 Wall Street, a massive 996 point range that the Dow swung in the Nasdaq had been down close to three and a half percent ended the day with a more than three percent gain. So I do want to bring in Melissa Armo, founder and owner of the Stock Swoosh. Melissa, it's good to see you. What are your takeaways from the volatility that we continue to see on Wall Street? I think that 2022 is going to continue to be a volatile year just like it started in January and February and now it's almost March. What does volatility it mean? It doesn't necessarily mean straight down. It doesn't necessarily mean straight up. It means something happens that's unexpected. I can't exactly say that the gap down this morning was unexpected to me. I was predicting it. I thought this was coming. I could say I find that rally today unexpected, but again, tomorrow's Friday and this could turn around in a hot second because the fact is that I still think the market has a long way to go down is still holding up trend. And the fact is that this problem, the reason for the gap down today is not resolved. We're in a conflict. It's not a war yet. It's a conflict and it hasn't been resolved yet. So I know you follow the charts closely, Melissa. So what are the charts telling you? How much further could we fall in this market as this conflict clearly has not yet been resolved? I could go to 400 level and if you could get over 300 level, that's just two examples right there. You have to remember and look at where we've been. 2020 was bullish after the drop in COVID and March of 2020. Then we rally the rest of 2020. Then 2021, we had an extremely bullish year and the backdrop of the economy in 2021. I didn't think it was that great to consistently have as many new highs as we did, but people kept buying and the market kept going and the market kept going up. So you're seeing profit taking, a lot of this selling in the early 2022 was profit taking because people are up so much money. So at some point though, when people come in and buy the dip, new buyers, we may have had new buyers today. People come in, new buyers come in. If this doesn't continue to go back up, then you're going to have people that will give this up and then you're going to see more selling. But a lot of the money that you saw flow out of the market in early 2022 was really just profit taking because people were up so much in the last 18, 19 months when we had the rally. And now you're saying that the story has changed, right? So how should investors be looking at their investments? Melissa, should they be taking money out of this market or are there opportunities that you see? Well, oil is an opportunity. You could pretty much probably buy any oil stock right now. They've been streaking higher the last several months. So obviously, as the previous reporter said, oil prices have gone up. And you've seen all the stocks that we normally look at, all the tech stocks that lead the market, a lot of them had really poor earnings. Look at Netflix, for example, that's nowhere near the highs, the tight-on earnings. Even Amazon, while it rallied today, is nowhere near the highs. Google had great earnings and fell off the highs right after the earnings. So pretty much everything that you would look at as a market leader is nowhere near the highs, including the overall market. So getting back to what you were saying as far as what do people, what should people do, people are in different situations. Some people earn more money than others. Some people are a different age group than others. Some people are in retirement. Some people are still working full-time or in the prime of their life. So it really, I don't think getting what should necessarily panic right now. If you're invested in the market long-term, the market is still an uptrend and it probably will hold an uptrend because most of the time of the life in the market, the market does hold the uptrend because people tend to buy the market like today, like you saw today. People love to go long. They love to buy. Retail traders love to buy. In fact, they much prefer to buy than short. I personally love to short because you can get a lot of panic, big moves, and short moves down. There are times to buy and there are times to short, but the fact is that it all depends on the individual what you should do. If you're looking for short term right now, I think that there could be some short-term pay in this market. We've seen it in the first two months of the year and don't forget the Fed is going to raise rates this year. We do not know how much you're going to raise them in March. That is above and beyond this conflict that we're seeing with Russia right now. We have an inflation problem. The rates are going to go up and we don't know how much they're going to raise them in March yet. So here's a question for you. I think we've been prepared for higher rates really since about mid-December when the Fed did start to lay the path forward for that, but of course inflation has ticked up even higher than I think many economists expected and Americans certainly feeling the pinch of that. Our higher rates priced into this market, Melissa, we know the Fed likely will raise rates in March. Of course, we don't know by how much, but is something like that already priced in or three weeks from now, could we see another significant leg lower in the stock market? I think it's going to depend what they do and what they say. I think a quarter percent is priced in. I'm not so sure half a percent bump is priced in in March or let alone a one percent bump between now and July midway for the year. And remember, it's not just going to be gas that goes up. The previous reporter talked about food. It's the idea of even every single thing that we buy, how do we get it? It's through fuel. So everything gets transported to us. So everything is going to go up when fuel goes up, because that's how we get all the goods and services and everything that we buy. So inflation is a problem. And I think we're the Fed made a big mistake last year is they said initially it was it was transitory. It was never transitory in my mind. And even the numbers that they're giving now that they're saying that the number that we're at, I as a consumer know it's much, much higher than that in everyday life. Remember, they take everything together, but you're seeing it all across the board. And I think that's going to get worse. And I don't think raising rates is actually going to solve that problem because what's going to happen is people are going to pay more for things and then their interest rates are going to go out when they borrow. How is that good for consumers? It's not. So can the Fed effectively raise rates and avoid a recession knowing that these elevated prices are having a real impact? I think it might be too late. I think there's a great possibility we could go into recession between now and the end of 2022. I think they acted too late. They acted too late and there was too much free money and stimulus out there. So while I hope that doesn't happen, I think we're heading that direction. And that's probably why they might end up trying to bump rates to a half a point and then 1% by July because, but that is going to make it worse. Do you understand? So it's too fast, too soon, too high now to try to overcompensate for what they should have done back in 2020 or 2021. Here's another question for you, Melissa. You do seem pretty confident that long term we're still in an uptrend. And of course, rates are still near ultra low levels. Historically, the stock market does perform pretty well in the early days of rate rises, but this time is definitely different than what we saw in the wake of the financial crisis. How long can this uptrend continue? And if investors are buying now, should they be prepared to sell stocks potentially a year from now if that uptrend does reverse? Well, I think people should be watching their investments right now. I don't think this should necessarily wait a year. You know, example, like today, if people bought in today and this doesn't hold, well, again, we have a long way to go down. I gave you the levels earlier. So what happens? I'd say in the next 30 to 16, maybe even 90 days in this market is really, really important. Remember, earning season is over. We're at the end of it now. Next earning season doesn't start until April. So the only thing that's going to take hold of this market that's going to change things is Fed decisions and news. But the news has had such a huge effect on this market. We open so much lower today. You can't ignore where we open this morning and you can't ignore what's happening all the way across the world. The world is too interconnected right now. So people need to not wait a year from now. They need to be looking at what is going on right now in their portfolios and how they want to shift things around. Again, you want to be in stuff that's strong that you know is going to hold even if you have a long term. And Apple had a nice rally today. But again, on the earnings, that didn't perform. That didn't go higher. That didn't go anywhere at all. If you look at all the market leaders right now, they're all having problems, mostly with the supply chain issues, you know, the chip shortages. I mean, you could go on and on and on and on and on. As far as interest rates getting back to what we're saying, let's talk about the banks really quickly. They dropped today. They're not near the highs either. The two leading banks, JPM and Goldman are no more near the highs while interest rates going up. Sometimes banks benefit from that. The fact is lending will slow down. So people will not be borrowing as much with higher interest rates because they're just not going to be able to afford as much with higher interest rates. Then you can normally buy a house for 500,000. With higher interest rates, you may only qualify for 400,000. So all of this affects banks and their revenue too. So banks are going to take a hit as well. And you can't have the S&P at branding long-term highs and running straight up without the financials. You've got to have strong financials. And they've been really great. They performed well in 2021. But 2022, everything is taking a tumble. All right, Melissa, we've got to leave it there. A great to get your input as someone who watches these charts closely, as well as his market. That's Melissa Armo, founder and owner of the Stock Swoosh.