Investor's Edge with Gary Kaltbaum - Week Ahead-Jobs and Earnings [05.04.2026 w Adam Sarhan]

Episode Date: May 4, 2026

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Investor's Edge with Gary Cultbaum. Straight talk about you and your money. Now from the BizTalk Studios, here is Gary CultBomb. And welcome once again to Investors Edge. I'm Adam Sarhan in for Gary Kay, who's out today. Today is Monday, May 4th. May the 4th be with you, my kids at school are saying. So I'll share that as well.

2026. And as always, we have a great show for you tonight. I want to thank you very much for being here. Just some housekeeping before I dive in and give you Gary's notes. and my thoughts on the market and latest headlines, a week ahead is going to be the topic for today and, you know, just set the stage for what's coming up. But first, some housekeeping. As you know, this is a show about you and your money and all of the fun points in between.

If you don't get the show in your city, you can go to GaryK.com. You can listen live or archive. If I tend to speak fast, you can pause it, rewind it, listen again and again and again for free on any device, all on GaryK.com. You can also follow Gary on X, formerly known as Twitter. You can subscribe to Gary. Gary's morning notes sent directly to your inbox for free. You can ask Gary about his money management services.

If you want his premium subscription, you can join Convictionleaders.com. Once again, Convictionleaders.com. He does a great job of updating members throughout the day. It does webcasts just about every day. And shares a lot more. So you can not only hear Gary, what we do normally is listen to Gary, but you can also see the charts and see him go through what he sees and see the market from his point of view, which for me is very helpful.

So all of that's available at convictionleaders.com. And I believe you can take a free trial there. All right. So again, week ahead is the topic for today. Before I go into the details, I'm going to read you some notes from Gary to make sure I'm the messenger and I do my job and get the message across to you. First off, transports, particularly weak, and they're getting hammered, Federal Express, UPS, they're really coming after the truckers now. Oil prices are spiking and the 30-year yield is above 5%. So it was during the day.

So we'll see what happens there going forward. But you guys already know, Gary's been bearish on housing, retail, and a bunch of other areas. So again, just to mention high level, just watch those transports. It's important because the markets, we spoke about this before last time, is a mirror of the economy. So financials are getting hit, transports are getting hit. you know, that tells us a lot about what's happening on Main Street. We can also mention, let's talk about some of the A, this is from Gary, some of the AI semiconductors and others ignored the Dow drop earlier.

So high level, just pay attention here to the narrowing areas of what is working. This is Gary's notes are done. The rest of this is going to be me now. Well, those are the notes from Gary. So let me end that. And I'll say the rest of this is me going forward. So it's really important paying attention to what is working and what's not working in the market. I always like to say the market is speaking and then ask, are you listening?

You know, the market's not literally talking to us using words like I'm using now, but what is the market doing? It's speaking to us by its actions. What areas are up, what areas are down, what areas are leading, what areas are lagging, so on and so forth. Movers in any given day a lot. I mean, there's so much. So how the market speaks to us, price, volume, so on and so forth.

Groups, themes, trends, et cetera, et cetera. But that's how I listen to the market. Just pay attention to what's actually happening. Not what people say might happen or this, the news, the headlines, all that. Sure, fine, fine, dandy, no problem. But what's actually happening? So what matters more than the why?

Anybody can have a reason for why something is happening. The market's up because enter any reason you want. What matters on my statement is what is actually happening. And that's the price. And that's why for me, price is primary and everything else is secondary. So up ahead this week, think about 20. 20% of the S&P 500 companies are reporting earnings. That's a lot, folks.

20%. Last week was a heavy earnings week. This week is another heavy earnings week. I believe it's peak earnings last week this week and over the next few weeks. This is the thick of it. Like we're in earnings season now. And we had some Federal Reserve speakers today. There's a Milken conference where a lot of the big Wall Street guys and gals go to talk.

