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A Benign Market Rules The Day
Daily Update on SPY, QQQ, TLT, USO, BTC, COIN, Mag-7, Gold, PLTR
Yimin Xu
May 20, 2025
Hi YXI friends,
It may be bewildering to many investors how the market could recover and rally back so strongly in such as short amount of time since April 7.
The human emotions tend to lag the price action, as investors still feel the burn of the post-Liberation Day crash. Even as we enter the touching distance of the all-time-highs in SPY and QQQ, I still see headlines of Wall Street analysts warning the impending doom and bust.
Meanwhile, the real money-making traders have been too busy looting instead of laughing at the research desks next door.
This question has never been so true: “do you want to sound smart, or do you want to make money?”
Since April, I have fired half of my brain, handing controls over to the machines. The results, I must admit, have exceeded my own expectations. While I kept looking out for the risk of a pullback, the our machine-learning models raged on with its risk-on mode, correctly capturing the upward moves across the risk assets nearly all of the time. We have also dodge the pullback in TLT in recent weeks.
Here is our cumulative returns since the launch of each individual machine-learning model. Today, we started the NVDA strategy too.
Ticker | Cumulative Returns | Launch Date |
|---|---|---|
SPY | 5.4% | 12/05/2025 |
QQQ | 6.8% | 05/05/2025 |
BTC | 25.8% | 14/04/2025 |
TLT | -4.4% | 07/04/2025 |
AAPL | 5.5% | 21/04/2025 |
AMZN | 7.3% | 28/04/2025 |
MSFT | 5.9% | 07/05/2025 |
META | -2.4% | 14/05/2025 |
NVDA | 20/05/2025 | |
TSLA | 38.7% | 22/04/2025 |
PLTR | 7.7% | 12/05/2025 |
For those looking for our machine learning Model Signals directly, you can find them in our dedicated morning note on SPY, QQQ, BTC, TSLA (free), PLTR (free), AAPL, AMZN, MSFT, and TLT. We also show them in the main content below.
Let’s dive in!
Table of Contents
DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is strictly educational. Any information or analysis in this note is not an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities. Nothing in this note is intended to be investment advice and nor should it be relied upon to make investment decisions. Any opinions, analyses, or probabilities expressed in this note are those of the author as of the note's date of publication and are subject to change without notice.
1. YXI Daily Dashboard
Observations from today
SPY and QQQ rallied back into the positive territory after a terrible open on Monday.
Mag-7s closed relatively flat too. AAPL and TSLA lagged the peers.
There was renewed interest in Gold / GLD yesterday, although the near-term trend remained down.
SPY, QQQ, SPDW
The primary expectations are inked in black. The alternative expectations are inked in red where applicable.
SPY rallied into the green, as Trump posted an update about Russia-Ukraine ceasefire talks. This told us two things: 1) Moody’s downgrade didn’t really matter, something we had suspected, and 2) the market is still in a partying mood.
Everyday in the past week, investors asked - “when pullback?”. Everyday in the past week, the market inched higher. This is the music of a bull, not bear, market.
Our wave (iii) target remains intact for $609+.
What’s interesting is the persistent outflows in the SPY ETF, as it recovers and rallies near its all-time-high in the past 6 weeks.
It suggests to me that a lot of the institutional investors are still skeptical of the rally, trying to de-risk as the price bounces. This could be bullish in the medium term, as the same investors could reverse course and start putting the money back on the table due to FOMO.
QQQ is only a few ticks away from our $527+ wave (iii) target. I do see QQQ reaching the target imminently, before fighting the next resistance of the trend line plus all-time-high.
FOMC Projections
We use the Fed Funds futures market to understand the market expectations of future FOMC interest rate decisions.
FOMC Date | Before Meeting | Post Meeting | Hike/ Cut in % |
|---|---|---|---|
06/11/25 | 4.33 | 4.31 | -0.02 |
07/30/25 | 4.31 | 4.21 | -0.1 |
09/17/25 | 4.21 | 4.06 | -0.15 |
11/05/25 | 4.06 | 3.91 | -0.15 |
12/17/25 | 3.91 | 3.76 | -0.15 |
01/28/26 | 3.76 | 3.66 | -0.1 |
03/18/26 | 3.66 | 3.56 | -0.1 |
05/06/26 | 3.56 | 3.46 | -0.1 |
06/17/26 | 3.46 | 3.41 | -0.05 |
Yields were unchanged overnight, as the market continues to foresee 3-4 cuts in the next 12 months.
3-month SOFR Futures Yields
2. Summary Of Today’s YXI Signals
SPY, QQQ, BTC, TLT, AAPL, AMZN, MSFT, META, NVDA TSLA, PLTR
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