Last week, we debuted this new feature of our paid subscription service. It is simply my chart reads on more than 800 stocks and ETFs, refined for you to list only what I consider to be the best and worst “setups.” Again, this is to speed your own research, not tell you what to buy and sell, as that is a personal decision. This is research.

At the end of this week’s quick and easy ticker table, I’ve also included a summary listing of how last week’s setups fared. Depending on subscriber feedback, we’ll decide how to track each week’s setups, if at all. As always, we appreciate anything you’d like to tell us to help us to help our subscriber base.

Now, here’s this week’s Fresh Charts and that “mark to market” report from last Thursday’s report. Note that in last week’s free debut edition, I covered only the 100 largest stocks in the S&P 500. This week, I went through them all.

I’m here to be this community’s go-to technical analyst, so if you have any ideas of what else to cover (or what you feel is less important to cover, let me know. If we get enough responses, we’ll really be able to craft this around our paid subscriber base.

As of August 15th, our monthly Substack will increase to $25/month and $200/year. Our current price is $15/month or $150/year so if you are looking for more in-depth research and want to experience our full content, consider taking advantage of this deal while it lasts. Try us out for a month and cancel at any time. If you’ve been paying monthly and are enjoying what we’re putting out, take advantage of the savings now. Try us for a year and make a small investment in your portfolio building skills.

Join us live on Tuesday for our last free live session. We will be taking a break for a few weeks and when we return live on August 18th, all sessions and recordings will be paid-only. Register HERE for the final session where Rob will teach How to create a simple DIY income portfolio using ROAR.PiTrade.com.

Subscribe now

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It is true what Yogi Berra said. You can observe a lot just by watching. The late, great NY Yankees Hall of Fame catcher left us with a lifetime of learning, including that quote. As you might know, I’m a bit of a baseball historian, and that includes the culture of the game, not simply the on-field activity.

And when it comes to Yogi quotes and a lot more about how baseball and life intersect, Yogi’s granddaughter Lindsay Berra has done some great work preserving that, including the family’s creation of a museum in my home state of New Jersey, and a documentary about Yogi’s life, career and impact after his playing days. It is great stuff for sports fans and investors alike.

I say that because when I think about why I feel so strongly about my stock and ETF charting, which I started at age 16 when my late father, a big Yankees and Yogi fan his entire life, taught me. Using pencil and graph paper, writing the charts by hand.

But you can speed up the process nowadays. So much so that using Barchart.com’s quick flipcharts tool, I can zip through watchlists in minutes, looking for what I consider to be high-percentage setups. Kind of like Yogi Berra’s remarkable percentage in not only getting to the World Series with this team, but winning it. 15 appearances in 19 years, and 10 wins.

Last Thursday, I debuted a new feature here. Fresh Charts provides a quick, to the point, bottom-line analysis of the best setups I see across several hundred charts each week. It is not a “buy/sell” list. There are plenty of those around, and from what I gather, their batting average is well below Yogi’s .285 lifetime mark. Getting a hit 28.5% of the time, and knocking 358 homers while guiding the pitching staff was a Hall of Fame resume for him. A 28% “hit” rate on trades is not quite HOF material.

As I see it, if I’m looking at upwards of 1,000 stock and ETF charts every weeks, and often multiple times a week for some segments of that list, the best thing I can do to transfer what I see to you is to document it weekly. Markets are more antsy than I’ve ever seen, so that’s why I chose a weekly snapshot, not a “buy this now” sort of thing.

As I see it, if you are a true DIY investor, you want the RESEARCH. We provide plenty of answers in our model portfolios and that is where you can go to truly “copy off Rob’s paper.” All you want, across multiple models. Some are reserved for premium subscribers, but most are free for anyone who enters their email address to sign up.

With Fresh Charts, the goal is to get you the “raw material” each week, so you can personalize it as you wish. But there’s another component: how to read the charts. That’s what I’m devoting this week’s issue to.

Continue on to see how I have determined, over 130,000 hours of market-watching and investment decisions, how to assign nearly any chart I see, in any time frame, to 1 of 8 different stages of the price trend cycle.

How is this different from ROAR? Time frame and use case.

ROAR’s best application is buiding portfolios, where the holdings are long-term, but the adjustments to the weights/sizes of those positions is managed actively. That’s why we call my main one ROAR 10 ETF.