But really from earnings, we have Tyson Foods, Lowe's, let's see, Palantier reports, Veritex Pharmaceuticals, Pinterest, Dualingo, On Semiconductor, Diamondback Energy, and more. That's Monday. Tuesday, we've got the March Joltz job openings report and April ISM surfaces or non-manufacturing PMI index. Those are the economic data for tomorrow. And then earnings tomorrow, PayPal, Pfizer, Cummings, KKR, Marathon Petroleum, Global Foundries, AMD, Arista Networks, Super Micro, Electronic Arts. Occidental Petroleum and many others.

Wednesday, another Labor Day of Focus. We've got Labor, not Labor Day in September, but heavy labor data day. Let's put it that way, right? Labor data, let's put it that way. You have before the open April's ADP, non-farm employment report, which is a private jobs number,

and that's from ADP. As far as that's economic news, earnings news on Wednesday. We have CVS Health, Disney, Uber, Apollo, Kraft, Oscar Health, DoorDash, App Lovin, Fortinet, F-T-N-T, SNAP, Zillow, Warner Brothers, I-O-N-Q, Beyond Me, and many others. Thursday, Thursday, earnings from, let's see who's reporting Thursday, McDonald's, Datadog, Peloton, Morby Parker, Tapestry, Coinbase, Airbnb, Affirm, Cloudflare, Lyft, and many other companies. That's Thursday.

And then Friday, we have the always fun jobs report. Why does that matter? Because that's the official report from the government tells us the unemployment rate, tells us jobs if employers are creating net net, jobs are contracting or declining, contracting or expanding or however you want to expand, either going up, jobs are going up or going down. Really, that's all that matters from the jobs report on Friday. At the end of the week, we're going to have about 20% of the S&P companies reporting earnings.

We're going to have better data on employment. And why does that matter, folks? Because the Fed has a dual mandate. Number one, make sure unemployment stays relatively low. Jobs continue to grow. And number two, inflation stays around 2%. That's it. Everything else has noise.

That's the Fed's mandate from Congress. So when you look at the jobs report every month and you look at other jobs data that comes in, like I just mentioned, all that other stuff that's happening this week on the jobs front, that's literally half of the Fed's mandate. It matters. I mean, what is the Fed looking at? It's looking at the jobs, you know, looking at unemployment. It looks at this data. And then the second thing the Fed looks at is inflation data. All right, oil is going up. What does that mean for inflation? Not just oil. Gasoline prices are going up. Gasoline at the pump. Prices are going to go up. I don't want to be the one to tell you. I'm just the messenger, but that's most likely what's going to

continue to happen here until oil prices and gasoline prices start coming. coming down. Until then, what's happening? Gas prices going up. Inflation. What does that mean for inflation up? So again, when you understand how this kind of this works, it's no longer a matter of like, oh, okay. It's like, oh, this makes sense. That's why this matters, because it goes back to the Fed. And ultimately, what is the Fed going to do with interest rates? That's powerful. Because once you understand what the Fed does with interest rates, now all of a sudden, you can look at the signals, not the noise. Elon Musk has a great line. Steve Jobs had this years ago, where there's lots of things happening in the world in their viewpoint every day. It's really important to focus on signals,

which actually move the needle and drown out, filter out the noise. Otherwise, we get lost in the sauce, like my friend Andy says. You get so much noise, all this happening, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. And most of it doesn't even matter. Signals. What is the Fed, which is the proverbial elephant in the room looking at? It's looking at employment, looking at inflation. That's it. All the other data, sure, it's important, but it's a backseat from the Fed standpoint. And again, economic data is by definition a rear view mirror phenomenon. It tells us what happened in the past. All of these earnings companies that are coming out this week with earnings tells us, told them what happened in the past.

But the market's a forward-looking mechanism, and that's a major disconnect for most folks until they understand it. Then all of a sudden, oh, wait a minute, what? I can look to the right of the chart. This makes actually sense. Like, the market's looking forward. It's discounting the future.

