Tell me the 5 most important things I’d learn if I spent an hour with investor Rob Isbitts, listening to him talk about what he thinks retail DIY investors should know.

If you spent an hour chatting with Rob Isbitts—the veteran investment strategist, founder of ETF Yourself, and creator of the ROAR Score (Return Opportunity And Risk), you’d get a masterclass in behavioral discipline and modern portfolio defense.

Isbitts spent nearly three decades as a fiduciary advisor and fund manager before pivoting to educating DIY retail investors. Here is one hour of Rob distilled into the 5 most important takeaways:

1. Investing is for “Staying Wealthy Slowly,” Not Getting Rich Quick

Wall Street loves to sell the dream of explosive wealth, but Isbitts flips the script. He proudly calls himself a “defense-first” investor. To him, investing isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme; it’s a tool to ensure you stay solvent and retain the purchasing power of the money you’ve already earned. He emphasizes prioritizing risk management first: once risk is tightly controlled, you can focus on maximizing profits from what is left on the table.

2. The S&P 500 is “Lying to You” (Beware Index Concentration)

Many DIY investors treat an S&P 500 index fund as a safe, highly diversified “set-it-and-forget-it” core. Isbitts strongly warns against this blind trust in today’s market. Because the index is market-cap weighted, a tiny handful of massive tech stocks heavily drive its movement. If you just buy the index, you aren’t as diversified as you think—you are highly exposed to a concentrated tech bubble.

3. “Buy-and-Hold” is a Myth—Markets are Highly Cyclical

Isbitts is a technician at heart with over 40 years of charting experience. He frequently points back to history—like the dot-com crash of 2000—to remind investors that the S&P 500 took roughly 12 years just to break even after that bubble burst.

The Cost of Complacency: Losing 12 years to zero nominal returns (and negative real returns due to inflation) can completely destroy a retirement plan. You have to be prepared to adapt to shifting market cycles rather than assuming the market will always just go up.

4. Treat ETFs as a “Tactical Toolbox,” Not Just Passive Baskets

Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) are Isbitts’ weapon of choice, but he wants retail investors to view them as a flexible, precision toolbox. Instead of just buying broad market funds, he advocates for using specific ETFs tactically to slice and dice market inefficiencies, target high-quality dividend yields via his YARP approach, or establish downside hedges.

5. Perfection is Elegant: The Power of a Simple 2-ETF Core

While modern markets are full of algorithmic trading, complex options, and noise, Isbitts is a huge proponent of simplifying your core portfolio. He frequently illustrates this with his basic strategy using just two vehicles:

• The Offense: A broad stock fund (like SPY).

• The Anchor: Treasury bills (like BIL).

Instead of building a dizzying portfolio of 30 different funds, he uses a proprietary model called the ROAR Score (Reward Opportunity Risk) to adjust the dial between those two main pillars based on technical market conditions. If the market is flashing danger, the dial turns toward cash; if it’s clear skies, it turns toward equities.

In short, a single hour with Rob Isbitts would teach you to ignore Wall Street’s daily noise, look underneath the hood of your index funds, and treat defense as the most important play in your book.

Don’t miss another word!

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Below you’ll find the video from yesterday’s live session. If you are enjoying these sessions and the videos, please consider joining our paid BASIC subscribers. These sessions and corresponding videos will be available for free for the next few weeks. Our sessions are interactive so we invite you to join us and see for yourself. We will be taking a break for three weeks starting mid-July. When we come back, all sessions and recordings will revert to paid-only.

Right now you can join for the monthly rate of $15, or sign up for the entire year for $150. This price will remain in place until mid-August so we encourage you to take advantage of this limited offer.

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Join us again live next week, June 23, at 4 PM EST. Register HERE

We’ve made some upgrades to the Weekly ROAR. Let us know what you think.

THE ETFYourself.com LINEUP

What you get for $150 a year or $15 a month

(note: both prices going up soon):

NEW: Fresh Charts Portfolio (“almost daily”)

(starting Friday 6/30)

• Rob’s stock trading account, live money (we’ll provide a 24/7 link to it)

• Posted Monday-Thursday, and some Fridays

• I’ll initially build a 20-stock portfolio

• Once it reaches 20, I’ll buy a new stock each day, and sell one

• All decisions are made based on the same charting method I’ve developed over decades. So the explanations will be brief. This is about being actionable and methodical. The way investing needs to be in these modern markets.

