All language subtitles for S&P 500 Outlook for the Rest of 2026

Hey everyone, and thanks for jumping

back into the equity verse.

Today, we're going to talk about the S&P

500 dubious speculation. If you guys

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on ITC premium at endthecryptoverse.com.

Let's go ahead and jump in. So, back in

February, we put out a video that said

that stocks would likely drop 10% soon,

right? This is back in February. And

again, it's not like it's you have to

have a crystal ball to try to figure out

when these corrections might occur. What

you look for is when you start to see

the momentum fade, right? And and you're

struggling to put in new highs, then you

start to argue, "Okay, maybe it's time

for one of those corrections." And in

this case, after such a massive move up,

we called for a 10% drop. This was back

in February. And in fact, when that

video was put out, yeah, I think it was

the week of the top, right? It was like

late January, early February.

Now,

after that, the stock market dropped

about 10%. Now, we said after that,

there are some definite cases where we

just right go right back up to all-time

highs as long as we see no

feedback loop in the labor market, and

layoffs have remained low, initial

claims remain low. Again, the market

loves to climb the wall of worry until

there is a sufficient reason not to do

so, and we haven't had that sufficient

reason just yet. Markets love to look

for optimism, and if you look at one way

to visualize that, if you look at a map

of the states where the unemployment

rate is rising, yeah, it looks like a

lot, but guess what prior recessions

looked like. It was the whole country,

right? It was the whole country in prior

recessions. And now, you can see it's

trending up in a lot of places, but

there's still

pockets

of optimism. Now, if you look at the the

a chart and you look at the number of

states where the unemployment rate is

rising over the last 6 months, it has

been elevated for a while. Um

but you can see it hasn't really broken

into these higher higher regions where

it's essentially the entire country. So,

I wanted to talk a little bit about my

framework for the rest of this year,

okay? And

the 10% drop happened and one of the

reasons why I was looking for that 10%

drop specifically is based on a fractal

that I still think will break, even

though I arguably it hasn't really

broken yet, and that's the S&P divided

by M2, okay? So, what I did back then is

I was I was just simply looking at at

that pattern and saying, "Look,

this fractal continues to play out going

all the way back to 1996 and when you

overlay it, right? When you overlay the

pattern, I just I just simply looked at

it and I was like, "All right, well, you

know,

this correction back in 2023

lined up with the one we had in 1997.

That was about a 10% drop. And then we

had the 20% drop. And then it looked

like, "All right, let's have a about a

10% drop." And it was. Now, what I'm

thinking is this, okay? First of all, I

want to be clear. I don't think this

fractal is going to completely play out.

There's a good chance it breaks to the

upside, in fact, okay? It could break to

the downside, but there's also a really,

really good chance it'll just break to

the upside until all the bears are

decimated and then you get a drop.

But

what I could see happening

is we are, you know, we are getting

close to some levels where you if that

S&P M2 correlation in time plays out,

you might start to expect a small

correction in the summer. Um sometime in

the June-July time frame. A small

correction, not yet a bigger one.

So,

one of the things that we've seen with

the stock market is that a lot of times

it'll have a correction early in the

year and then it'll have a correction

later in the year in midterm years.

Okay? So, let's go through this.

In 2022, you can see there was a big

correction in the early part of the year

and then you had another major low that

formed in the later part of the year.

This one was a little bit cleaner of

just a bear market, but again, a big

drop and then a rally and then another

drop going into the second half of the

year. In 2018, you had a very big drop

at the beginning of the year. Trump was

president. This was 2018, right? And

then another big drop at the end of the

year.

So, midterm years like to do that where

you have a drop, you know, multiple

drops throughout the year. You can see

in late 2014, there was also a drop. If

you look at the S&P M2 fractal, the next

larger drop likely won't start until the

third quarter of the year. So, what I

could see happening is this. I can see a

smaller drop happening in the summer

and then a rebound and then a larger

drop happening as we get later on into

Q3 going into early Q4. And then after

that, you might see a rebound once

again.

But that's how I think this is going to

play out. And the issue for Bitcoin, of

course, is that it's had all this time

to theoretically go to new all-time

highs if it was going to, if the super

cycle guys were right, but despite the

fact that the S&P keeps putting in new

all-time highs, Bitcoin keeps lagging.

The problem is that we're getting closer

and closer and closer to a correction by

the S&P 500, right? This is now how many

weeks in a row? I mean, you know, seven,

eight weeks in a row where the S&P has

just gone up only and at some point,

you're going to get at least a small

drop and when that happens, it'll likely

hit Bitcoin because Bitcoin's already

been lagging. And so then when the lower

risk stuff gets hit, that's when Bitcoin

will often get hit even harder. Think

about the people that bought altcoins in

2023, 2024, and 2025. They basically

just watched it bleed to Bitcoin. When

Bitcoin would go up, it would lift the

altcoin market with it, but the minute

Bitcoin started dropping, altcoins would

get annihilated. Now we're further down

the risk curve. Now Bitcoin goes up when

the stock market does, but because

it's in a bear market, whenever the

stock market then drops, Bitcoin then

gets hit harder. So it it doesn't really

participate in the rallies the same, but

then when the stock market drops, it

goes even lower. That's how it played

out in 2018, you know? The stock market

had two drops.

And you know, the second drop wasn't

that much lower than the first drop, but

Bitcoin went a lot lower on the second

drop by the S&P. So the same thing

happened by the way in 2022 as well. So

I think what's likely going to happen

again for the S&P, again just

spitballing dubious speculation. I'm not

like trading these ideas. I've I've I've

actually still own all my index funds

international and domestic. More bullish

on international at this point. But

until you start to see a distributive

top, it's hard to fade, right? It's hard

to fade. So what I'm looking for is a

small drop kind of in the June-July time

frame. Probably June if I had to guess.

And then a rebound and then maybe a

larger drop starting in September. Maybe

August, but September seems to be

an okay bet as well. If you look at

2018, you can see it started

in September. The S&P M2 factor would

actually correspond to September.

And you know, if that is the case, we

know that Bitcoin, well we don't know,

but I think Bitcoin might bottom in

October. And so if the stock market were

to top in September, then maybe Bitcoin

would bottom out pretty quickly just

because it would react to whatever the

stock market's reacting to a lot quicker

because it's just further up the risk

curve. It would get hit a lot quicker

than the stock market and potentially

Bitcoin then finds that low

sometime in the fourth quarter. Maybe as

early as as October. So those are my

thoughts on on the stock market.

And you know, if you if you want to look

at other things like energy and

manufacturing, I do spend a lot of time

talking about that over in ITC premium.

So I would encourage you guys to go

check that out. There's a lot of

mechanics and how these things work and

if you're getting bored of the markets

because you only care about crypto and

crypto's not doing that well, there's

been a lot of money to be made in other

parts of the markets. You just have to

be knowing you just have to know where

to look and you have to be willing to

not marry an asset class and not just

marry the crypto asset class and only

care about crypto, but to recognize that

you can actually have a portfolio that

grows with time most years by just

having a diversified portfolio. That

doesn't mean you can't ever take strong

directional bets on a couple of names,

right? Like I've done that before, but

there's also nothing wrong with having

some of your portfolio

diversified so that it can weather the

storms. If you're all in on crypto going

into a midterm year, it tends to not

work out that great. Whereas if you have

some exposure to metals and then stocks,

it then tends to actually give you much

better results. So those are my views.

Thank you guys for tuning in. Make sure

you subscribe, give the video a thumbs

up, check out the recent reports we put

out at benjamincowen.com,

and I will see you next time. Bye.