And economic data, earnings data, tells us what happened in the past. That's important. Don't get me wrong. Earnings data is important. Economic data is important. But really, going forward. So you tell me that inflation was low three months ago.

Okay. But three months ago, oil was at $60, it's now over $100. That's not going to mean that inflation is going to stay low tomorrow going forward, right? The next time you take a look at inflation, it's going to be up. Well, okay, then the Fed's going to adjust. So the narrative coming into the year was, hey, the Fed can cut rates and stuff, blah, blah, new guy coming in after power leaves, cuts rates, cuts rates, cuts rates, Trump said cut rates, cuts rates.

What if inflation goes up? And there's something called stagflation, which means you have an environment where inflation's up and growth is down, and that's not a good environment to be in, but that's kind of what could happen going forward. But the market, for now, dismisses that. Okay. I said recently, and Gary's mentioned many times, the market's so extended, it's due to pull back.

Okay, so we're pulling back. It's just one day today. Okay, let's see. How long does this pullback last for? Is it an aggressive, heavy selling? Heavy distribution, fancy schmancy word, which just means heavy selling, institutions are selling on volume or is it a very low contained pullback so far it's a low

contained pullback if we start seeing down big percentages on big volume in the major indices day and day out day and day out or heavy down days on heavy volume that that's considered distribution days but right now after a big move up you know the market's extended it's it's earn the right to pull back and consolidate some of this move and even with oil prices so high the market barely budget up next we've got a lot more to cover believe that's all the time we have hi I'm Gary Kalbaum hosted a nationally syndicated radio show Investors Edge we're not just handsome radio people we manage investors money for a living specializing in fee-based discretionary money management no big commissions just a fee on the assets that's

managed we also provide a full range of personalized services, including retirement planning, fixed income, and educational needs, all to assist you in achieving your financial goals. Understanding not all individuals have the same needs, we'll carefully evaluate your personal goals to determine a proper investment strategy. If your current approach to investing is not getting you to where you would like to be, call us to make an appointment for a complementary portfolio review. The number to call is 888-4-22-5-559. That's 8. 888 422-5-5-9.

That's 888-4-22-55-59. Investment advisory services offered through Coltbaum Capital Management. It's time to switch on the integrator units and get the brain cells working. You're listening to. Hey, this promise is to be fun. Investors Edge. The last bastion of quality programming. With Gary Coltbaum.

It doesn't get better than this. And welcome. Once again to Investor's Edge. In case you're just joining us or missed any part of the show, you can go to GaryK.com, rewind fast forward, listen at your convenience on any device. In case the timing was off, a few minutes ago, we had that figured out. There was a technical difficulty, so thank you for your patience. Going forward.

So we talked about the market. We talked about what's coming up this week, the fact that employment is a big focus this week on the economic front. and we spoke about the fact that really a lot of earnings are coming out. It's just that simple. So we've got earnings. We've got economic data, jobs.

Now, what matters? The Fed matters, what they're going to do next. And they're going to look at inflation. They're going to look at jobs. Earnings data, when it comes out, that matters because we're going to have winners and losers from earnings season. How do you determine what a stock is a winner or a loser during earning season? It's by looking at the reaction to the next.

news. And what you look for, basically, the easiest thing to look for, at least what I do, is I look for stocks that gap up on earnings. That's it. And gap up big. And when we're in that situation where the stock gaps up big on earnings, even if the earnings numbers are not the best, the reaction to the news in my world has more of a weighting than the actual news itself. Because lots of times I've seen stocks where they have crummy numbers for whatever reason in that quarter because of whatever they have to take a hit or something happened. But their guidance is super strong or whatever positive thing happens going forward. And guess what?