Fresh Charts is about a shorter time frame. The idea is that from all of those hours of chart-reading, and making instant decisions as to which ones make the “first cut” and which are “cut first” from consideration, we can narrow the field of good trading candidates.

From that point, however, everyone has a different style. I won’t stick with most trades that fall 5% from where I bought them, maybe 10% at times. Others might be more patient. I also do not let my winners run as others might. I used to, but I just do not trust the markets like I once did. Not with algorithms, indexes and many other factors turning what used to be “price discovery” into a casino atmosphere. That makes me want to not overstay my welcome. Sort of like when we recently spent 3 nights in Las Vegas. If we had spent 8-10 nights, I think we would have entered the land of “diminishing marginal returns.” And I’m not much of a casino gambler. I’m talking about the constant vibe, mayhem and stimulus.

Yogi Berra was great for many reasons. Part of it was his relunctance to buy into what was popular, and chart his own course. That came out in some of his quotable gems.

I think investors can learn a lot from that. I also think that approach maps directly on to what I’ll focus on in this week’s issue, as well as in our Tuesday live show today:

Anatomy of a Winning Chart: What I Look For Before I Trade

I say it all the time: we are subscriber-driven. That’s what got us this far. So if the Tuesday live crowd (join us HERE) decides that a more Fresh Charts-driven discussion is the best use of our time each week, there’s a good chance we will morph the show into that.

Now, to the main topic for this week. That’s reviewing the 8 stages of a chart that I’ve stapled to my brain over the decades. It is my style, my creation. And hopefully, it will help you. I’ll provide a example of each by showing a current ETF chart that I think represents each stage. There’s enough going on these early-summer markets to do that.

As Yogi Berra said, after a lot of (chart-)watching, I think I’ve learned a lot. And I am here to coach our subscribers, using those decades of learning and doing.

Here we go!

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In order to provide as much value as possible to our paid subscribers, we are going to take our revamped Sunday edition “behind the paywall.” This week’s edition is the last “free” one. With the recent edition of our Fresh Charts weekly feature, the ETFYourself.com paid subscription will now include:

Tuesdays: Weekly ROAR (Blunt, bottom-line broad market opinions)

Thursdays: Fresh Charts (Best/worst trade setups from with a watchlist of 800+ stocks and ETFs)

Sundays: A highlighted digest of Rob’s articles for Barchart and Seeking Alpha. During the first half of 2026, Rob wrote more than 300 articles OUTSIDE OF ETFYourself.com. Our Sunday weekly issue has been re-engineered to distill the key takeaways from 10-15 research articles each week to a 2-3 minute summary.

That’s more than 150 posts a year, for $150 a year. For now.

As of August 15th, our monthly Substack will increase to $25/month and $200/year. Our current price is $15/month or $150/year so if you are looking for more in depth research, consider taking advantage of this deal while it lasts. Try us out for a month and cancel at any time. If you’ve been paying monthly and are enjoying what we’re putting out, take advantage of the savings now. Try us for a year and make a small investment in your portfolio building skills.

Subscribe now

The ETFYourself.com Sunday Summary

The Realist’s Guide to 2026: Cracks in the Core, “MANIA,” and How We Protect Our Capital

• Tech Volatility Hits 23-Year High

• OpenAI IPO Delay Marks AI Stock Peak

• MANIA Hardware Trade Replaces Magnificent 7

• Cash Yields Quietly Beat Top Tech Equities

• Copper Trends Forecast Upcoming Macroeconomic Health

• Industrial Concentration Mimics Tech Sector Risks

• Index Concentration Penalizes Average Retail Investors

• Prepare For High-Volatility Historic Market Half

• Protect Assets With Simple Two-ETF Strategies

• AI Capex Threatens Market But Lifts Software

Let’s skip the Wall Street cheerleading and look at what the charts are actually telling us right now. If you’ve been following my work at ETFYourself.com, you know I don’t care about market hype; I care about risk management and preserving your hard-earned capital. Right now, the structural cracks under the surface of this market are widening, and if you’re blindly riding passive index funds, you’re exposed.

The AI Mirage and the “MANIA” Pivot

First up: the AI trade is fracturing. OpenAI’s decision to delay its IPO filing isn’t just a scheduling hiccup—it’s a massive red flag. It exposes the reality of unsustainable cash burn and exhausted retail demand, signaling what I believe is the death knell for overhyped AI equities, with 50% sector haircuts likely on the horizon.

