Okay folks, so we are officially and sadly into a new Black Swan event: You've got a full-on Russian invasion of Ukraine, airstrikes all over the country, Russian troops raiding from all different sides. You've got some expected side taking with China refusing to call the Russian attack on Ukraine an invasion and instead blaming the Us and the West as a whole. And meanwhile, what we are hearing from the West is saying they'll fight back with more sanctions. It seems as though the Russians would have already expected heightened sanctions.

Their desire for Ukraine was higher than their desire not to have sanctions unless they went through the invasion. Anyways, my non-geopolitical analyst view makes me think that they tried testing the waters for the last couple of decades, saw that retaliations would be very, very weak and more symbolic than actual retaliations. mostly because Western Powers have no interest in being entrenched in another foreign war. And so now in that, Putin has found his opening to go in with very, very little consequences Outside of sanctions, who knows how far this is going to go and whether or not Ukraine is just the start of his ambitions or the end of them.

But even retaliation in the form of further sanctions is going to have a hugely negative impact on not just the Russians, but also Westerners and the United States. The only sanctions that are really left to really hurt the Russians and the Russian economy are also ones that are going to dramatically backfire for the countries that are replacing those sanctions. Which means there's no easy solution to this problem if Western powers do nothing. Obviously, Ukraine falls, which, from a pedestrian standpoint, that seems to be the most likely outcome here.

and if the West tries to hit them with really, really strong sanctions, it still seems like the Russians would just do it anyways because they've already factored in that likelihood. But in that situation, inflationary pressures on a global scale go parabolic and they are already going very, very fast. Now, I don't want to be tone deaf and act like the only problem here is that Putin didn't stop to think about our damn portfolios before he invaded Ukraine. This is certainly a horrific event and we cannot minimize that.

Our prayers go out to folks over there and we hope for a peaceful or at least more peaceful resolution. Instability in one part of the world is a threat to stability in every other part of the world. But of course this is a finance channel and we have to talk about how this is impacting the markets as well as some short-term trading ideas. On this and before we get into it, the only thing that I ask in return is that you hit that ravishing like button.

And also don't forget to subscribe either. So last night, when it came out that the Russians had launched a full-scale invasion into Ukraine, U.s futures dropped dramatically. It was one of the worst drops of the year. European Index prices also dropped dramatically.

The Dax: the Ftse, Cac, and others down just under four percent. Russia's stock market index is down a casual 33 percent, and the Russian currency is down to a record low. This is what the Moex Russia Index looks like today. It was nothing short of a devastation.

But interestingly enough, the massive, massive sell-off in global equities actually ended up benefiting the U.s today. The extended sell-off that we saw in the futures market and part of the pre-market got bought up incredibly quickly to the point where he had the Nasdaq up three plus percent today and growth stocks went parabolic. Even Arc finished the day up. Seven Point Seven Nine percent.

Growth Tech went crazy today. Whether you're talking pltr charge point. Evie, Go Tesla, Crowdstrike Mora. Lovely Mora.

Upstart was up about 17, Growth stocks were up huge. Meanwhile, the S P 500 is doing pretty decent at plus 1.5 percent, and the Dow is up 0.28 You would never think that massive war broke out today. We do know that history suggests that most geopolitical issues on a global scale that don't drag the Us into a boots on the ground arrangement usually causes dips to get bought up very, very quickly. But why so aggressively? And why is the Dow underperforming by such a huge margin whereas Tech stocks are going parabolic? I mean, Commodities and Energy specifically jumped huge today.

Doesn't that create a much higher likelihood of more out-of-control inflation, which causes more pressure on Jerome Powell to hike interest rates at a faster pace? Well, you'd think that, and that was the original knee-jerk reaction. The Nasdaq hit Bear Market territory this morning and bounced right off it. But it seems like a big part of the bullishness today can be summed up by this Goldman Sachs analyst Note: They said we do not expect geopolitical risk to stop the Fomc from hiking steadily by 25 points at its upcoming meetings. Though we do think that the geopolitical uncertainty further lowers the odds of a 50 basis point hike in March.

I repeat, we do think that the geopolitical uncertainty further lowers the odds of a 50 basis point hike in March. That one line there explains very, very well why Tech and especially Growth Tech went parabolic today. If that 50 basis point hike isn't coming in March, that means that many stocks that have sold off 80 to 90 percent expecting it have some immediate upside. which of course is why you saw the ones that got beat down the most today rally up the most today.

It seems like a small difference, but if you combine all the factors together, it creates this opportunity for lots of capital to flow in on a short-term basis to stocks that are at huge record lows but also aren't going to get bludgeoned as much. In terms of further interest rate hikes, the new found and slight upside allows short-term capital to rotate into the most beat down sectors at a faster pace and then cycle out again. When the macro situation changes, today's market took the perspective that I probably wouldn't have guessed that global uncertainty, economic setbacks, and an already very sensitive financial market are going to cause the Fed to pause and say, wait, do we really want to raise rates at the same pace that we were considering before this whole situation broke out. Which is actually sort of freaky because you'd expect inflationary problems to get more out of hand, not less out of hand because of this geopolitical issue if the Fed responds to more out of control inflation with less aggressive measures to tighten away that inflation.

That's obviously going to be a massive, massive problem down the road, but it just simply kicks it down further so that the market could have a short-term sigh of relief. But that's not the only reason that equities rose today. There's also the side that U.s equities are seen as a safe haven. Investors fleeing from markets like Russia that went down dramatically today, the rest of Asia or even Europe found today a safe haven in U.s equities and increasingly in the U.s currency itself.