Stock has a huge gap up on earnings, which is a catalyst. And then it continues to run. And converse is also true. I've seen stocks gap down big on earnings and they continue to fall. Now, sometimes it's rare, but sometimes they have a huge gap. up and then they sell off hard or a big gap down and they rally right back up again depending on the overall market we're in and where we are in the cycle and so on and so forth there's examples of everything i mean just how the market works nothing's a hundred percent lock that i figured out

maybe there is something if there is please let me know i'd love to hear it but again this is all about stacking the odds of success in our favor the probability the future by definition is unknown same with the market same with life if you would have asked me in 2019 though i think the world is shutdown because of COVID. Even early when COVID first hit before the shutdowns and the lockdowns and all that is the whole world going to shut down. I'm like, yeah, no. I've seen this before, mad cow disease and this, that and the other thing, chicken, bird flu and whatever, all this other stuff. Yeah, the world's not shutting down. That's what I thought when COVID first hit. But guess what? Probabilities, folks. Risk reward. So again, when you look at markets, look at earnings as we make our way through earnings season,

I want to focus on a few things. First, the reaction to the news. And how do I organize all of this? It took me years. I used to do it by hand. And then I did it with technology. I keep a spreadsheet. Now I just automated the whole thing.

And I built a tool that I use and you're free to use it to. It's called market terminal.com. You take a free trial. If you like it, great. You don't like it. That's fine too. Big Wall Street firms, hedge funds, institutional investors, family, all the big top 1% of Wall Street, just about all of them, use terminals to win.

So I'm like, all right, well, there's ACE, it's called information asymmetry. It's called they have an edge with information. They're able to organize everything to one easy to use terminal. I'm like, I want a terminal. I don't want to pay $30,000 for a terminal, whatever these crazy numbers are. So it took me a few years, I've built my own. But it's been my life's work since, I think 2004 when I first had this idea. And at the time, it was way too expensive.

I didn't have the money at the time and so on and so forth. Finally, I was able to get it up and running. And now it's got everything to my liking built. So every day, I can see stocks gaping up. One click. I just read to you earlier today, the week ahead, there's a calendar built into the terminal where I can see everything coming up. All the stocks reporting earnings, what day they're reporting earnings, the estimates.

There's AI built into it. I can see breakouts in real time, setups in real time, setups in real time, gaps up, gaps down. all-time highs, 52-week highs, stocks moving on volume up and down, all the things I'm looking for. I can make my own watch lists. I can use a scanner, which is extremely powerful. A screener, we can run screens and filter out stocks, so on and so forth. And there's a lot more. It's a quote panel. You can see the market and see quotes going up and down, up and down, up and down. Any ETF, you can see all the holdings under markets. You can go to ETF and holdings.

and see Navidias 8% of the NASDAQ 100 or Apple's 7%. Whatever the not holdings are in the percent waiting on that ATF. Super powerful tool. Anyway, I digress. I'm passionate about it, so I light up like a Christmas tree because, again, my life's work kind of thing. I finally was able to get it. I still can't believe I have it or built it. But on market terminal, every day with earnings, first thing in the morning, before the open,

I have an extended hour section. I can see the action before and after the close every day. earnings, right now heavy earning season. I can see all the stocks that are up and down before the open by 3% or more. Up down. I can see stocks breaking up before the open, breaking down before the open. When the market opens, I can see him breaking out during the day. Breaking down is super powerful tools.

Gives me an edge. Gaps right at the open, five minutes in the open, two minutes of the open. I can click on gaps. I can see all the stocks gaping up. Right there, one click. before I have to scan and weigh and then now it's one click done so I'm looking for

first thing is the reaction to the news second thing I'm looking for is what are the actual numbers third thing consensus what did wall street expect and then the fourth thing guidance going forward that's really in a nutshell how I handle learning season and I keep track of the leaders and just because the stock went down the first time doesn't mean it has to it doesn't

It has to stay down. Like Goldman Sachs, for example, went down when it first reported earnings and then it rallied. And then what happened? It went right back up. Okay. So I'll take it off the laggard list and I'll put it on my leader list when it gets back above where it was before earnings. Or a stock that gaps up and kind of fades or rolls over, hey, I'll take it off the leaders list. I'm looking for leaders.

