On multiple occasions, former President Donald Trump has suggested that he would contest the 2024 election results if he didn’t win, according to a report from the New York Times. Strategy Risks Founder and CEO Isaac Stone Fish joined the show to give insight into the possible scenarios of what would happen with China if the US presidential election does not have a smooth conclusion.

300 stocks on the New York Stock Exchange hit new highs, the most since March of 2024, suggesting the market’s breadth is expanding. According to Bank of America, the US benchmark Feds Fund rate suggests Wall Street is set on a soft landing scenario with expectations for interest rate cuts to come.

A recent Goldman Sachs (GS) report revealed a slowdown in retail investor activity, potentially paving the way for an influx of short sellers. Yahoo Finance anchor Julie Hyman broke down the details of these findings and what they could mean for markets and investors heading into earnings season.

Box office stocks are showing signs of recovery despite not having a ton of new content. Chad Beynon, Macquarie senior analyst of gaming, lodging, and leisure, joined the show to discuss his outlook on box office stocks.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here

Video Transcript

Hello and welcome to ask you for a trend.

I’m Josh Lipton for the next half hour.

We’re going to be breaking down the trends of today, that’ll move stocks tomorrow.

There’s a lot to keep track of.

So we’re focusing on what you need to know to get ahead of the curve here.

Some of the trends we’re gonna be diving into.

It’s a winning week for the major indices.

The S and P 500 shaken off yesterday’s losses and closing above that 56 100 level.

Thursdays sell off was sparked by rotation out of big tech that’s continued to boost names in other sectors.

And that broadening lifting the dow today to close above 40,000 for the first time since May and staying put president buying dismissing calls to lead the presidential race in a news conference that showed off his experience but also his age.

More democratically lawmakers have come forward, demanding by and step down as reports circulate that party heavyweights are also pushing the president to end his re election bid.

Plus it’s been nearly eight months since the last of the Hollywood strikes came to an end.

But studios in the box office still feeling the effects we’re checking in on the state of the summer.

Blockbusters that’s coming up.

President Biden saying European allies are urging him to continue re election efforts.

Story continues

I’ve not had any of my European allies come up to me and say, Joe don’t run.

What I hear them say is you’ve got to win.

I can’t let this guy come forward.

It’d be a disaster.

The ongoing uncertainty surrounding the November ballot and who will be in the White House come January could have major geopolitical consequences.

According to our next guest, I’m joined now by Isaac Stone Fish Strategy Risk founder and Ceo Isaac.

Good to see you.

Thanks for having me.

So what you were or Isaac, it’s interesting is that come the election November to the extent that after that election, we have some degree of confusion, uncertainty who it’s too close to call a candidate says says he won.

He didn’t, that could actually open the door in your opinion to maybe bad actors making moves.

We are in unprecedented times and it’s now possible or arguably even likely that the election is contested.

Biden wins.

Trump says he wins.

It’s a dream for Autocrats, the world over and especially for China to make a move against what the United States global interests are and what would, what would China’s move be there?

A lot of different possibilities.

The scariest is that China goes and seizes Taiwan, which is a Democratic nation that Beijing has long claimed as part of China.

What, what would you actually ceo, I mean, Eisen, what odds would you put on that China invaded Taiwan?

Are you 5050 lower higher in the next six months?

I would put it at maybe 10 or 20%.

But it would be such a catastrophic event that it would reshape global markets and it’s something that everyone has to plan for.

It’s higher than we think, longer period of time, you say higher than we think, because I’m, I’m surprised you even go that high because Beijing has been very clear for decades and they now have the capability to do so.

And the biggest reason why they wouldn’t, as far as we can tell is that the United States would step in and would defend Taiwan.

And then that would almost certainly be World War Three, which is a major, major decision for any polity to make.

But if the United States is distracted or even worse, seems like it’s leaderless, it could be a very good time for Beijing to.

So those are different variables to consider if they were to invade China Isaac.

Um What would that actually look like?

I mean, is it a limited strike, is it something bigger, broader, larger?

There’s two different scenarios, there’s a limited invasion which Beijing hopes then is all they need to do because Taiwan powers, the United States doesn’t act.