Tuesdays: Weekly ROAR

• The 10 Most Important Charts To Me, Right Now. With very quick explanations.

• The ROAR-Board. To piggyback on those charts, using my proprietary metric.

• Model Portfolio review (performance and holdings), using ROAR.PiTrade.com

Tuesdays: Live Show

3-4 Tuesdays per month at 4pm ET, video recording out by next day

• Briefly review Weekly ROAR: The 10 charts, ROAR-Board, and model portfolios.

• Recap of what I’m doing in my trading accounts. That doesn’t mean I’m asking you to mimic what I do. This is impersonal advice, as we all know. It just provides a starting point for your questions. And you’ll always know where I stand, on any subject you ask about.

• Review of Fresh Charts Portfolio activity for the previous week.

• This will take maybe 10-15 minutes a week. The rest is answering live questions.

That’s the program

That’s what we’ve determined works for our growing audience, and for us. We always appreciate feedback and suggestions!

Now, on to this week’s issue…

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Please join us as we discuss:

THE ROAR-BOARD: A Timely Market Update
Rob’s unique analysis of global markets, through the eyes of his creation, the ROAR Score

Rob will cover multiple markets, using ETFs, stocks and trend analysis, to update subscribers on his very latest thinking. Inflation, War, New Fed Chair, Stock Market Casino...where’s this all leading?

At a time when AI is starting to change our lives, who better than a guy whose initials are RAI (Robert Alan Isbitts) to help you separate market fiction and salesmanship from unbiased probability analysis, using the proprietary ROAR Score, and his 40+ years of charting stocks and funds!

Register HERE and join us tomorrow, Tuesday, June 16 at 4 PM EST.

These sessions and corresponding videos will be availabe for free for the next few weeks. We will be taking a break for three weeks starting mid-July. When we come back, all sessions and recordings will revert to paid-only.

Right now you can join for the monthly rate of $15, or sign up for the entire year for $150. This price will remain in place until mid-August so we encourage you to take advantage of this limited offer.

Subscribe now

🚨 The Big Picture: Market Reality Checks

Is the bull market telling you the whole truth? Dig into the macro shifts keeping smart investors awake at night.

• The S&P 500 Is Lying To You, The Market Crashed A While Ago, And I Have The Receipts – Why the headline index numbers don’t match reality.

• A Top-Heavy S&P 500 Approaching Its ‘Terminal’ State Should Keep Baby-Boomer and Gen X Investors Up at Night – The structural risk threatening retirement portfolios.

• ‘Sticky CPI’ Is a Silent Portfolio Killer. How You Can Protect Yourself Right Now – Practical defense strategies against persistent inflation.

• Leaving Las Vegas: How to Beat the House as the Stock Market Turns Into a Casino – Shifting your mindset from gambling to calculated investing.

⚡ ETF Strategies & Sector Deep Dives

Actionable setups, traps to avoid, and where long-term value is actually hiding.

• When Investors Finally Get Sick of AI Stocks, This Medical Devices ETF Could Be a Long-Term Winner – The ultimate rotation play for the post-AI hype cycle.

• 2 Turnaround Defense Stocks Hiding in the ITA ETF Tell a Very Clear Story: The Iran War May Not Be Over – Geopolitical realities reflecting in the charts.

• This 2-ETF Portfolio Protects You From a Stock Market Storm and Teaches You the Most Important Investing Lesson Ever – Simplicity meets ultimate downside protection.

🛑 Danger Zones: Avoid These Traps

• Iran War Apathy Has Left Rare Earth Stocks in Critical Condition. Stay Far Away from the REMX ETF’s Dangerous Trap

• Consumer Staples Stocks Are No Longer a Recession-Proof Haven Amid High Inflation. Just Look at the PBJ ETF

🔍 Small-Caps, Splits & Speculation

Separating the hype from the cold, hard cash flow.

• Hunting for the Next Nvidia Is No Easy Feat. Small-Cap Tech Stocks Promise Riches but Really Are Just Rags – Why chasing micro-cap tech miracles usually ends in tears.

• The Dow’s Split Personality: Why Some Winners Soar While Others Drag Down the Dow – Inside the index’s internal tug-of-war.

• The SpaceX IPO: Why I Think Next Week, Not Friday, Is the Real Event – Timing the most anticipated market event of the season.