I want strength. An object in motion does what? Stays in motion. So again, as I go through earnings, I want to find the reaction to the earnings. I want to find the leaders. I want to find the ones that are able to outperform their peers. You know, the NBA finals are going on or the NHL finals or the Super Bowl, the playoffs in any season. Same thing with stocks.

It happens every quarter. I want to find the strongest of the strong. Why? Because most likely, not always. Again, nothing's 100% lock. But again, it's all about probabilities. most likely stock that gaps up on earnings on volume and continues to rally or continue to rally for a while. And some of the best stocks out there, these big growth stocks, the monster stocks are the ones that are able to gap up and rally, beat earnings, beat consensus, raise guidance and do it after several quarters in a row.

And they just run and run and run. Those are the ideal scenario. I mean, that's the best possible scenario. So I believe that's all the time we have for this segment. up next we have a lot more to cover thank you everybody for your patience while i deal with the technical difficulties here on my end but um we've got a lot more i'll be right back thank you back in investors edge he's got to be pleased with that the crowd is just on his feet here he's a Cinderella boy with Gary Colbomb comes highly recommended you're gonna feel better if you

talk to him and welcome once again to investors edge I'm Adam Sarhan in for Gary Kay in case you're just joining us or missed any part of the show you can go to GaryK.com rewind fast forward at your convenience 24-7 all for free on GaryKK.com all right so we spoke about the week ahead high level spoke about earnings 20% of the S&P

thereabouts are reporting this week we've got jobs in focus this week and that's important because the Fed cares about jobs and inflation okay we want to separate I want to separate winners from losers, leaders from laggards during earning season. I do this every quarter. You'll hear me say this again anytime I'm on during earning season.

Really look for those leaders. It's really important because the stocks that tend to be the monster stocks, the big leading stocks, the growth stocks are the ones that are really, really, really just the textbook stocks are the ones that tend to beat raise, raise, raise, and raise, you know, raise guidance. They beat consensus. They just smash numbers, gap up. and they do that several quarters in a row. Not months, not weeks, but quarters in a row. Great. Great action.

Textbook is what we look for. Not all of them. They're like that. In fact, most or not, but that's okay. That's what makes us fun. It makes it challenging. So a few other things to keep in mind as we move forward. Ernie season spoke to you about how I find them.

I've got market terminal. I use the gaps up there. You can see new highs there as well, all-time highs as well as 52-week highs, breakouts in real-time breakdowns. I read Gary's notes to you. I'm just overviewing everything with you in case you're just joining us. Transportation stocks an area to avoid. And we've got some heavy selling going on there.

So let's go through some of them to show you actually what's not working. What is working? So I'm going to use market terminal here. I can click on markets. And then this is under it. I've got industries and I've got ETF holdings. So I'm going to click on ETF holdings. And I'm going to type in IYT because the IYT is a transportation ETF.

The biggest stock holding one, from a waiting standpoint on this ETF is Uber, U-B-E-R. And Uber is down just a little bit today. They report this week. UNP, which is a Union Pacific, a railroad company, down. By the way, Uber is about 19% of the IYT.

UNP is about 15%. UPS got clobbered today on earnings, I believe, No, sorry, one second. We're earnings last week. Ernie for a few days ago. It fell on earnings. That's another good example. Rallyed for a few days.

Reversed on Friday and then just got crushed today down 10.5%. Just today. And that's about 8.6% of the IYT. FedEx. FDX is a ticker there. That's down big today as well. And that's about 4.75% of the transportation, IYT. E-T-F-D-I-T.

United Airlines, UAL, down as well, down big. Let's see here, 90 and a quarter, 90. So yeah, you're about 4.69% of the IYT. That's United Airlines, UAL is a ticker. ODFL's Old Dominion Freight, Truck and Company. Gary mentioned that to be careful and avoid those areas. that ODFL is 4.5%, so 4.55% of the IYT, and that's also down big, and it's been down for the last few days. Delta Airline, DAL, another transportation stock in airline, that's 4.46% of the IYT.

