in India

People hear of terrific success of Indian graduates of prestigious schools like I.I.Ts. But the reality of students who go to an average college or university is bleak. As we hear, there is 40% unemployment among college graduates in India. And the average student does not even apply for AI, Technology or those elite jobs. They are looking for simple service jobs or government jobs.

2.4 The BIG problem for many students

Government jobs are in high demand because of the job-security factor. But getting such a job requires a birth-based hurdle, a problem for students from non-disadvantaged backgrounds. India has what in US is termed as Affirmative Action. But its impact in India is far worse. 

In India, the equivalent of Affirmative Action is Job Reservation for students from disadvantaged backgrounds or lower castes as used to be the term. And the problem in India is that the number of students from Job Reservation communities is far larger than those from non-reservation communities. So many of these students have to apply for work in low-paid service entities.  

So a big demand is to end Reservations. But this is the demand from a minority of students with Non-Reservation backgrounds. In an electocracy like India, it is virtually impossible to end this system, because any candidate who campaigns on ending Reservations is guaranteed to lose the election. 

If you want to see real pain, watch the clip below of a student who is not from the Reservations category.

This is a huge issue in India. How long do you keep Job Reservations based on the history of discrimination suffered by a student’s ancestors? We can’t solve this in America even 140+ years after Lincoln’s death in 1865.

But did you hear about this in the coverage of the Delhi riots by Yalda, or by ABC or by any US outlet? No. It was so much easier & more lucrative to call this a Gen Z protest even though it had nothing to do with Gen Z.

2.5 Reality of the Delhi “Protest” – Mainly Thugs Not Students

The above discussion describes the nature of the problem. Below see what the actual protest was like. First, ask if you know of any real students who would attack & beat up a male reporter like below:

or a female Indian reporter as below:

And we saw the clip of one of Yalda Hakim’s cherished “India’s Gen Z” lowering his pants for display to an Indian female reporter. We can’t show that explicit clip for reasons of propriety. 

There are so many clips of  “protestors” acting like criminals & hooligans. We thought we would share one that actually provides a list with expert commentary from a General:

 

After CJP goons, came the new young women. Is this what Gen Z is about? But we actually can’t include the videos because they violate our modesty standards- In the first one, Ms. Anu Dagar, the presentor, is disgusted herself:

https://x.com/TheAnuDagar/status/2080301567371329742

https://x.com/arunpudur/status/2079832489653338284/video/1 

https://x.com/Geetashloks/status/2080280137254465655/video/1

Wonder if Yalda Hakim finds these words from sexual gutter a great sign of India’s Gen Z and would she encourage it for young girls in her own family & friends!

2.6 Entry of Nihang Sikhs

The situation began changing on the evening of Thursday, July 23. The violent attacks of police & the horrendous sexually violent language about PM Modi had finally begin to wake up the common Hindus. Until then, they felt sympathy towards the problems of the youth. But once they saw that the protests were horribly anti-Hindu & anti-India, they woke up. Mumbai Government also woke up & organized their action. The Newly elected Bengal Government readied its base. 

Also by then the intelligence services had probably examined all the photos & identified about 2,000+ criminals in the “protest” via facial recognition software. And the Delhi police were completing their own protective screens around Parliament & Government Buildings. 

And just before that, the Nihang Sikhs arrived. They had first come to protect the students but once they came, they were shocked at the violence against the Police & the virtual lack of the so-called “students”. As one Nihang said “not even 20% of these people are students“. We saw 3 Nihang Sikhs on top of a Police Jeep that was chased by the rioters. With those sword-carrying Nihangs, the mob fell back.

 

2.7 Resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, Education Minister

Many think that the resignation of Minister Pradhan was a concession by PM Modi. We beg to disagree! It is the old game of showing one hand while playing another. Pradhan’s continued stay at Education Ministry enabled PM Modi to make detailed preparations about what to do if the protests don’t stop. We believe Pradhan’s resignation suggests that preparation are now complete. 

Minister Pradhan’s resignation now gives PM Modi the leeway to prosecute similar NEET leaks reported at Panjab’s State Education Ministry in the AAP party state government. And Mr. Kejriwal, the head of the AAP government, has no basis to disagree. 

Did any one notice that Minister Pradhan’s replacement was even a harder man with background even stronger than Pradhan’s. He is a Braahman with 35 years in the RSS. His tenure will be more intense than Pradhan’s. Also he will now have a free hand to implement reforms that might hurt established interests. 

And then you have PM Modi’s brilliant decision to announce Nandan Nilekani to lead task force for education reform.  We also think that PM Modi will accelerate other plans he has that might lead to some opposition. Our guess is that after the Delhi riots & the role of opposition in it, PM Modi will ride roughshod over the opposition and pass the reforms he wants. 

Already the violence, anti-Hindu rhetoric of the cockroach protests have not been received positively by the center of India. That will give him PM Modi a stronger hand to appoint police officers with a more intense intelligence background. 

We wonder if PM Modi will look at the National Guard in USA and create a similar organization that can be deployed both at the center and in states. What we have seen is that a local Police Department is not strong enough or deep enough for a thorough focus on security roles that lie between State Police & the Armed Forces. Some time ago,  India made the decision to strengthen its Border Security Force and look at the dividends. Today, the BSF manages most of the issues even at borders with Napakistan & BanglaDesh. 

Perhaps the need of the medium term might a Domestic Security Force (DSF) that can act with speed, size & power to handle situations like last week’s violent anti-India protest. 

We might prove to more sanguine than sensible but we think there is a strong probability that, one year from now, we all might say these cockroaches proved to be helpful to PM Modi & India. 

 

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