 Welcome back folks, Dow, Dow's up 25, Nasdaq's down 46, S&Ps are up 4. Let's go over to our man, Mr. Steve Rhodes, as we do each and every Monday at 20 past the hour. Don't forget folks, Steve does an outstanding show here every trading day, one to two Eastern standard time. Also has a great newsletter, Mastering Probability. Now the way you get Mastering Probability, you come over to our website at TFNN, you're going to see it right under featured content. You hit our man, Mr. Steve Rhodes, as you hit that, you can get subscribed. You can get Steve's newsletter for one month for $149, six months for $6.95, which is a savings of $199, a year for $11.95, which is a savings of $593, and of course don't forget our man, Mr. Steve Rhodes, is the 2008 market time of the year, according to the time he's died dressed. That's a beautiful thing, man. Meow! What's happening? I guess what you're telling me is that Beyond Meat is the way to be able to get kids to eat their vegetables. I guess so. You know, there's going to be, there's a battle over this, folks, about the different states. There's a couple of states already that have it illegal that you can say that something is vegetables meat. And I can see that, I can see why these companies are going to have a big battle, but they're probably going to lose because you know what happened? So picture this, this goes back to the milk business. You remember there was only milk, and then they made coconut milk and almond milk and all that? Sure, sure, sure. They're going to probably lose that whole deal because the people that are doing the fake meats, right, are saying that, hey, what am I going to say that, I was reading this article last night, what am I going to say that bacon is like two slivers of fat and you know, I mean, do you know what I mean, like, what do you call it, right? You know what I mean? No, yeah, yeah. I'm sort of old school, and I don't need a lot of meat, but you know, but if I am in the mood for a burger or a steak, I want a burger or steak. Oh, there's no doubt, there's no doubt. You know, I'll eat my vegetables, I actually, when it first came out, I looked at the ingredients, I don't recall what, I mean, they were like peas and you know, I mean, it was just all types of powder stuff. Peas, meats, I've done it. No, I know, I know. It was kind of... Listen, I had a nightmare last night. I told Tommy before I was just coming down stairs, folks, that I had a nightmare last night. Listen, this is a true story. I woke up and I got, and I'm dreaming that I got a shot beyond meat, and I woke up and I said, I am not shotting beyond meat. Oh, that's true. Isn't that crazy? This is like one-thirty pneumonia, so I can't believe it. I can understand that. I can understand that. Oh, my God. Well, you know what? Let's talk about other, perhaps, myth versus facts. Oh, cool. Okay. Okay, so I thought maybe we would just kind of, and so you're leading, you know, everything in life does happen for us. I couldn't figure out a segue into myth versus fact until you brought up beyond meat. Right. And so it was perfect. So I want to take a look at two, and it's especially important with regard to what's going on this week with the Fed. And so the question is, is it a myth or is it a fact? For example, if interest rates rise, because this is the belief, this is kind of what is thrown out there in the media, this is what's thrown out on Trump's Twitter stuff. If interest rates rise, the stock market will go down, or the opposite therefore would have to be true. Because if interest rates decline, the stock market would go up. So let's go take a look at the myth versus fact. Let's first begin. Now what we're going to look at, folks, here are monthly timeframe charts. At the top of the chart, we're looking at short-term interest rates, a 13-week Treasury bill. And now below that, we have the S&P 500. So I'm going to take us back to 1992, 27 years ago. And between 1992, a September of 1992 and January of 1995, short-term rates rose by 117% yet during that same period of time, the S&P rose by 13%. So it didn't go down, didn't go up massively, certainly not percentage-wise matching interest rates, but it did not go down. Okay, well that's just one example, but that is about a two-and-a-half-year period of time. So let's take a look at the next period of time that we can look at, which takes us to October of 1998 to October of 2000. Again, the top portion of this chart, monthly chart out here, so it smooths out. Short-term interest rates rose by 46%. If we go take a look at the same starting point and point in the S&P 500, what we'll see is the S&P rose by 30%. So here we've got short-term rates rising, and we have the S&P 500 rising. But we don't have to stop there, that only takes us to 2000. We can also take a look at the period from June of 2003 to February of 2007. And during that period of time, short-term rates rose by nearly 500%. And if we take a look at the S&P 500, that rose by 44% during that same time period out there. You know what? I grabbed the wrong chart, my apology to folks that are listening, that are watching out there. Actually, I see that the chart out here that's on my screen is the wrong chart, but the percentages are correct. And I'll be able to show, I've got another slide here, it'll show that time frame. So it was between September of 2015. Here's our fourth period of time that we can take a look at, because interest rates began rising in 2015. So between September of 2015 and when they peak thus far, this is the 13-year T-bill, which would be February of 2019. Short-term rates rose by 47,000%. Because we're going basically from zero to where we're at. Yet the S&P 500 rose by 45% during that exact same time period. So myth versus fact, if interest rates rise, the stock market will go, really, we should take a look at if interest rates rise, the stock market will go down. That has not proven itself over the long haul out here. And here is the actual picture. So we can see the four different time periods. That's with interest rates rising, short-term rates rising in the top portion of our screen, Tom, versus the S&P 500 on the bottom portion of our screen. So there's something else that's going on out there with regard to interest rates. It has nothing to do with the markets. The fact of the matter is, you and I, we're business people. We have many business people, entrepreneurs that are listening to us. And what we each know is whatever the rate is that we're borrowing at, if we can make more than that rate, we'll go ahead and take out that loan. Sure. If we can't, it doesn't matter what the rate is going to be out there. And I guess the rates have been going down since 1980, right? Well, that's true, too. Yeah, that's true, too. So let's go to our second myth versus fact. If the spot fix index is at a high level, the S&P 500 will go lower. And that is, folks, a total myth. Let me show you why. And one key to understanding the spot volatility index is understanding price, the spot volatility index, in relationship to its 50-day exponential moving average. So here is a chart with the spot volatility. So the red line happens to be the 50-day exponential moving average. So let's take a look at a couple of time periods out here. If prices are going to move lower, we need to see the spot fix index trade above its 50-day exponential moving average. So here we take a look at the S&P 500. We go back to the 2008 time frame. Certainly, price was moving lower in the S&P 500. But take a look at the spot volatility index in relationship to its 50-day exponential moving average. Then let's move over to the bottom that formed in 2009. There's no relevance to the fact that when that bottom began moving to the spot volatility index, it was trading around 40. And you can see these are the green rectangle box that we're in here. You can see how the spot volatility index continued to trade below its 50-day exponential moving average. We can do the same type of thing and take a look at 2018, 2019. The yellow box, the green rectangle out here shows us time periods where the spot volatility index is above its 50-day and below its 50-day. And so to conclude this, and currently where we're at, where we're currently at is the spot volatility index is below its 50-day EMA, which is 1427. And therefore, your thought process that the S&P 500 is going to continue to move higher, as long as the spot fix index is below its 50-day, I have to concur. So those are our two myths versus the actual God's honest truth out there. And, folks, it's really easy to get Steve's newsletter. Come over to TFNN. You go on to Featured Content. You're going to see Master of Probability. You can just hit one month, six months a year. Steve, you have a great one. Stay fun. We look forward to show tomorrow. Thanks, Tom. Take care. Thank you. Stay right there, folks. Come right back.