As the financial media got all excited about the alleged news that Iran is ready to end the war (Hint: they aren’t) and the algorithms exploited month and quarter end along with a short squeeze to create a rally, the reality is we’ve seen this movie before.
More on that later.
Let us take a gander at Q1 2026 via the S&P 500 to see just how we settled the nonsense today (all charts via TradingView.com):
While that big fat green candle looks like relief and a miracle, it didn’t manage to breech the 200 day moving average and the downward trend remains intact until it does so.
On a longer term basis, just how risky is this market? Let’s look at the 1 year version of the S&P 500:
The markets have several “at risk” checkpoints but none bigger than the 5600-5800 trading range. While that seems too far away to consider, markets are one headline, one political event, or one more big private credit operation barfing up a hairball away from disaster.
This brings into question what I was referring to from a historical point of view, which sadly, the old dude writing this has been around for several of these in the past. This great observation from Bespoke via X should be a wake up call:
Oh, uh, September 2008, good times. June of 2012 wasn’t too much fun either until we got the Bernanke QE not QE QE to bail everything out again.
What did the S&P 500 chart look like on September 30, 2008? Let’s take a peek:
Good times after that.
Buckle up and pray for BOGO Tacos if you’re a bull.