Japan doesn’t act or it could be a full fledged invasion.

So we have the Russia model where in 2014 they started seized Crimea, they started going in the east of Ukraine and then full fledged invasion.

Eight years later, Beijing could do that or they could just start day one with a massive attack.

It’s very difficult to know it’s very opaque at the top of the Communist Party.

But because there’s so much we don’t know, we have to plan for this uncertainty.

Let’s say they did launch an attack.

And I like these are hypotheticals Isaac.

We’re just trying to game out the scenarios.

What do you think a US response would be?

It so depends on who’s in the White House.

It depends on what timing.

It depends on what the polling is like.

It depends on who controls Congress.

So Congress has the power to go to war.

But us presidents for the last several decades have ignored that or overlooked that.

And so I think frankly, a strong Biden presidency, if that’s even still possible, is more likely to go and defend Taiwan over China than a Trump presidency.

That Isaac because Trump is more able to be talked out of these things and he’s less of an establishment leader, the establishment on both the Democratic and Republican side in Congress and in the executive branch is more pro Taiwan than Trump is.

Trump is an outlier there even though he’s been very critical of China.

But we’re all rewriting the playbook over the last, what would be the argument?

Isaac?

I mean, if you’re trying to make the case that Taiwan is in America’s national security interest, what would that case be?

There’s the economic case?

But the most important case is that if Taiwan falls to China, it’s hard to say America is the most powerful country in the world and countries around the world will no longer be able to look to the United States as the global provider of security.

In other words, you said there were, there would be ramifications is your point both for allies and adversaries and for the United States itself.

So there’s massive how they view us in some sense.

Exactly.

That’s a big piece of it.

And so if you don’t think America can or should be the world’s most power country, fine, you can let Taiwan fall to Beijing, but there’s massive amounts of implications there for what that would mean.

It’s a big problem for Japan which is fairly close to Taiwan and Okinawa and the other home islands and it really just sends a signal that the United States is retreating inward.

Big important topic, Isaac.

Thanks so much for trying to help us walk through it.

Appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

All right.

Moving on stocks bouncing back from Thursday’s tech driven, sell off the dow closing at its highest level since May and just above that 40,000 level here with more on the trading day takeaways.

We have Yahoo finds his very own Jared Jared.

That’s right.

We are looking at a breadth explosion right now and that is my first take away.

We really see, saw things come alive yesterday and that was in reaction to that weaker than expected.

CP I print carried over into this morning and I was looking at the new highs of all New York Stock Exchange listed stocks and there are about 3000 in that group.

But the new highs were about 300 today.

306.

That was the most since March of this year.

And it just shows you the general strength that just kind of erupted in this market over the last couple of days, we hadn’t seen that.

We’ve been talking about concentration.

Well, here we got the opposite of that.

It’s, you know, having, you know, the kind of skeptical take on the market has been, you know, this market has bad breath, but now we see this explosion, Jared is it just, I mean, listen, we all been tracking small caps very closely but where else are we seeing that?

What are the vertical sectors?

Yeah, you’re right.

It’s not just small caps.

We saw the Dow come alive.

It hit an Intraday record, didn’t make the close, but it hit an intraday record.

So it is at the highest level that it’s ever been.

You see the small caps coming alive, but it’s not just limited to some of these French sectors or the cap sectors.

You can look at XL B that’s health care just had its first record high since February, I mentioned the Dow financials also first heard Intraday highs since May 17th.

And then you look inside financials to regional banks.

Kre has exploded here, arguably that’s a mid cap.

But so you see all the strength coming from different part of the market.

So I find that encouraging with a couple of cys, all right, hit me with the second bullet point, Jared.

We have Wall Street all in on a soft landing looking for those rate cuts.

And in fact, more rate cuts have been priced in over the last day.

And that’s in response to that CP I figure.

And the people I figure, in fact, we’re seeing about 10 to 15 basis points of more rate cuts than we were two days ago.

So here’s the federal funds rate.

This is the fed’s benchmark rate.

This is when we talk about the fed adjusting rates.

This is the rate and this goes all the way back to the beginning of the century.

And you can see here, this was a global financial crisis.

