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A Salad Of Price Drivers, Or An Elastic Band?
Daily Update on SPY, QQQ, TLT, USO, BTC, COIN, Mag-7, Gold, PLTR
Yimin Xu
June 17, 2025
Hi YXI friends,
Macro. Price Technicals. Valuations. Seasonality.
Are they just buzz words? Often, at least one if not multiple of the elements above fail to explain the asset price move.
Does it make them useless?
One can think of market as a large elastic band. At any point in time, the elements above are pulling the market in their own directions with different strengths.
Sometimes, investors focus on geopolitics (e.g. oil market today). Sometimes, investors focus on valuation (e.g. 2022). Sometimes, everything is momentum driven, in which case, everyone looks smart except for the bears (depending on which year of course!).
Macro quantitative methods like ours spot patterns between the asset price movements and external factors. Price technicals look inward at the asset’s muscle memory from its historical price behaviour. Seasonality is like wind in the background that can help speed up the directional momentum or slow it down.
But the only certainty we will ever have is that nothing is certain.
Before the end of the month, I will establish a more coherent framework on how to consider these factors together.
I lean towards a scoring system, which you can remember as 4-3-2-1, making 10 the total score:
4 points attached to our ML model outputs
3 points to the price technicals
2 points to valuations
1 point to seasonality
I will explain more detail soon, but I welcome any thoughts on this subject in the comments or the poll at the end of the article.
If you are looking for our Systematic Signals directly, you can find them in our dedicated morning note on SPY, QQQ, BTC, TLT, AAPL, AMZN, GOOGL, META, MSFT, NVDA, TSLA (free), PLTR (free).
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
Key Observation
TLT, USO, GLD traded in the same direction on Monday, while risk assets moved the opposite way.
The market may have been hopeful in the deescalation of the Israel-Iran conflict, but Trump has signalled otherwise. Combined with an FOMC meeting on Wednesday and Triple Witching on Friday, I expect continued volatility in financial markets throughout this week. That means my appetite for adding new risk is low.
Click here for the past YXI article explaining many of the components of the dashboard.
Equities, Bonds, Oil, Gold, Bitcoin, USD, Sectors MTD performance
2. SPY, QQQ, (SPDW)
SPDW is updated every Monday.
SPY rose by 1% on Monday but failed to make a new local high. While $607 remains the wave (iii) target at the 1.382 extension of wave (i), it may not be worth chasing given the risk of a wave (iv) pullback that would align with QQQ and large-cap stocks.
QQQ continues to move along the resistance trend line and is still shy of both the local high and the all time high. But wave (iii) has sufficient length to be deemed complete here.
3. FOMC Projections & Rates Futures
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 | 4.33 | 0 |
07/30/25 | 4.33 | 4.23 | -0.1 |
09/17/25 | 4.23 | 4.13 | -0.1 |
11/05/25 | 4.13 | 3.98 | -0.15 |
12/17/25 | 3.98 | 3.83 | -0.15 |
01/28/26 | 3.83 | 3.73 | -0.1 |
03/18/26 | 3.73 | 3.63 | -0.1 |
05/06/26 | 3.63 | 3.53 | -0.1 |
06/17/26 | 3.53 | 3.48 | -0.05 |
There is virtually no chance of a cut on Wednesday. July is also a small chance. We could see the next cuts in September and December.
3-month SOFR Futures Yields
4. Summary Of Today’s YXI Signals
This section will soon be come a “YXI Score” Dashboard using the 4-3-2-1 system we mentioned at the beginning.
SPY, QQQ, BTC, TLT, AAPL, AMZN, GOOGL, META, MSFT, NVDA, TSLA, PLTR
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