• Forget the Fed: Why the Knicks Winning the NBA Finals Could Be the Biggest Downside Catalyst for the S&P 500 – A wild, historical correlation you have to read to believe.

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🚀 Level Up Your Strategy

Reading is the first step; execution is the second.

• Join the Community: Meet our ROAR.PiTrade members every Tuesday at 4 PM EST ) to discuss these charts live with Rob Isbitts. Register HERE. These sessions are available to the public for free only for a few more weeks.

• Track Risk: Monitor macro market conditions dynamically. Check out the ROAR score on Pitrade.com.

  Save 20% on ROAR.PiTrade

• Get the Charts: Dig into the technicals yourself. Start a 30-Day Free Trial of BarChart Premier.

• Deep Research: Expand your toolkit. Get $30 off Seeking Alpha Premium.

We’ve Entered the Danger Zone of the Market Cycle. Are You a Type 1 or Type 2 Investor?

We have officially arrived at that point in the market cycle where investors face a critical fork in the road. Either we are staring at yet another “obligatory” bounce to cheer the buy-the-dip crowd, or we are about to confront something we haven’t seen in 18 years: a true, grueling bear market.

I’m not talking about the quick 20% drops of 2018, 2020, 2022, or 2025 that rebounded before most people could even process what happened. I’m talking about the kind of market reality that can erase years of hard-earned wealth and take a decade or longer to recover.

After 30 years of managing money professionally, I’ve observed that investors handle this environment in one of two ways. One group is playing a highly dangerous game of statistical roulette without even realizing it. The other is actively building a “portfolio machine” designed to survive any outcome.

In this exclusive deep-dive for ETFYourself.com subscribers, I am pulling back the curtain on:

• The Hidden Trap of “Redundant Portfolios”: Why owning 8 of the largest ETFs in the world might give you the illusion of diversification while actually leaving you 100% exposed to a singular, massive risk.

• The 6 Critical Questions you must answer right now to build an airtight “moat” around your serious wealth.

• My Personal ROAR 10 ETF Model Portfolio: A live look at the exact 10 permanent ETFs I use with my own real money, how I set “guardrails” to manage extreme market volatility, and exactly how I handle cash residuals.

Editor’s Note: If there was ever a time to stress-test your strategy, it’s right now. Risk levels are historically high, driven by unprecedented structural shifts in how the market functions. Even if you only sign up for a single month to read this specific piece, copy my homework, and audit your own portfolio against these 6 rules—it could save you years of market recovery time.

Subscribe below to unlock the full article, see the live portfolio allocations, and access the step-by-step blueprint to protect your wealth.

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Below you’ll find the video from yesterday’s live session. If you are enjoying these sessions and the videos, please consider joining our paid BASIC subscribers. These sessions and corresponding videos will be availabe for free for the next few weeks. We will be taking a break for three weeks starting mid-July. When we come back, all sessions and recordings will revert to paid-only.

Right now you can join for the monthly rate of $15, or sign up for the entire year for $150. This price will remain in place until mid-August so we encourage you to take advantage of this limited offer.

Subscribe now

Interested in our full package?

PREMIUM SUBSCRIBERS at ROAR.PiTrade.com ($800 a year or $50/month) get:

• Everything that BASIC subscribers get, plus...

• ROAR.PiTrade.com entire site, live and interactive coaching, AND full access to my writing on ETFYourself. You get full access to all of my portfolios as well as the ability to copy-trade.

  ROAR.PiTrade

Join us again live next week, June 16, at 4 PM EST. Register HERE

I’ll get right into this week’s blog below. But since we are not “ad-driven,” the only way I can alert you to resources I think could help our audience is to tell you here. No one is paying me to say this. It just needs to be said. And I’m not one to keep my opinions to myself, especially when it comes to things like this.

These markets are even more confusing than usual. Probably more so than ever. I write here at ETFYourself.com, and I cover topics in our live sessions that I think DIY investors will learn from. But no matter what you think of my efforts here, no one has a monopoly on good ideas, great content, and actionable data.

How to get the milk…and the cow…for free

That’s why I want to take a moment and highlight Barchart.com. Again, no one there asked me to do this. I just think it might be the most useful, wide-ranging DIY investor tool set that is not a household name. I experienced it from the outside as a longtime subscriber. And since early last year, from the inside, now writing many times a week there.

