ETF Movers: Tariffs Get Whacked + Gold, Stocks Jump + Portfolio Safety is a MUST!

Emergency tariffs are struck down by the Supreme Court. What does it mean? More tariffs on the way: a 10% global tariff. Are you kidding me? Let's take a look at what ETF markets are telling us and take a look at the action, the price action of these markets.

It's crazy. So far since the start of the year, four areas have been up and one area has been blah, and that's the Bitcoin market, which is down 22% since the beginning of the year, but we got a real nice jump. This is your big picture view by the way. SPY tracking S&P 500 is now up over 1%. BND is also in positive territory. That's US bonds up over 1.3%. And then of course global real estate is doing well. RE and SDCI commodities.

We're going to take a look at gold miners, gold, silver miners, all that in a second. This real week really was all about emergency tariffs being struck down. And which areas got the biggest pop? Well, let's take a look. Semiconductors up big. These are some of the ETF tickers to put on your radar: Saxo, TSXU, SMH, gold miners also did dynamite along with silver miners, precious metals, communication services. Those were all very good areas. As I indicated earlier, the only area that's been lagging the whole year has been Bitcoin, which is in a slump.

I actually wrote an article, the link is in the description section below to Financial Advisor Magazine, asking the question, are ETFs to blame for the crypto crash? Well, I think you know the answer if you've been watching this channel, but again, you can digest it at your own speed and it's provided that link below. You can read it and digest it at your own leisure. Now, in terms of S&P 500 industry groups, we've got 11 industry sectors. We got seven up, four down. And you look at the four that are down. These are modest losses.

These are not what you would call bare market losses. And the winners, you got four sectors that have up double digits led by energy, materials, industrials. Another ticker symbol that you should put on your radar, and I didn't get a chance to chart it, but ticker symbol ERX, which is leveraged energy stocks. That's been a great trade this year. So, these are the leaders and the lagards. And as you can see, the leaders are outnumbering the lagards.

I asked you the question on our community poll. Does US national debt pushing almost $40 trillion worry you? Never mind tariffs. Let's talk about the big league stuff, right? The stuff that really matters like runaway national debt, runaway national spending. And it appears that you are worried about this, 77% of you. And I asked on our Twitter feed or X feed, what's the peak craziness in precious metal prices and other finite assets to the upside? What is it? And the answer to that question, to that equation, to that puzzle is this. What's the peak craziness in runaway federal spending and runaway federal debt?

We've got debt that now exceeds the total GDP of the nation. We've got interest costs that are exploding. We've got mandatory spending locked in on autopilot with no shortages or stoppages in sight. And nobody in DC cares about this. This is a chart of federal debt held by the public from 1900 to 2056. And you could see it's at record levels and going up. And you know, you see back in the '40s, we are at wartime level. Well, we've exceeded wartime levels. Usually, you see when there's a conflict of global scale like a war, that's when debt really explodes.

Well, we haven't even been in that sort of environment and debt has been running away. And again this is very supportive of prices for gold, silver, finite assets higher even to some degree Bitcoin. Bitcoin the problem right now in the crypto market and the reason I feel why it's not participating in this particular moment is because of the fact that there's too much leverage with all these Bitcoin treasury companies. And once that gets cleaned out, once these Bitcoin treasury companies like Strategy and these others that have been using debt to finance their Bitcoin purchases, once these folks get vomited out of the Bitcoin econom, get vomited out.

We got to clean out the house, get rid of them, and then once they're cleaned out, once they've been liquidated, once they've gone bankrupt and the Bitcoin market is cleaned out of these folks and it's been they've been removed from the Bitcoin ecosystem, I think then, you know, the Bitcoin market is going to drop. Obviously, it's going to be scary. Prices are going to go lower than what they are right now. But then after all of that, then the Bitcoin market can begin to heal itself. And I think when those lower prices come, I think that's going to be a great setup.

I think it's still too early though to get into Bitcoin. But again, finite assets, that's the theme. That's the trend. That's the place to be. Some of these areas tied to finite assets like gold miners, GBug, it's an actively managed ETF as well as silver miners. SLVR have been great performers this year. You see they got a bounce this past several weeks. But if we look at this on a larger scale since the beginning of the year, the trend is still up for both of these areas.

