10 Things You Need to Know – Ultimate Trump Trade Edition

July 18, 2025
/ By Michael Comeau

What a week! We just saw:

Record highs in SPY and QQQ
Strong earnings from the likes of JP Morgan (JPM), Bank of America (BAC), and Netflix (NFLX)
President Trump continue to harass Fed Chair Jerome Powell
Federal Reserve governor Christopher Waller call for a July rate cut… which might be his official application for the Fed Chair job
A shocking rally in what bears call “low quality” stocks

And way, way more!

So let's dig into the 10 things you need to know about markets right now, starting with…

1. The Ultimate Trump Trade Just Won't Quit

We've talked a lot about the monster moves in stocks that benefit from financial market volatility, including:

Robinhood (HOOD)
Coinbase (COIN)
Interactive Brokers (IBKR)
Charles Schwab (SCHW)
Webull (BULL)

These stocks went WILD this week thanks to higher stock and crypto currency prices plus strong earnings from Interactive Brokers and Charles Schwab:

Webull led the way with a 22% gain.

So what are these stocks telling us?

The market expects:

Higher stock and crypto prices
Strong volumes thanks to Trump-driven news flow.

Keep these names on your radar.

2. Sentiment Is Bullish, But Not in a Crazy Way

The latest AAII Sentiment Survey shows that 39.3% of investors are bullish.

This is the third straight week of above-average bullish readings.

Before this streak, the last such bullish reading was way back on January 30.

And of course, we are well off the 19.1% lows from earlier this year.

It goes to show – nothing brightens the mood like rising stock prices.

So do these numbers indicate rampant bullishness?

No. It's common for bullish readings to go over 50% in strong markets.

But do you know what does indicate rampant bullishness?

This:

3. “Low Quality” Stocks Provide High-Quality Returns

We screened for stocks with these attributes:

Under $100 million in revenues
Market cap over $2.5 billion

We came up with 28 names:

27 of 28 were up this week with an average return of 13.3%.

The bears will tell you that surges in low-quality stocks can be a sign of extreme froth.

But remember, they're only low quality if you're not in them!

But, our friend David Prince of T3 Live's Inner Circle had something interesting to say on Thursday evening:

4. Listen to David Prince Now

Here's what he told us:

Late stage bull markets are awesome and DANGEROUS… this is when 5 dollar stocks go to 20 in days. It’s also why trying to call the top is a fool's errand. Often the most money is made right here and now. Just remember when the music stops to have a chair waiting.

— The Inner Circle Trading Group DP David Prince (@epictrades1) July 17, 2025

So what's David saying?

That this could be a dangerous time.

But's also a lucrative one – as you can see by the eye-popping moves in speculative stocks like Sharplink Gaming (SBET), Joby Aviation (JOBY), and Rigetti Computing (RGTI).

These companies have questionable fundamentals, but sexy stories.

And right, traders are buying stories.

5. Ethereum Screamed

This week, the US Congress passed the “Genius Bill,” which regulates Stablecoins.

This legislation is aimed at making Stablecoins safer for mainstream use.

This gave Ethereum a big turbo-booster since it's used in many Stablecoins.

And Ethereum rose over 19% this week while Bitcoin slid off its peak:

6. This Week Is BIG

We got a whole lot going on this coming week, including:

Fed Chair Powell speaking at a conference in Washington DC
The ECB rate decision
Earnings from Tesla (TSLA), Alphabet (GOOGL), IBM (IBM), Intel (INTC), and other key names
2 US bond auctions

And MORE!

This is a big improvement from this week's snoozefest (outside of President Trump's antics, of course)

So let's talk about a funny thing we see with Tesla:

7. Tesla Keeps Getting Worse and Better

Tesla (TSLA) stock is up 31% over the past year.

Yet its earnings estimates have dropped HUGE:

What's holding the stock up?

4 Words: “In Elon We Trust.”

So here's a possible scenario for earnings on Wednesday:

Tesla delivers a tiny earnings beat, and the stock pops 10%.

So it's a good time to look at earnings season overall:

8. Earnings Season Is Going Better Than You Think

We've yapped endlessly about how low expectations have been for Q2 earnings season.

So how's it going so far?

Very well, thank you very much.

FactSet tells us that so far:

83% of S&P 500 companies have beaten earnings estimates
83% have beaten revenue estimates

So once again, the market braced for an awful earnings season and it's turning out pretty well.

On June 30, Q2 earnings were estimated to grow by 4.9%.

That number's since creeped up to 5.6% as better-than-expected reports keep rolling in.

9. Fed Rate Cuts? Outlook Not So Good

This week, FOMC Board Member Christopher Waller made waves by calling for a rate cut at the July 28-29 meeting.

The market doesn't see that happening.

The CME's Fedwatch tool shows a mere 4.7% probability of a July rate cut.

And September is not a done deal.

The market is pricing in a 57.8% chance of a rate cut by September.

Oh well.

Surprises are fun!

10. Trading Is Not About Lambos and Miami Mansions

This week, we asked Sami Abusaad and JR Romero a simple question: what do you love about trading?Here's what they told us:

Have a wonderful weekend, friends!

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