There was rates came up to 5% and then they got lowered pretty drastically all the way down into the 2009.

And then again, they got ratcheted up here to the pandemic.

And we actually started lowering rates before the pandemic.

And then we got that steep drop when it was obvious what was happening.

But you notice here, look, this is uh this is where we are.

This is supposed to be July actually, this is December of this year.

This is December of next year.

This is a much more gradual slope here.

So you’re saying a soft landing is done.

It’s a done deal.

Is this your point?

Yeah, I I’m afraid that we got to look at history here.

I know this is only two other uh prior events.

But if you look at the slope and let me just erase these lines, look at how steep this is and how steep this is.

What happens when everybody is expecting a soft landing.

And that’s usually the base case.

Nobody sees the hard landing, nobody sees the recession data until it’s right in your face.

Usually all of a sudden the labor market falls out from under you and there’s a rug pole, so to speak.

And so that’s what we saw the pandemic.

OK?

You want to say that’s an outlier?

Well, we saw that in global financial crisis, we saw that in the year 2000 in the.com bubble bust.

Uh when things get bad, they tend to go down very quickly overnight.

And so the onus now now that we now that we know where we are in the business cycle, the data has to come in either pretty good or not too bad if it comes in really, really bad, you’re gonna see, you’re gonna see expectations for a lot more rate cuts and it’s not going to be pretty.

All right.

Third bullet Jared.

Let us go for a intervention.

This is kind of under the radar here.

It looks like yesterday when we did get that market moving.

CP, I report the Japanese government was in the, and I’m going to go to our US dollar versus the yen here.

You can see over the last two days, uh this was a big drop.

This is the dollar getting weaker on that CP I announcement.

And uh it looks like the Bank of Japan was also feeding into that.

So they were actually buying yen, they were selling dollars during that same period.

And then later on that night, when they reopened for business, I think it’s about 8 p.m. Our time this is UTC down there, by the way, they sold again, they sold the dollar and then this morning, I’m not sure we don have evidence yet.

Uh if there was a intervention this morning, but it’s possible we see the move in here.

And so the Bank of Japan, the lesson is uh they don’t want a weaker yen and they’re gonna get in the market to achieve their ends.

And if you’re on the opposite side of that trade, if you’re in the Kerry trade, you’re gonna get stomped on, let’s say, are your investor right?

Now you listen to Jared Blackery, do the charts.

You’re going into the weekend and you’re wondering, why does this matter to me?

What do you say to that?

Jared?

Look at this chart.

Well, how could this not?

I mean, it’s a beautiful chart.

Yeah, I think it matters because at the end of the day we got to remember that when the stuff, the proverbial stuff hits the fan and it might be hitting the fan in Japan pretty soon the governments, they will change the rules and they will do what’s necessary to protect their markets.

In this case, it’s going to be the Japanese currency and their government bond market.

I live through the flash crash.

It’s indelibly imprinted in my brain when one part of the market breaks in a big way, it spreads everywhere.

Very instantaneously there it is killed it.

Thank you.

Movie theaters are in the thick of summer blockbuster season but the lingering effects of 2023 actors and writers strikes, plus the lack of a Barben Heimer type event means the box office is still lagging for more on the state of theater is joining us.

That was Chad Bynon macquarie, senior analyst, gaming, lodging and leisure chat.

It’s good to see you.

So let’s dig right in uh to the US box office.

Chad uh because you’ve been crunching the numbers on, on Q two.

What, what did you find, Chad?

It sounds broadly soft.

Sure.

Thanks for having me, Josh.

Yeah, April and May start off very soft.

So as a quarter, we’re looking at 40% lower than the second quarter of 2019.

And that’s mainly because of April and May you, we were still seeing come the end of a lack of product from the strikes.

Uh June fared much better, right.

We had inside out, we had this big me.

Uh so there was a glimmer of hope similar to what we saw last year at times.

You know, you see a Barben Heimer right now, we’re seeing the inside out despicable me.

It feels like something uh you know, exciting is happening again, but then you go through a month where people just decide to not go.

But yeah, Q two, we’re definitely going to see the negative operating leverage for these companies.

They’re not going to generate that much IDA and then we’re kind of looking for Q three, Q four.