NSC, Norfolk Southern Railroad Company, let's see, transportation, raw materials, yep, that's down. And again, same thing. that's about 4.3% of the IYT. CSX, another railroad company, down a little bit, no big deal. Let's see, Love, which is Southwest Airlines, LUV, down a little bit, 3%, and so on and so forth. So those are the big ones as far as a weighting is concerned, EXPD, another logistics company or a transportation stock, down today, down big gap down. That's about 3% of the IYT, the CHRW, CHRW, CHRB, CH Robinson worldwide, freight and logistics company,

down big today weighing on the transports. XPO, another freight transportation stock, logistics type stock, down big. J-B-H-T, J-B-Hunt, I've seen their trucks around. Down big. Well, not big, just down today. Not big. And then American Airlines, A-A-L, down a little bit. And J-O-B-Y, that's nothing really major.

Lyft, L-Y-F-T. And now we're down to each one of these holdings. about a percent or so of the index. So as you can see, a lot of these transportation stocks, when you look at the actual holdings, it gives you a much better picture of why that ETF is, or that index or whatever it is that you're looking at, is down so much.

Same thing with the QQQQ. In market terminal, I'm going to go to markets, and then ETF holdings, I'm going to type in QQQQ, Navidia, NVDA is 8.88% of the NASDAQ 100 right now, the QQQ. 8.8%. Apple is 7.56%. Microsoft is 7%. 7.02. Amazon's 5.2 and Tesla is 3.8. Those five stocks, 2, 4, 5 stocks, make up approximately 30% of the index. If you add meta and Google, another 3.75% each thereabouts. You're probably at 30% thereabouts.

It's like 5, 6 stocks make up like 30, 40% of the index. That's massive. If you look at the S&P 500, SPY, you can type that in there. Again, MarketTermal.com, I'm going to market and then under that ETF holdings. Navidia, NVDA, 7.59% of the S&P 500. That's big. But if you look at stocks throughout history, it's normal to see that. Apple is 6.46% of the S&P 500 right now. Microsoft is 6%.

Right now we're at 20% of the index. with those three stocks of the S&P 500, Navidia, Apple, Microsoft. If you had Amazon and Google, and Facebook, you're about 30, or even Tesla, you're over 30% with those few stocks of the S&P 500. So market of stocks, yes it is, but also understanding what these holdings are

and the weighting gives a lot of clarity. A tremendous amount of clarity. Because when you see something like, three stocks or four stocks or even five stocks make up, I don't know, the vast majority of the index, then all of a sudden I've got clarity on saying, oh, maybe it isn't. There's 500 stocks in the S&P, four of them or five of that, maybe, let's say, five of them make up 30% of the S&P. Well, hold on a second here. That's a complete different conversation than saying, oh, yeah, the market's down.

Most of every stock is down, so on and so forth. Yeah. You can sometimes you see the Dow down so much. And the NASDAQ barely moves. Are the NASDAQ's up? Why? Because when you look at the Dow, I'll type in the DIA so you can look at the Dow. Let's take a look. Waiting. Goldman Sachs is 11.6% of the Dow. Caterpillar, 7.58. Right there is about 20%. Microsoft's is about 6%. American Express 4.7. Home Depot, 4.48. Visa 4. 4.3. United Health 4.3. JPMorgan, 4.1. McDonald's about 3.85. IBM, 3.77. Apple's 3.7. I'm surprised. I thought that would be bigger. Amazon's about 3%. Johnson and Johnson, about 2.5%. Navidia's

only 2.3% of the Dow. Wow, I didn't know that. Hey, you learned something new every day. Navidia is a big piece of the NASDAG, big piece of the S&P, smaller piece in the Dow. Chevron, about 2%. Procter & Gamble, 1.75% Walmart's about 1.4, and the rest of them are, Mark is about 1.38, and the rest of them are about 1% or lower.