In fact, if you follow my author page there, you might just get the closest thing to what I’d call “The Daily ROAR.” That’s not the official name. But I write about 10 articles a week there. And during weeks like this and next, when they’ve asked me to fill in to write their popular Chart Of The Day column, you’ll have about 15 articles from me in a week. That’s enough to pick and choose what you like. Oh, did I mention, the articles on Barchart.com are free.

But this is not entirely about my work there. I’m one of many columnists, though I am more ETF-focused than most. I’m a chartist to the core, and my core charting system is the one I’ve used from Barchart.com for the majority of their 31-year history. And I’m still discovering more about it every day.

I like Seeking Alpha, Bloomberg, WSJ, Barrons, Trendspider, CNBC, and many other investing resources. I’ve tried just about everything the past 30+ years. I think there’s a picture of me as a baby, sprawled out in the den with the stock market section sitting next to me. Guessing my parents put me up to that!

But Barchart.com has really moved to the top of my “go to” list. That certainly has a lot to do with the great work being done there by the editorial team that I work with. And it’s so easy to use. The time I save clicking around to find the information I need is truly game-changing.

If you are skeptical, click here to go to the site map. If you don’t get lost in that deep vault of investing analytical aids, you’re not trying hard enough. Fortunately, the site is very intuitive, as my longtime subscribers know. Since I demonstrate my own process using that site nearly every week.

As I told Elizabeth Volk, Senior Editorial Director and creator of the new Barchart Exclusive on this same Substack platform. Seeing how that part of a tenured company whose roots go back to providing agricultural data, I guess I’ll just summarize this by quoting a pair of baseball greats, Phil Rizzuto and Harry Carey: HOLY COW!

I suggest you check it out. Let me know what you think.

Because I’ve already taken feedback to my editors to help enhance the system. So, why not use that for our collective benefit.

And if you are up for learning how to really understand your own investment performance, join me at 4PM ET today for a live session on that…plus a few bonus “perks”.

Now, to that 1 thing and those 5 charts. Because this market is becoming a “dream sequence” for tactical investors like me. And I want to share what I’m thinking right now. Not only for the immediate term, but looking out to what happens next. Because the point of attack, so to speak is right now.

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Please join us tomorrow, Tuesday, June 9 at 4 PM EST as we go live for our weekly ROAR.PiTrade show.

We’ll give a brief update on the market as well as our approach to navigating it, including the application of our proprietary ROAR scores. We’ll also try to answer all of your investment questions. This is a great platform to discuss any observations you’d like to share as we build a community of like-minded investors with the primary goal to “AVOID BIG LOSS”.

Please register HERE if you haven’t done so. You will get a confirmation email upon registration.

All sessions are recorded and posted on our YouTube channel within 24 hours.

Looking for deeper analysis? Consider becoming a paid member and receive all of our best thinking for $15/month or $150/year.

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🚨 Market Alerts & Core Strategy

• The VOO ETF Just Hit $1 Trillion in AUM. That’s a Terrifying Warning on ‘Terminal’ Index Concentration and the Risk of a $100 Million Loss.

• TMV: The S&P 500 Crash Hedge No One’s Talking About, Until Now

• Invest Like Warren Buffett and Buy Wide-Moat Stocks Via This ETF Ahead of a Major Market Shift

💡 Tech & Semiconductor Plays

• Investors Are Fleeing to South Korean and Taiwan ETFs for Diversification. If You Do That, You’re Still Just Chasing AI Chip Stocks.

• The SOXX ETF Recently Hit 10,000, but There’s a Semiconductor Split Lurking Under the Hood

• We Now Know for Sure That the Software Apocalypse Selloff Was Overdone. Buy Cloud and Software Stocks Now to Profit.

🔍 Myth-Busting & Sector Warnings

• These New 0DTE Covered Call ETFs Are Not Magic Money Trees. In Fact, You’re Better Off Just Buying SPY.

• How Overzealous Option Traders Are Making 3X Leveraged ETFs Look Like Saviors

• Cracks Are Forming in Private Credit. The BIZD ETF Is Waving a Red Flag About Where This Market Is Going Next.

• Even If Eli Lilly Stock Continues to Shine, Stay Away from This Pharmaceutical ETF

🏗️ Sector Opportunities

• Lower Rates Are Helping Home Construction Stocks in the ITB ETF. I Think It’s Time to Move In.

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🚀 Level Up Your Strategy

Reading is the first step; execution is the second.

