The Monday Morning Playbook: Week of April 7, 2025

Good morning,

Before you can become a good investor, you have to learn how to not be a bad investor.

My entire career has been with financial advisors. First, as one. Then, as a technical strategist for them.

So, I’m going to assume that you all know what “not” to do and the destructive impact of panic selling.

I’m also going to assume you all are aware of how well buying when the market is crashing has historically paid off.

There are a million places to get the Vanguard-y, client hand-holding, “everything always works out” long-term charts.

That’s all well and good. And truth be told, I nibbled a little bit myself late on Friday.

But that’s never been my game or what I do here.

If you pay your hard-earned money to hear my perspective and what the charts say, I’m going to give you what I think, good or bad, every single time.

And right now that message is:

There is absolutely nothing in the charts or technicals that says this is over or we should be buying from a tactical perspective.

There’s obviously a lot to cover but today, we’ll walk through the market bottom checklist and review why the low likely isn’t in and what it could look like when it is a buying opportunity.

We’ll also review:

• Signs of capitulation

• Fixed income markets

• Commodities

• Currencies

• A crash performance recap

• and more

Finally, tomorrow’s Overtime report will be an open-ended recap of Monday and anything relevant I’m seeing or couldn’t include in today’s report. Today is light on ETFs and individual stocks but nearly everything closed at the lows Friday, so there is little to add outside of the major message (we’re still in this). Hopefully, I’ll have something positive to report after today’s close…