Very strong Q four and that’s when we’re lapping the top of very low production.

Given the strikes in Q 423.

So easy coms chad but also in the back half of the year is there, is there just gonna be some, some movies, some content that’s coming that you’re banking on as well.

Yeah, look uh summer is generally a, a pretty busy time.

Um I think the summer overall should be good.

It’s not gonna be great, but I think it’s good.

Um The next one in the next couple of weeks will be Deadpool and Wolverine, which could do over 400 million of box office here in the in the US.

Um in that release in the fourth quarter, that’s when you see Gladiator Two, you get Wicked wanted to Lion King.

Um Just a lot broader content.

So I think the Thanksgiving through Christmas period will be very strong generally in the fourth quarter, September.

Um you know, it is a slower month and that kind of carries into October.

But yeah, it’s look, it’s a back half weighted story.

We have seen the stocks pick up, I’d say year to date, right?

You’ve seen Mark uh recover here.

It is part of the small cap movement.

IMAX as well and then obviously a MC on the meme K ro and Kitty uh movement as well.

But yeah, we are hopeful that Q four picks up and then for next year 25 I do think we’re gonna see some nice growth year over year as well.

Let’s get some topics too.

Chad, you know, IMAX, I believe is that your top pick?

I think how come, what’s, what’s the argument there?

Yeah, look with, within this category, IMAX is the top pick.

They, they’re a little bit of a different story.

Uh To be honest, this is a, this is a company that has asked for a coverage probably from more tech analyst versus the traditional movie theater consumer uh analyst.

But this is a company with a real strong global brand.

They have a strong backlog of projectors that will be rolled out over the next three years.

Um, that brings about 10% growth per annum.

So if you think about that growth, like you would for a franchisee, a Marietta Hilton, um, that’s pretty strong in that, in that drives earnings and then in terms of the, the product, they obviously have the Hollywood product that they lean on.

But what they’ve done over the past couple of years is have more local language product in India, in China, in some of the Latin American markets.

So the global box office for them, you know, is more predictable.

It’s a little bit more steady.

Um, they obviously benefited from, you know, the Taylor Swift movement uh last year.

So I, I think it’s a better business model, good margins.

They’re not the ones running the theaters, they’re kind of taking, you know, half of, of the business that that comes through.

Um So I like that more predictable model.

We’re at a $24 price target.

It is a small cap one that we really like here.

Chad.

Great to see you on the show.

Thanks for joining us and have a great weekend.

Thanks you as well.

Retail investor activity has declined and it’s likely emboldening short sellers.

That’s according to a new report by Goldman Sachs Yahoo Finance’s Julie Hyman joins me now with a closer look, Julie.

Yeah, we earlier talked to Goldman Sachs Derivatives Research had John Marshall who helped outline what exactly this means.

And this is something that Goldman Sachs does measure on a regular basis.

And it’s not that unusual of move going into earnings.

But really the thrust of the report was that investors need to be careful about which stocks they are betting on going into earnings because we’ve been seeing some outsized movements in them last earnings season and they expect to see that this earnings season again.

So here, what we’re looking at is single stock options volume and this goes back, uh uh really a couple of years here and we’ve been seeing a little bit of decline as of late in that activity.

Now, at the same time that that’s been happening, Goldman Sachs also has an index of retail sentiment and that has been sort of going sideways to even ticking up as the single stock options go down.

John Marshall said that that indeed could indicate that hedge funds might have an opportunity to step in here with some shorting activity.

Here’s what he told us earlier.

Now, it’s not our call that the S and P is necessarily going to decline here, but weak stocks, stocks with weak fundamental stocks that have high leverage.

We think hedge funds are gonna be more emboldened to short those stocks as we’re entering earning season because there’s less of that threat of a short squeeze from retail and the options market.

And that’s evidenced by that decline in that single stock option activity, that less threat of a short squeeze as we have a retail sentiment that is relatively strong right now, at least according to this particular measure, Josh.

All right, thank you Julie.

And that is a wrap on today’s asking for a trend.

Be sure to come back Monday at 4:30 p.m. Eastern for all the latest market moving stories affecting your wallet.

Have a great night.