 And we now move to talk about stocks and companies going forward into 2019. To do so, we are once again pleased to be joined by Melissa Armo, the CEO of the stocks which is so great to be with you in person, Melissa. I know. Good to see you. Happy holidays. Happy holidays. So let's start with the one that's made so much progress in the last two years, although this year has been a bit of a downer lately. That's a tech sector. What do you see going forward? I know. It's unfortunate because that sector started out the year really with a bang. I mean, when you look at the fact that Amazon hit up over 2000, 2050 was a previous high. It's nowhere near that today. And even Netflix had a great year too. Even Apple hit over in New Highs. All of these companies look so great. I would say Facebook probably had the worst year. Even if you look back in February, Facebook just fall off a cliff early in the year and never looked back. It was that Cambridge Analytica scandal was the thing that... And then it was like the Energizer Bunny, right? They kept more and more and then in recent days they've been looking at more memos that haven't been so great for Mr. Zuckerberg. A lot of problems. And I think even more to come. So I take Facebook now out of that sector when I look at the whole thing for performance and where it's going. It's sort of an outlier. Yeah, because there's so many things we don't even know and so many scandals. But Facebook's not going away. No, no. But it doesn't mean that it's one something that you would consider investing in right now or buying. Do you know what I'm saying? You're looking at something strong and you say, well, I really want to get in the stock Facebook. Technically speaking now is in a downtrend. Apple is still in an uptrend. Amazon, even though they've fallen off the highs, still in an uptrend. Netflix is still in an uptrend. So some of these companies, even though they've dropped off and they're not near the highs, they are still in uptrend. So Facebook is not technically speaking that's in a downtrend. When you talk about... One more question on Facebook and I'm going to thank you for your patience on this. But you know, they always say buy the dips, right? But when do you know the dip has died and it's going to go back up? How do you know that with Facebook? Well, I don't say buy the dips. That's what everybody else says. Okay. So what do you say? Buy momentum by the gap when you get something called a gap. Now for those people that don't know what a gap is, I'll explain. A gap is a difference between the close and the open. The U.S. stock market closes at 4 o'clock Eastern time and opens at 9.30 in the morning. So there's post-market trading and there's pre-market trading and buying. When buying comes in in a big way after hours or in the morning, that's what you want to look for in a stock. And that's where you want to buy into that momentum or you want to sell into that momentum if something gaps down. But in the case of Facebook, it would have to be just a massive gap up for me to ever be convinced that stock's going to turn out. I definitely wouldn't buy any dip in anything right now. The market's too uncertain and going into 2019, we're looking at all this volatility that's been happening the last, really the last couple of weeks. This is like a sign. It's like a sign of what's going to happen into 2019. 2018 is going to be like a lamb compared to 2019 for the volatility. So get used to it. This is what it is and if you are a person that it gets scared when you look at your portfolio and see a fall or a drop-off, even in stocks that are strong, then you need to kind of get your head straight about it before 2019 because expect more of this to happen. And we've spoken about it before a few weeks back about volatility, particularly during this time of year when markets are thinner. There's not as much liquidity because people are on vacation, on holiday, etc. And so even some moves that might otherwise not move markets, they can really move markets. So keeping an eye on the VIX at the SIBO, the fear gauge, as they call it, is something important to watch. Speaking of which, one of the things which has moved the VIX in 2018 has been this whole interest rate idea. We've seen interest rates increase. But let me ask you, when we talk about things that are impact sectors, housing's got to be a big one, autos to some extent, but housing is the main one, right? How do you look at housing stocks going forward into 2019? Well, they may come back, but with interest rates on the rise now, people may be thinking twice about purchasing a home right now, not knowing where it's going. Now, if you have on the horizon that you want to buy, you might want to get in quick because you want to get in a lock and your rate before the prices go up. That being said, housing stocks, some of them just reported recently in the last month, and they haven't looked that great. But they're being drugged down by the market and everything else in the last two months. So it's really hard to say that any of them are a buy right now, but look for interest rates to increase. But still, when you look at, if you want to go out and get a 30-year mortgage, interest rates are still relatively low than what they were even, say, 30 years ago. I mean, you can still afford to go out and buy a home, but they're going to go up. I mean, I'm not saying we're going to get to 8% again for a 30-year fix, but it's not out of the woods. I mean, we could have... It's not going down any time soon. That's what I mean, yeah. I mean, it's more likely that the rates will go up to over seven or close to 6.75, seven, seven and a quarter, than they would