• Join the Community: Meet our ROAR.PiTrade members every Tuesday at 4 PM EST ) to discuss these charts live with Rob Isbitts. Register HERE.

  Save 20% on ROAR.PiTrade

• Track Risk: Monitor macro market conditions dynamically. Check out the ROAR score on Pitrade.com.

• Get the Charts: Dig into the technicals yourself. Start a 30-Day Free Trial of BarChart Premier.

• Deep Research: Expand your toolkit. Get $30 off Seeking Alpha Premium.

And while I no longer offer direct/personalized investment counsel as I did for decades, I do think I can help. So I’ll do so with a quick suggestion.

THIS LINK can make you a better investor.

WHAT? It takes you to the 1-page model portfolio summary page we just created.

WHY? ROAR 10 ETF is my most popular model, and that’s no surprise since my expertise is risk management. And as you can see in the table, also pictured below, it has averaged nearly 10% a year since the back tested start on 1/1/2020, and its worst 12-month decline was under 5%. Compare those figures elsewhere, hard to match.

However, we have 6 other models and they range from 2-ETFs to 30 stock holdings. And, from aggressive to conservative. Review them, get familiar with them, and focus on the 1, 2 or 3 that appeal to you as an investor.

HOW? If you are signed up at ROAR.PiTrade.com, you can explore these and check back any day to see what the current model is, and follow it along. Then trade it as you see fit. Or, you can sign up to have it copy traded for free at PiTrade.com. You’ll see that link on the page where you see the models summary table.

WHEN? Given recent market conditions, and how I’ve been guiding subscribers through it with straightforward, no-hype perspective. perhaps there’s never been a better time.

That’s also why this Tuesday’s live session will focused on what you see in this table. To help you better understand how it all works, and how you can apply it yourself.

That is how THIS LINK can make you a better investor.

Alpha: How much you make above and beyond what the market gives you.

Beta: How much volatility you endure on the way to trying to profit.

Capture Ratio: How well you do in the good times versus how well you manage risk.

That’s it. That’s the ABCs of investing. And between the way the market is behaving, and the way investors are ignoring the defensive side of the portfolio, the more I am convinced that there’s a lot of overconfidence around us.

I say “us” because if you read ETFYourself.com, you have already decided you are serious about managing risk. Before I cover a handful of charts I think are most worthy of your attention this week, feast your eyes on this data table.

You can also see it by clicking HERE.

Different investors will gravitate to different lines in that table. Each row is one of the model portfolios I run. Three of them are available to copy trade for free at PiTrade.com. They are all available to our premium subscribers to view 24/7. And many are able to be viewed by anyone, subscriber or not.

You’ve heard about some of these. Here’s the performance of these automated models, which we continue to update daily at ROAR.PiTrade.com. The Alpha column shows that every one of these has added value versus its benchmark. You can also see the returns, and the range of best/worst 12 month period.

There is no live session today, Tuesday 6/2. However, at our next one, Tuesday 6/9 at 4PM ET, I will be teaching one of the most important aspects of investing very few DIY investors ever learn: how to assess your own performance. And how to express in Wall Street terms what you are really looking for. Outcomes, not narratives.

Now to those five key charts I’m watching, and the latest positions in the ROAR 10 ETF model portfolio.

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Every Sunday, we recap my work elsewhere, primarily at Barchart and Seeking Alpha. Occasionally, an article should be highlighted and pushed to the front of the line. This article is more personal, introspective, and in our view, most relevant to those seeking to learn from my experience and current priorities as an investor.

This first one, published this past Friday at Barchart.com and syndicated to Yahoo Finance, MSN and elsewhere, is one such article, so I’m alerting my audience to it.

🌟 Featured Spotlight

2 Weeks in May Rekindled My Love for Stock Picking. Here’s My Daily Trading Routine (May 29)

My latest Barchart piece reveals how a recent, unexpected stint as their "Chart of the Day" guy broke through my macro fog and completely rekindled my passion for stock picking. Coming next: how I'm integrating this daily ritual to radically upgrade your ETFYourself.com service.

