 got the weekly numbers I'm gonna run through those quickly for the week the S&P down just fractionally same as the case it looks like for all three of these major indexes even though they were just fractionally higher today so we've been moving in this range for a while now and I want to bring in Melissa Armel founder and owner of the stock swoosh Melissa it's good to see you on this Friday what do you make of the stock market well not much right now to be honest with you we are caught in the tiniest range that I've ever seen for the last 15 years since I started trading for 15 solid day straight the market in the QQQ's has been in a very tight range we're seeing a lack of commitment or no commitment or no conviction from buyers because the market isn't lifting higher out of the range and the market isn't going lower below the range either like we had Tesla earnings yesterday which fell Tesla gap down the market should have fallen fallen off the planet but it didn't then we had bank earnings that came out when earnings season started we have great earnings from JPM the market should have broke out higher and rally through the area couldn't do with that either so this market is driven 100% right now by what the Fed's gonna say what the Fed's gonna do so the market may be in a range even though there's earnings in the next two weeks before the meeting the market may stay in this range with good earnings bad earnings because the market really doesn't care about earnings the market cares about what the Fed's gonna do and again they're probably gonna raise rates okay well based on the data that we've seen Melissa on the jobs front the inflation front in the past month or so since the Fed's last meeting mid-march do you expect that the Fed does change its tune that it says anything different at the next meeting the next decision that is on May 3rd no because they're still trying to find inflation because we still have high inflation and the Fed's only tool for that in their mind really is continue to increase rates which is of course going to do what it's going to slow down lending it's going to slow down the economy and that's unfortunate and and and already we've already been talking about the fact that we're going to go into recession towards the end of 2023 in fact uh you know Elon Musk did an interview on another channel the other night and said yeah we're going to go into a recession so the fact is that when you have all of these things coming at the market at runs high interest rates uh people are scared because of the bank collapses and then you have this market in this tight range which isn't showing conviction people are worried and they don't know what to do about their investments so people have moved a lot of money around with the bank with the banks going under people are worried about the fdic 250,000 limit and you have a lack of commitment from people overall deciding to buy more in their investments even if something like Tesla which is a great company that fell you know sometimes when stocks fall like that they get a lift people say oh this is a great place to buy it's a perfect price it's a great price but it fell it fell yesterday in fact it could even fall even lower so you have very strong companies right now that aren't reacting positively and even Goldman that came out and gapped down on earnings and rallied really didn't go anywhere higher so let's say we do get a recession I mean we've been talking about a recession since the start of 2022 right and we did technically actually have a recession two back to back quarters of negative GDP growth even though the administration said the jobs market is holding up this isn't a typical recession what does that mean for the stock market can the stock market over time grind higher or does a recession create a red flag predicting that stocks would go down well typically you don't always have the economy and the stock market do the same things so you could have a great economy and the stock market fall you're going to have a bad economy and the stock market rally so that's let me just put that out there but as far as the overall market goes I think that the last time that we saw brand new all-time highs at QQQs was November of 2021 not 2022-2021 so we're talking 18-20 months ago as far as the spy at the beginning of 2022 we had brand new all-time highs but we went all of last year without seeing new highs and this year we may go the rest of 2023 without highs and if banks are going to slow down lending okay that will have an effect on small businesses large businesses commercial businesses and as you've seen even this week Metas laying off people companies since the beginning of the year have been laying off people because they are predicting that we're going to tighten up as far as economically and what happens when you have the banks tighten up on lending so people want to buy stuff then they tighten up on lending they're paying more in-interest rates or they lower their credit card limits what happens when people want to go buy properties or mortgages and want to get a mortgage they can't afford as much so ultimately it slows down than the housing industry when you have lending slowing down you have all types of businesses that borrow whether it's commercial lending whether it's lines of credits and that slows down or costs more and so if sales are going down for businesses and lending is going up again you're gonna you might have some companies that are laying people off or tightening up or even going out of business and so as far as the stock market the reaction to the market goes it wants to see the Fed ease up on interest rates until the Fed makes up their mind that they're gonna lower rates which I don't think they're going to do in 2023 the market isn't going to react positive so we could go into recession the economy could go to downturn but the Fed could lower rates and the market could lift i'm not saying that's going to happen but i'm saying that would be a scenario with not a good economy but a good market it is tricky sometimes that's for sure common sense doesn't always necessarily play out right between the two melissa armo founder and owner of the stocks wish i'm also thank you