For the mega caps. The large caps, you've got Sherylum Williams, Amgen, Travelers, all about 4% or 3%. So again, knowing where you are in the index, how big that stock is,

the weighting on it, the impact on it, on any given day, all that's available, right down on market terminal, I want to know what's happening and I want to go under the hood. Another really helpful thing that I look at are movers. So you look at the movers, stocks that are moving up or down more than 3%. There's 144 stocks that are moving up, 275 that are moving down.

All right, that tells me there's more movers down than up. Powerful information. And by the way, that update's live in real time. You got 140, you got 150, you got 200. So 2 to 1, 3 to 1, small. but subtle sign of strength and or weakness. And by the way, I can see all the stuff before the open as well. Again, the market is speaking.

My job is to listen. And I'm looking for signals, not just the noise. Why? Because it's a noisy environment. The market's very noisy, folks. There's a lot of noise out there. A lot of noise. Up next, we have a lot more to cover.

I want to thank you very much for being here. This is the one in moment, Investor's Edge. You're listening to. What are we waiting for? Well, what are you waiting for? One, two, ready, go. Action! And welcome once again to Investor's Edge.

In case you're just joining us from just any part of the show, you can go to GaryK.com, rewind, fast forward, listen at your convenience on any device, all for free. It's GaryK.com. All right. So we spoke about a week ahead, spoke about the jobs, spoke about the Fed, spoke about what I look at during earning season, spoke about leaders laggards during earnings, spoke about how to listen when the market is speaking. A lot happening in the market. Our jobs to really just filter out the noise and focus on the signals, which is the things that actually matter. And a lot of things, I'll give you the last few minutes here, just some structure, some high-level structure.

So a lot of things that people focus on really just don't matter. Nothing's wrong with it. There's no malicious intent. There's nothing wrong. It's just not there's just noise. It's not actually things that move the needle. So what I've learned to do is do my best to look at the forest and not just the trees. And what does that mean?

The forest is the overall trend. Let me zoom out. Let me look at the big picture. Let me look at what the actual big trend. is you look at yearly charts, quarterly charts, monthly charts, all those are available in market terminate you can do any way you want. But really I want to align myself and be in harmony. That's my play on the word harmony. Be in harmony with the market. Longer at a market, out in the bare market or short in a bare market, however you want to adjust it, everyone can do their own thing.

But again, be in harmony with the market. And the way that I do that is by looking at the forest. Then might zoom in a little bit, daily charts, weekly charts, look at the trees. Intra-day charts are the leaves and the trees. And most people, even daily charts to some extent, any given day in the market doesn't really move the needle in a big way over a long enough period of time. Buffett taught us thinking decades. So any given day, sure, it's a matter that day.

And if you get stopped out, a different story. But in a lot bigger picture, I was talking about the overall trend, how it impacts the forest, any given day, it's rare that that really is just a huge outlier. But for the most part, most days are just become blips on the radar. Again, I'm speaking in generalities here. So what matters? The longer term trend, right? But also you want to make sure that you're aligned in.

You have risk money management principles. You respect risk, so on and so forth. But most people, what they're doing is they're getting caught up in the minutiae, the stuff, the noise. They're looking at the leaves, intraday action or the daily action. Oh, this happened, this, that caught up in the news, caught up in the headlines, caught up with what their friend thinks or whatever the emotional decisions that impact every human because we're emotional creatures and they miss the forest they missed the trees they miss the

forest they're looking at the leaf on the trees oh i found this extremely helpful zoom out step back look at the big picture and ask myself am i aligned with what's actually happening in the market it's a mirror of what's inside of me it's the market's the biggest ever been in history. The economy is the biggest ever been in history. It's the best time in the world to be alive. We have access to AI. We've access to the internet and go anywhere in the world in a flight or two flights and you're around the world. Make a phone call in two seconds. You can FaceTime anybody or Zoom with anybody anywhere in the world. I mean, just tremendous opportunity. Tremendous. And what's happening? If I'm sitting here fighting the market,

there's always reasons to be bearish. There's always reason to be bullish. But what's actually happening? So I want to get in harmony with the market, focusing on structure. and asking myself, A, do I have the results I want? Yes, great. If not, am I going to keep doing the same things expecting different results? That's what most people do. Or am I going to change? Do something different.