You saw this crisis cause a strong uptick in the value of the dollar compared to major world currencies like the Pound, the Euro obviously, the Russian Ruble, as well as the Ukrainian Horizonia all that capital that's flowing out of emerging markets needs to find a home somewhere and much of which the big money that's in Russia would rather have that invested in foreign markets than in domestic markets which are going to get hit with massive massive economic sanctions. Most of the attacks on Russia are going to be just sanction wise economic, so most of that wealth is like, well, we don't want to stay in Russia and have to deal with this for the next five, ten plus years, let's go and rotate into a safe haven, which most investors on the international level see that as the Us. If Europe is in the process of getting invaded and a lot of the supply chains of Europe are under a huge threat because of this invasion, what are your other choices to invest in? Are you going to invest in China, a regime that quite frankly hates capitalism and isn't really pro-investment Or are you going to invest in the United States, which obviously stands on its own and has historically outperformed every single other country when emerging markets are under threat that money gets sold off and it flows into the safer markets. But there's also the argument for hey, well, the market does like to pre-factor in risk, right? The markets over the last few weeks were factoring in the likelihood that Putin invades or does a full-on invasion of Ukraine.

Markets like to over factor in risk and they like to oversell off on it. But now that we're actually here, at the worst case scenario, at least in terms of that factoring in phase now they're like, okay, well, it's already happened. It's an opportunity to bounce. We've over factored in the worst case scenario, and now it's time to buy back in.

First, the market sold off fear and volatility around Putin invading, but now that Putin has invaded, the next step of escalation is likely Western Boots on the ground, which the market likely sees as a much, much lower likelihood. But at the same time, I'm extremely surprised that the market hasn't been freaking out more about this inflationary scenario. As sanctions roll in commodities are skyrocketing, it seems like even the escalating sanctions are leaving room to continue buying Russian energy, which is probably a big reason why the market's not super worried about it. But you let this escalate a little bit more and that's the next thing to go.

Markets are in a sigh of relief right now because they think the Feds get to be less aggressive on interest rate hikes. They think that the likelihood of Putin escalating this any further besides, a complete annexation of Ukraine is low, and they think that the sanctions that the West is going to hit Russia with are going to be very, very lukewarm and are going to completely avoid the energy segments. But in a situation where Putin and the Russians decide to escalate this even further, you'd have markets taking a deep deep dive because they're not pricing in that risk anymore. And even outside of that, if the situation does de-escalate and things slow down, it's still difficult for me to see a sustainable reversal in anything before inflation starts going down steadily.

And I don't know folks, I'm seeing a lot of analysts suddenly switching to short-term bullishness, but I just don't see the Putin part of the market sell-off being done. It seems like there's a really sad, but high likelihood that recent movement into Ukraine turns into a second Cold War type of situation, one that continues to cause present supply chain issues to worsen and also causes periods of escalation that spooks markets. Take my non-geopolitical analyst view with a grain of salt, but if you read the transcripts of Putin's speeches, it seems clear his goal is to rebuild the Soviet Union and its global influence in some way, shape or form, and Ukraine is the first major step in that. I don't know that two or three months from now, we're not going to continue to be talking about new ambitions coming from his regime, and those things will continue to be clouds over the market's head.

That said, if you are looking for short-term trading opportunities based on the current market environment, this week in the Zip Trader Eu morning briefings, we have been focusing a lot more on energy stocks, specifically energy stocks that have very, very high beta and tend to do very, very well during the reduction of overall global supply and energy which have been providing some good opportunities. Some of the big ones to know are Impp, which is Imperial Petroleum. We've been briefing on this one since Tuesday morning. It's gone from around 70 cents to highs at 192 this morning in a few short days as this escalation has happened.

Some of the other big ones to keep on your radar though are Indo Indonesia Energy Corp, Cei, Camber Energy Usws. These are stocks that I'd consider escalation stocks stocks that are going to be extremely volatile over the upcoming weeks, but on days where you see escalation, on mornings where you see escalation, they're going to go very, very parabolic. Certainly stocks for short-term traders. Don't get me wrong, these aren't conviction plans, but if sanctions do end up scaling up into the energy segment or something indicates that they might, I'd expect these to continue to go up dramatically.

There is a likelihood that the invasion is the most escalation we see, but at the same time the ramifications are likely going to be on a rolling scale and are going to provide a lot of opportunities for energy to continue to go up. The other one, from an escalation perspective, is Uvxy. It tracks the vix, fear and volatility have been on an uptrend. If this escalates further, we'd expect Uvxy to see more popping.

We'll keep you updated on our favorite picks based on the current market condition. Every single morning that the market is open and the Zip trader you briefings, you can join us with that link below. We'll put a little coupon code in there as well if you are interested. But outside of short-term trading, you know that the biggest opportunity that I see in market conditions where there's so much fear is simply buying stocks that you have a lot of belief in in any market condition.

Ones that are discounted dramatically because of the current fear that has likely nothing to do with them. If a catalyst does not impact the long-term business model of your company yet the stock is down 90 in some cases, then you know, hey, that's a good deal. It all comes down to the type of stocks that you see opportunity in and your own research and conviction. but make sure that you're keeping your eyes open.

We'll continue to try to present you with opportunities on both a short-term basis and a long-term basis, but still at the end of the day, you want to make sure that you're using these times to plan out how you're going to grow your account for the long run. Plan out how you're going to get that extra alpha. Anyways, folks that caps off today's video. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us below or join us on Zip Trader Circle if you'd like to join us in Ziptraderu, I'll put the link below and that caps off today's video.

Have a good one and I'll see you in the next video.