ever go back down to 3.5, 3.75 again. And remember, a few years ago, you could get a 30-year fixed rate mortgage for like 3.75. Yeah, crazy, crazy stuff. Let's shift and talk about both manufacturing, and I'll put this together, agriculture, because they're both really impacted by a lot of the trade tensions that have been going on. How do you think they're going to fare going forward in next year? Well, specifically, I mean, it's just really all depends on what's going to happen with everything with Trump and the Chinese president. I just don't know if these things are going to get resolved within this 90-day break of the interim period. They still have tariffs on, and it came out the other day. Peter Navarro said, oh, we've taken in 7 billion in tariff profits. Well, that's a lot of money for the U.S. government to collect. Everyone's saying, well, yes, but are consumers paying that? When you go into a store, think of it like this. So before you go into a store, say you want to buy just a normal item that's not that big of a deal, not a brand name. So you want to go buy a light bulb. Say the light bulb costs 99 cents for a Chinese-made light bulb, and the American-made light bulb, say a brand name that you would recognize, maybe GE or something, might cost $1.99. And you would normally say, oh, I'm just going to get the 99 center. It's a light bulb. Now that Chinese light bulb might cost 175, and I don't know these exact numbers, I'm just throwing it out there as an example. You say, well, I'm going to get the one that I know is a better one for 25 more cents. So what it's doing is that people are being forced now to pay more to buy American, which obviously is what one of the things that Trump ran on to support American workers, but then consumers are paying for this extra thing. So what is it going to get resolved? Chinese people truly believe that Americans can't exist or afford to live without Chinese products because they're so cheap. So that's part of the reason why they're hanging on, and they've made a lot of money, as well, selling things to U.S. customers. No matter what, it's never going to equal. If China continues to raise the tariffs and U.S. raises the tariffs, it's never going to meet, because obviously there's more in our side than there is in their side. Do you know what I'm saying? I know exactly what you're saying. Matter of fact, I'm smiling as you're talking about it because, and I shouldn't, I hate to admit it, but I was at a dollar store not too long ago and I bought some detergent that was really cheap that looked like tide. And then once we got home and we washed our clothes and started breaking out with rashes and saw that it was from a country which I will not name, said, you know, geez, there is a distinction and there's a big difference here, but if the price changes to your point, Melissa, that really will make a difference in buying. And I want to ask you generally, and you've disagreed with me in the past, and you may do it right now, but I'm curious. So I think a lot of this, the trade tensions, we're really going to start seeing that come up in the data when we see Q1 earnings reports, that all the things for the holidays, they were ordered back in May and June before a lot of these tariffs went into effect, but when we get, if we start seeing really negative or not good, not as rosy earnings report, you know, in the beginning of the year after the first quarter, rather, I think that could really send markets on a downward spiral. Well, it's all overlapped. See, it's all overlapped. This 90 days is coming in first quarter earnings season, starts like towards the end of January and the beginning of February, when all of these things, the big names, Apple, all of these companies start to report in that period right in the first two months of the year. So this is going to be an overlap, 100%. So, you know. It could come in a hurry. It could, but again, I'm still bullish long-term in the market because I think the market's going to shake it around a lot. So even though we've been down, we're going to have green day still. So overall, is it going to look like we might fall and break into a downtrend? Yes, but are we going to do it? No, I don't think that the market overall is going to go from an uptrend to a downtrend unless we have some kind of world war, which isn't without the realm of possibility. Something could happen like that. I, you know, God forbid. But other than that, I'd say the market holds the uptrend. Could companies, actual companies go into downtrends like Facebook, could Apple go from an uptrend into a downtrend with a bad earnings report? Yes, it could. So I don't know. And that's one of the companies that's a big, big watch right now because it is tied into China where they sell a lot of their products. So I don't know what's going to happen next year. I think the market holds the uptrend, but with individual companies, you may see some of these very strong companies drop off. Doesn't mean they're going to drop off for the end of time. It just means temporarily it could happen until all of these things get resolved, which the longer this trend's on, then the longer it seems like it's going to take. And that's one of the reasons the market has been selling off and taking a dive because it's scared. We thought things were all widened, but I mean, the market did think things were resolved right after that summit, and it had that big gap up, but that didn't even last even 24 hours and it was falling off a cliff. It didn't, so a lot of volatility. Melissa Armo, CEO of the Stock Swoosh, so interesting, so insightful. Thank you, Melissa. Thank you. Good seeing you. Happy holidays.