Do something better. Take accountability for my actions, so on and so forth. I'm the type of person humbled enough by the market. If you trade stocks for long enough or any really publicly traded market for long enough, you get a certain amount of humility. And you realize, not only does any given date not matter in the market, any individual person zooming out really doesn't move the needle in the market. It's like standing in front of an ocean trying to block a wave. That's kind of my analogy towards it.

It's like, okay, you can try. But most things just don't matter. Okay, great. So I want to have structure. I can't in any way, shape, or form impact other people's actions or whatever. It's not even part of my thought process. all I want to do is, again, looking at performance, studying excellence, is be prepared. Ben Franklin taught us hundreds of years ago, right?

America's turning 250 this summer. Happy birthday. Happy early birthday. We're making plans for the fourth now. We'll be in New York that weekend. Seeing my sisters in Jersey and some other fun stuff. We have planned. But guess what?

I'm taking the kids to see the fireworks and all that fun stuff. Ben Franklin said if you fail, if you fail to prepare, you're prepared. you're preparing the fail. I'll say it again. If you fail to prepare, that means if you don't prepare, you're preparing to fail. Thinking about a kid

going into studying for a test. What do do? They cram the night before. High school, college, whatever it is, right? Even work. Oh, let me just do it the last day before the deadline.

Where were you all week? Where were you all quarter? Where were you all semester? Where were you all? You know, do it early. Same thing with the market. I found it extremely helpful to write things down.

Have a plan. before the market even starts. Why? Because now all of a sudden I've got my thoughts on paper and I can check them objectively. Here's what I thought would happen. Here are the stocks that I'm focused on because I can't watch every single stock in the market.

It's not possible. Here's my focus. Like I have a universe list and then I have a focus list. I have a top stocks list. Okay, or some way of making sense of the market. Here's what I'm focusing on. And then actual buy. Watch list, buy lists,

ready list, whatever word you want to use, anything you want to call it. And then place the orders. Do I take the trades? I said, I'm going to take? Did I not take them? Why? Why not? How do I improve? Constant improvement. Then I can look back last week, hey, what did I think was going to happen and what actually happened? Disconnect. And then fix it. Really, that's simple. And then strive for excellence and intellectual honesty. Be honest with myself. Actually, on market terminal is a cool thing that we built called AI prediction, which shows you what AI thinks will happen. There's no way, shape, or form.

I'm going to trade off of that right to second because it's not back tested and all that stuff. But it's a, hey, this is what AI thinks might happen. Okay, great. Another tool to toolbox. Have structure, folks. Think of it, Michael Jordan. Any professional person who's going to do better, the person who just wings it or the person who takes a time and prepares and has structure.

And that keeps me intellectual honest. Otherwise, I'll forget. So it's really important as you keep yourself intellectual honest. Okay, great. I've learned to do that. I write it down. I can look at what I wrote down. And the best part is I can even print out my trades and have two columns. I have a winning folder and a losing folder. These trades won. These trades lost. Okay, that's fine. There's going to be losing trades. We're all human. We're

all going to have losing trades. We all make mistakes. Mistakes are your teacher. Those losing trades, I learn from them. I place a trade. I write down why I have, I wanted this trade. Why I didn't? Same thing with the winners and losers, and I learn. I believe that's all the time that we have. Thank you very much for being here. This is the one and only Investor Day. This has been Investors Edge with Gary Cult Bomb on BizTalk. To listen to past episodes or to get in contact with Gary, go to GaryK.com.

That's GaryK.com.