Another area that's been performing well, gold miners. Let's see. Oh, yeah. Here we go. This is leverage version of gold miners. Nugget and Jug. Jay-Nug, of course, is the small cap gold miners. That one's up, both of these up over 40% since the start of the year. Those two areas also performing very strongly. Now, let's talk about something that is of concern, and this is safety. Who's going to protect you?

And you know the role of government is not to protect your wealth. And it's very important that you understand this because we live in dangerous times and your wealth is at risk. And why do I say the government is not out to protect your wealth? Well, because a government needs the wealth of its citizens to sustain itself. So the government's main function then is to make laws. It's to maintain order. It's to collect taxes. It's never been the government's role or even goal to protect your finances.

And these consumer agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and others, they are all fluff. They are there for like a scarecrow, right? Just for design. And the safety of your wealth is not their priority, nor has it ever been. And this is just an example over the past 25 years of all of the regulatory meltdowns by Wall Street's COP, the SEC. And there's this is just a small sample size from Enron to FTX to Bernard Mayoff. I mean, the scale and the scope of misses is just astounding.

Meanwhile, and I haven't even listed it here, you've got present-day scandals like this congressional insider trading, which is another grotesque example of institutional decay that's infected and paralyzed the highest levels of government. So, my favorite economist Mil Friedman pointed this out quite astutely. He said, "Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent need is to protect the consumer from the government." And he was right on.

And so the bottom line is that all individuals, each of us is responsible for protecting our own wealth. It's not the government's job. It's not your financial advisor's job. It's your job. You're the sole person responsible for protecting your own wealth. And if you're going to rely on others, if you're going to rely on the government or protection agencies to guard your net worth, you're going to be greatly disappointed.

And this is one of the reasons that I teach you what are the foundations of an architecturally sound investment portfolio. You have your core, your non-core, and your safety bucket. Your safety bucket is designed to protect you. And when you invest with this sort of framework, this is what keeps you out of trouble. This is what keeps you from having sleepless nights. This is what keeps you safe. It's what keeps you liquid. And it also, especially during retirement, prevents you from running out of money when you start to spend all that money that you've accumulated over a lifetime.

And so, this is part of the public service that we provide. I provide at ETF guide. We've got a free online course all about safety, teaching you how to implement safety inside your investment portfolio, making sure you're not just using the right size, right? Because everyone's safety cushion. The size is going to vary from investor to investor. It's going to depend not just on your level of risk tolerance and your profile, but also it depends on obviously your age, right?

We don't invest the same when we're 75 years old as we do when we're 20, right? And so making sure that your investment portfolio reflects the need for safety, right, at an older age, especially in retirement because you have less time than a 20-year-old to recover from a major event. So again, I want to point this out because there's a lot of crazy things happening in government today and will continue to happen. Let's talk about the billionaire index from Bloomberg.

I like to point this out because this is where the big money's at. And the big money has made its fortune and continues to grow those fortunes in the technology sector. You can see six of the top 10 global billionaires made their fortune in technology sector. And as I've said before and I will continue to repeat that's not going to change. As society becomes more digitalized, as society becomes more plugged in and as society becomes more connected, this trend will continue and there are many more fortunes yet to be made.

But from an investment perspective, I think this favors the investors that emphasize technology inside their portfolios. Whether that's AI focused ETFs, whether that's blockchain focused ETFs, blockchain investments, digital currencies to some extent. We've got also cloud computing software, cyber security. There's so many aspects of this. Of course, semiconductors. So, this is the place where I think the emphasis should be when it comes to investors investment portfolio.

We've got upcoming episodes. ETF Battles this week is going to definitely drop. Last week we dropped First Look ETF. So, our February episode is live. Be sure to check that out. And we also do have a new Mel's in motion episode coming up with Sprats Asset Management talking all about the uranium market. Uranium is the necessary fuel for nuclear power. And if you're not paying attention, some of the biggest technology giants on this planet from Microsoft to Amazon and others are setting up shop for their data centers.

And guess where they're putting them? They're putting them right next to or near nuclear power plants. And they're doing that deliberately. So, be sure to watch that particular upcoming episode of Metals in Motion because uranium is the focus. That's the fuel that nuclear power needs. And so, uranium is an interesting market and we're going to talk about a couple ETFs to play that market. So, you will not want to miss it. So, that does it for today's episode. I'm Ronda Ley with ETF Guide. Hit me up in the comment section below. And great seeing you again and we'll see you this upcoming week right here on ETF Guide TV.