Subscribe to ETFYourself

📊 Market Trends & Macro Risks

🌐 The Big Picture

• S&P 500: 20% Moves Up And Down During Next 6-12 Months Very Likely. Here’s Why (May 26)

• The S&P 500’s Price Is Getting Better Every Week, But This Indicator Keeps Getting Worse. Why 52% Could Be The Market’s Tragic Number. (May 29)

• The Ghosts of 1987 Appear: Kevin Warsh, Alan Greenspan, and How to Invest Safely Under a New Fed Chair (May 27)

🚀 Tech & IPO Hype

• The SpaceX IPO Is a Bet That Retail Investors Love Elon Musk So Much They’ll Fund His Money-Losing Empire (May 30)

• Wall Street Wants You to Chase the SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI IPO Hype. History Tells Us That’s a Dangerous Game. (May 30)

• Nvidia and Micron Stocks Are Almost Exclusively Driving S&P Earnings Strength. These 3 Very Real Risks Could End It All (May 28)

📈 ETF Strategies & Sector Pivots

• Micron: Why The ETF Ticker MUD Might Soon Be A Clean Trade (May 29)

• A ‘Golden Dome’ Has Formed on the Chart of This Gold Mining ETF. The Bull Rally in Precious Metals Has Run Out of Steam. (May 29)

• Telecom Stocks Are Surging Ahead of the SpaceX IPO. This Chart Reminds Us All Rockets Come Crashing Back to Earth Eventually. (May 26)

• This Sports-Betting ETF Is Set to Stage a Comeback in the Second Half of 2026 (May 25)

• Sickly Healthcare Stocks Are Perking Up. For Contrarian Investors, Buying Now Could Be Just the Remedy to Protect Your Portfolio. (May 24)

🛡️ Risk Management & Defensive Plays

• When Growth Stocks Finally Collapse, You’ll Want This 1 Anti-Beta ETF in Your Portfolio (May 24)

• Rising Rates Are Threatening to Kill the Zombies and Send Small-Cap Stocks Plunging (May 23)

• Don’t Ignore Basic Bond Math and Jump Into TIPS: The ‘Inflation Hedge’ Story Isn’t Everything (May 26)

🚀 Level Up Your Strategy

Reading is the first step; execution is the second.

• Join the Community: Meet our ROAR.PiTrade members every Tuesday at 4 PM EST (Note: NO session on June 2) to discuss these charts live with Rob Isbitts. Register HERE. (Reminder: Today is the last day for the 40% discount on ROAR.PiTrade!)

  Last day to save 40%

• Track Risk: Monitor macro market conditions dynamically. Check out the ROAR score on Pitrade.com.

• Get the Charts: Dig into the technicals yourself. Start a 30-Day Free Trial of BarChart Premier.

• Deep Research: Expand your toolkit. Get $30 off Seeking Alpha Premium.

Take a peek at yesterday’s live session where Rob gives away ETF secrets to anyone who wants to “ETFYourself”!

Join us live each Tuesday at 4 PM EST and be part of the discussions. We are taking a break next week but we will be back live on June 9 at 4 PM EST.

As a reminder, our ROAR.PiTrade subscription 40% discount is ending this Sunday, May 31. Here is a breakdown of the services we offer:

• LEVEL 1: Introductory paragraphs to what I’m talking about behind the paywall. (free)

• LEVEL 2: All my writing/research at ETFYourself.com ($150/year or $15/month).

  Subscribe now

• LEVEL 3: The whole package. All Level 2 benefits plus full access to ROAR.PiTrade.com. ETF and stock analysis updated daily, create your own watchlists, all the model portfolios, and admission to me weekly live show and subscriber chat. And you’re one click away from free copy trading of those models over at PiTrade.com.

  Save 40% on ROAR.PiTrade

WE ARE OFFERING A 40% DISCOUNT ON LEVEL 3, A $400 ANNUAL SAVINGS, ONLY THROUGH MAY 31.

If you look at the major averages, you’d think everything is fine. The index-worshippers are celebrating. But underneath the surface, we are staring at a massive market Rorschach test. To me, it doesn’t look pretty.

We are living in an environment where a tiny handful of high-flying growth stocks are carrying the entire weight of this bull market. The passive investing crowd has a saying: “When in doubt, ETF it.” They buy the SPY or the QQQ and assume diversification has their back. It doesn’t. In fact, if and when these top-heavy growth giants finally roll over, they won’t just fall—they will be the downside leaders.

Take it from the guy who built the ROAR 10 ETF Model Portfolio: there’s a VERY good set of reasons that QQQ is in there, but as one of 10 “levers” I can nudge up or down in weight every week, based on my ROAR Score analysis.

