What's going on moon gang, i appreciate you taking the time to join me in my humble abode and we are here to talk about two very important things: numero uno. I want to talk about why the market has been so rocky to kick off april and what's causing all of that volatility and number two, i want to talk about how the apes can actually win the fight for market transparency. In fairness, i should probably say: maybe the next proper step so make sure you stay tuned for that now before we get into all of it. Obviously, if you enjoy this type of content, don't forget to hit that like button and join up with the moon gang by hitting the subscribe button with all that being said, let's get at it.

So if you take a bit of a topical level, look at what happened in the old stock market today it was a bit of a mixed bag. Some of our equities were in the red. Some of our indices were in the green, the overall market tracked by spy. The s p 500 was up by about half a percent, but that doesn't really tell the full story: there's a lot of volatility and awkward movement.

So, for the past two and a half days, we were trading down and then around 1 p.m. Today, on thursday april 7th we saw a spike in price and we're going to be getting into all of it, but to really go. We need to rewind two days on april 5th, feds brainard seeds, balance sheet reduction soon and at a rapid pace. What does this mean? It means that the fed is being very hawkish.

Well, what in the world does that mean? It means that the fed the people who decide our monetary policy have been like duh inflation's, bad. The economy is looking good. It's about time. We fix it, they have various tools at their disposal.

One is raising the interest rates and what that's? What we saw last month, it was their first interest rate hike ever since late 2018. They raised it by a quarter of one percent 0.25. Another thing is referred to as qt quantitative tightening. Throughout the rona era, we had quantitative easing qe and that's where they put about just under nine trillion into the economy through bonds and mortgage-backed securities and helping out the repo market.

Well now, you kind of have to undo that that's referred to as a balance sheet normalization, a balance sheet runoff those are the tools at their disposal, interest rate hikes and fixing the balance sheet. Well, two days ago april 5th you had brainerd you had daily. You had bullard, who were all on tv and doing interviews were sounding very, very hawkish, and obviously the market reacted, and we see that right here. People were like whoa, okay and the reason they react like that is because, when you're hawkish a side effect is basically money becomes less cheap, as in it's harder for businesses to flourish, which means the old stock market goes down, so it's a side effect of them.

Fighting inflation: well, they did this in anticipation of what came out on the 6th, which is right here april 6.. We got the minutes from the march meeting, which is more of like a full detail of what was and wasn't discussed and what people did or didn't say. Well, obviously, it wasn't that bad and you could see that they were kind of prepping us for it, but at two it was bullish and it was bearish. Then it was bullish and it seems like the market digested it.

They're, like okay, we get it you're gon na be hawkish, and things seem to calm down a little bit and in fact those minutes of what was discussed, but not necessarily in the interviews that happened right on march 16th. Well, i have those details and they're pretty important. The federal reserve officials are planning on reducing the central bank's trillions of dollars in bond holdings by about 95 bill a month, and there is a chance that they actually start this in may they plan to allow some of the government-backed holdings to expire. You could just let them like kind of fall off your balance sheet.

They just mature off of it, which currently stands at 9 trillion. A limit of 60 billion in treasuries and 35 billion in mortgage-backed securities would be allowed to roll off officials generally agreed in the minute notes. I love how they quoted it. They generally agreed there's no way they were like screaming at each other, like a middle school girl.

Fight totally 100 did not happen. So this is all the information that came out on the sixth and then today, people were like okay, it's still kind of hawkish. What's going on, are we going to find support? Should the market be at these levels? What's going on well right, around midday, a fed member who's been notoriously hawkish. Bullard came out, says, interest rate policy is behind the curve, but it's making progress.

So he basically said something we all knew and then he said i don't think it's that bad and then he had a very, very funny comment at the end. So i need to show you that if you take account of forward guidance, we don't look so bad. Not all hope is lost. This is the basic gist of the story, you're still behind the curve, but not as much as it looks like and in fact people are saying i don't even know if there's really going to be a recession.

So is that right or wrong - i don't know, but it calmed things down, but this is the comedic part. The difference between today and the 1970s is central. Banks have a lot more credibility in the 70s. No one believed the fed would do anything about inflation.

Where have i heard that before it was kind of a chaotic area, you really needed volcker to come in, he slayed the inflation dragon and established credibility after that people believed that central bank would bring inflation under control. Well, i think some people still have a couple questions on their mind currently so anyway, this is really what's been going on: the movement in the market, the kind of rocky start to april, and really just the volatility we're seeing it's all because of the fed. It's all because of monetary policy, it's all because of what is going to be done about inflation. I personally believe remember not a financial advisor.

Nothing i say should ever be really construed as a buy, sell or hold signal, but i think now the hawkishness of the next i guess month is going to be priced in which i think gives us a little bit of breathing room to the upside. In the general stock market, so that's what i have for you for a stock wrap up. But i really want to talk about the next steps that the overall retail traders, the overall ape community, can take in the fight for market transparency and fairness. Now, on the highest level, i really really believe the way we win.

This is through the proper channels, it's through being respectful to a certain degree, with our voice still being heard, it's being technically accurate and it's really going through those political channels and knowing who on capitol hill is on our side. That's how laws and regulations are made. You got to be in with those guys and say the right things and do the right things to enact true change, and i think it's one of those things where you go step by step, brick by brick, fight by fight. I don't think it's one thing: we're like hey: we want the market to be transparent and fair.

Do it now. I think we have to be very, very specific, and do it one thing at a time, and i think one of the things that currently has momentum behind it that i think we can actually pull off is fighting payment for order flow pfoff. And for those of you who don't know, that is it's the really the business practice of brokerages selling your order flow to market makers such as citadel such as virtu and all this trading ends up really being executed off exchange. This increases the fragility of the market.

This hampers price discovery, it costs retail trading and also like etfs pension funds in totality billions of dollars a year. We could go on and on about it, but it is not a good situation. Remember 90 of retail trades are executed off exchange. They have successfully fragmented the entire retail trading public and there's a whole host of issues that are prompted by it, but they don't care and when i say they, i refer to market makers.

The duopoly because they're making billions and billions and billions of dollars well shout out to dave lauer the team over at terminal right here. There is now a letter that you can sign, and this is all about payment for order flow, and it's trying to get the attention of gary gensler shout out to we the investors as i'm filming this there's just under 35 000. I have a feeling after this there's going to be quite a bit more, but this tells you everything you need to know and the concept of it is to say, hey, retail, we're ready. We know what we're talking about and gary gensler has been doing a lot of talking the talk, but not much of walking the walk and there's a question of maybe he just doesn't have enough political firepower.

This is very much a political chess match and, as thousands and thousands of people start to show support for this, it might give him the exact thing that he needs to pull this off. If that's, what he's looking for so once again, just to reiterate, i think this is the next proper step that the apes and the retail trading public really takes to win the fight in market transparency. Obviously, these are just my own thoughts, but i will post this link in the description below and you could also find it on twitter. I appreciate your time i'll catch you in the next video you.