Meanwhile, the old “Magnificent 7” narrative is dead. The smart, fast money has rotated into the high-stakes “MANIA” hardware trade—specifically Micron (MU), AMD, Intel (INTC), Broadcom (AVGO), and Nvidia (NVDA). This isn’t a “buy-and-forget” portfolio; it’s a high-volatility battlefield. If you are going to play here, you need to use tactical tools, like hedging or trading your exposures via leveraged ETFs like SOXL or inverse tools like SOXS to defend against sudden downside. At the same time, keep an eye on software; while massive corporate AI capex poses a systemic risk to the broader indexes, it’s opening a unique backdoor that could propel the tech-heavy IGV ETF to new records.

The Illusion of Index Safety

If you think hiding out in broad index ETFs makes you safe, think again. Tech stock volatility has quietly surged to a 23-year extreme. The divergence between the Nasdaq-100 and S&P 500 volatility indexes tells us the bull market clock is ticking down fast.

Want proof that things are broken under the hood? Over the past year, simple, boring Treasury bills quietly beat out 40% of the individual stocks inside the QQQ. Let that sink in. Nearly half of the tech-heavy index underperformed cash, but a few mega-caps masked the damage.

This illusion of safety isn’t restricted to tech. Look at the Industrials (XLI)—it has quietly become an un-diversified, top-heavy mess driven entirely by its top three holdings. Even when major developments occur—like SpaceX making waves in the Russell 1000 (IWB)—the resulting forced index concentration means retail investors are the ones left holding the bag, taking on concentrated, single-stock risks they never signed up for.

Your Action Plan for a Historic Second Half

Macro economic indicators are calling for heightened defensiveness. “Dr. Copper” is currently on the examination table, and its price action is setting up a crucial diagnosis for the macro economy that you cannot afford to ignore.

As we enter what promises to be a historic, highly volatile second half of 2026, asset protection is paramount. When the SPY or QQQ inevitably stumble, you don’t need a complicated, over-engineered institutional strategy to stay safe. Real asset protection is simple. By running a tactical, dual-ETF mix of broad equity exposure and cash equivalents, you can capture the upside while keeping a firm hand on the exit door. Don’t let Wall Street tell you to just “buy and hold” through a storm. Check your risk level, simplify your defense, and protect your capital.

Read the Full Deep Dives Here:

• Find my comprehensive technical data and market analysis on my Barchart Author Page.

• Read my full macroeconomic commentary and portfolio strategy breakdowns on my Seeking Alpha Author Page.

🚀 Level Up Your Strategy

Reading is the first step; execution is the second. Take action with these exclusive tools and community events to maximize your market edge:

• 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 2 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.

As many of you know, I’ve been a professional investor for 33 years and have been charting stocks for 46 years. My “bread and butter” is producing quick chart takes with a strict focus on identifying major risk points—because managing risk when things get stormy is where I’ve done my best work over the decades.

With a rapidly growing Substack audience, I wanted a way to download the chart analysis running through my brain directly to you in a format that is time-efficient, affordable, and helps you think for yourself. I originally planned a daily 20-stock trading portfolio, but with so many stocks and ETFs to cover, a daily obligation is not in your best interests, or mine.

Instead, I called an audible: I am delivering my raw, ongoing chart work in its simplest, most adaptive form.

This week’s issue is below, and it is free to all of our subscribers. After this maiden issue, it will go behind the paywall, and only our paid subscribers will receive it. As a reminder, a paid subscription to ETF Yourself is currently $150 a year or $15 a month.

Starting August 15, all monthly renewals of ETFYourself.com will be at $25/month. Our annual price will be $200.

Subscribe now

What is Fresh Charts all about?

Each week, I analyze hundreds of stock and ETF charts, to answer 3 simple questions.

1. Which charts look good to me this week? (Best Setups)

2. Which charts look bad to me this week? (Worst Setups)

3. Which charts do not evoke a strong view? (Do not appear in the report)

Tuesday vs. Thursday: What’s the Difference?

• Tuesdays (Weekly ROAR): Macro, big-picture thinking and intermediate-term risk scores to help guide portfolio allocation.

• Thursdays (Fresh Charts): Pure, short-term chart analysis. No portfolio management—just a weekly research report to supplement your DIY investing.