As a chartist, I don’t care about narratives or Wall Street’s cheerleading. I care about risk management and where the capital is actually flowing. Right now, the charts are telling me two distinct stories:

1. One S&P 500 sector is quietly perking up from the dead, and

2. One highly specific, overlooked safety valve within that ROAR 10 ETF portfolio will be a great signal for when the growth mirage shatters. Even more than it has been historically.

If you’re a retiree or a DIY investor managing your own nest egg, you cannot afford to ride a top-heavy index off a cliff. You need tools that act as an iron-clad hedge, and you need sectors that give you a place to hide.

Here is exactly where I am looking, what I am buying, and the tickers on my radar this week. I’ll also cover this briefly at today’s live session, as part of the broader topic of “Why 97% of ETF Don’t Matter.”

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For a limited time, we are offering this weekly live session to all our subscribers. Please join us HERE on

Tuesday, May 26 at 4 PM EST

This week’s topic: ETF Yourself - Why 97% of ETFs don’t matter, and how to focus on the ones that do

All sessions will be recorded and posted for review.

This is a great way to learn about the tools available at ROAR.PiTrade and see them in action as Rob’s gives a weekly report using the ROAR.PiTrade analysis.

The market is flashing some incredibly mixed signals right now. While tech continues to dominate the headlines, underneath the surface, traditional safe havens are crumbling and volatility is hiding in plain sight.

If you are looking for clarity in a market that feels like it’s holding its breath, you’re in the right place. Here is what you need to know this week to protect your portfolio—and profit from the rotation.

🔥 The Big Story: A Tech Top and Nvidia’s High Stakes

• Why the Earnings Report Reaction in Nvidia Stock Matters So Much More This Time Nvidia isn’t just a stock anymore; it’s the bellwether for the entire market. Here is why the reaction to their upcoming earnings could dictate the direction of your portfolio for the rest of the year.

• These 3 AI ETFs Could Be the First to Kill the Stock Market Rally The AI euphoria has been the rising tide lifting all boats, but these three highly concentrated ETFs are showing signs of exhaustion. If they break, the broader market rally could go down with them.

• As Chip Stocks Warn Of ‘Empire State Building’ Top, How To Profit No Matter What Happens Next Semiconductors have built a towering, “Empire State”-style chart pattern. If you know what to look for, you don’t have to fear the drop—here is how to position yourself to win regardless of the fallout.

⚠️ Market Mechanics: The Hidden Dangers

• The VIX and SPY Are Falling at the Same Time. Don’t Get Trapped by Volatility Hiding in a Market Blind Spot. Usually, when the market goes up, the fear gauge goes down. But right now, both the S&P 500 and the VIX are falling simultaneously. This rare divergence is a massive blind spot for retail investors.

• Consumer Staples Are Losing Their Safe-Haven Status. Here’s Why. When the going gets tough, investors usually hide in consumer staples. Not anymore. We break down why the ultimate defensive sector is suddenly losing its armor.

💎 The Hidden Gem of 2026

• The $43 Billion ETF Hiding in Plain Sight. Why DIA Might Outperform SPY and QQQ for the Rest of 2026. Forget the tech-heavy Nasdaq and the S&P 500. There is a massive, $43 billion rotation happening right under our noses. Here is why the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DIA) might just be the best place for your capital through the end of the year.

🚀 Level Up Your Strategy

Reading is the first step; execution is the second.

• Join the Community: Meet our ROAR.PiTrade members every Tuesday at 4 PM EST to discuss these charts live with Rob Isbitts. Register HERE.

• Track Risk: Monitor macro market conditions dynamically. Check out the ROAR score on Pitrade.com.

• Get the Charts: Dig into the technicals yourself. Start a 30-Day Free Trial of BarChart Premier.

• Deep Research: Expand your toolkit. Get $30 off Seeking Alpha Premium.

Join us live every Tuesday at 4 PM EST as we explore different topics and show you how ROAR.PiTrade can become an essential part of your investing toolbox.

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For a limited time, we are offering this weekly live session to all our subscribers. Please join us HERE on

Tuesday, May 19 at 4 PM EST

This week’s topic: Collar Me - A simple, jargon-free, hype-free way to use options to protect and grow capital

All sessions will be recorded and posted for review.

This is a great way to learn about the tools available at ROAR.PiTrade and see them in action as Rob’s gives a weekly report using the ROAR.PiTrade analysis.