Key Universes Reviewed

Each week, I review approximately 800 tickers from the following master watchlists:

• S&P 500 Stocks (500 tickers)*

• Microcap List (All 150 holdings of ETF ticker: FDM)

• International Markets (Rob’s country/international ETF list of 80 ETFs)

• Rob’s ETF Watchlist (75 ETFs; full list at ROAR.PiTrade.com)

* Note: in this free issue, I analyzed the S&P 100 (100 biggest stocks). Starting with the first paid issue next week, I’ll cover all 500.

About Fresh Charts

Fresh Charts is designed to identify short-term market opportunities by evaluating technical chart patterns across hundreds of liquid securities.

• The Objective: To scout for “high percentage shots” from more than 1,000 weekly tracked tickers.

• The Timeline: Focuses strictly on a short-term horizon (10–20 trading days) using daily charts.

• The Schedule: Updated every week following Wednesday’s market close and delivered Thursdays.

⚠️ Important Clarification: This is NOT a list of investment recommendations. It is a curated collection of stock and ETF tickers analyzed strictly through technical chart patterns by Rob Isbitts (me).

Q: Rob, why don’t you do “buy/sell” picks like a million other investing “experts?”

As my longtime subscribers know, I’m not like the others. It is up to you to decide if and how that helps you. I am here to coach by showing you what I see, on a regular basis, and discussing how my analysis and opinions evolve. There are plenty of “top picks” publications out there, so they are very easy to find.

Here, our mission is not simply to “give DIY investors a fish” but to “teach them to fish.”

How you use my observations, both in Tuesday’s Weekly ROAR and this new Thursday Fresh Charts post, is entirely up to you. Which ones to consider and how to gain exposure to them (small share position, large share position, deploying options, etc.).

I was a fidicuary investment advisor for 27 years, and retired from that role in 2020. Back then, I mapped my trade setups to our clients’ portfolios. This is research, and you’re the captain now! And we want to make you the best one you can be.

Subscribe now

Complementing the ROAR Score

This report is designed to complement—not replace—the ROAR Score approach (ROAR.PiTrade.com). That site is all about replacing “picks” with “portfolios.” Learning to manage your wealth like a portfolio manager (my old job!) will create much more wealth for investors over time, and with far less risk of disaster along the way.

• ROAR Scores gauge a ticker’s risk of major loss on an intermediate-term basis and are automated to help direct multi-security portfolio allocations (like my popular ROAR 10 ETF model).

• Fresh Charts focuses solely on immediate, actionable chart reading. That’s why we call them “setups” not picks or trades.

We Value Your Feedback

How can we make this new report more valuable to your investing process? Send your questions and feedback to info@sungardeninvestment.com.

Now, here’s this week’s Fresh Charts!

During yesterday’s ROAR.PiTrade Live session, we gave an overview of our upcoming feature, Fresh Charts, debuting this Thursday. Watch below to learn about this exciting new feature.

As a reminder, our next two Live sessions will be free. We will be taking a summer break for a few weeks and will return on August 18th, at which point live sessions and recordings will revert to paid-only. If you are a free subscriber and would like to continue participating or watching the recordings, we invite you to lock in our annual rate of $150/year before the price increase.

Starting August 15, all monthly renewals of ETFYourself.com will be at $25/month. Our annual price will be $200.

Subscribe now

HERE is the registration link for the July 7 and 14 sessions at 4 PM EST. Previous sessions can be viewed on our YouTube channel @ETFYourself.

Just look at that big guy! He’s decided that no matter what he sees, no matter what he’s experienced, and whatever comes next (a bone, I’m guessing), he is going to be positive. And walk around with a smile on his face, and a firm belief that things will be just great, eventually.

Or, maybe he’s just yawning

As I’ve said going back decades, I am neither a bull nor a bear. Ever. I’m a realist. That means looking at any investment, particularly through the charts, as a constant tug-of-war. There’s money trying to lift the stock price, and other money trying to get out, or outright short it and profit on a price decline. This is, as they said in the animated film “Beauty and the Beast,” a tale as old as time. That’s a father of 3 grown kids talking right there. And they keep me positive always, along with my wife and business partner Dana.

Still I can’t unsee what I see. And what I see is a historically high level of risk. Particularly in certain areas of the stock market and elsewhere. This is like having the game on the line, and your baseball team needs a hit. But the bench is emptied, and the guy whose turn it is at bat is hitting .083. As in, he gets a hit once every 12 at bats, on average. That’s how I think of this market, though more like a .200 hitter, if you get what I mean.

Still, I am increasing seeing some opportunitities emerging, the likes of which I have not seen in some time. Maybe years. And it all relates to what we see in the headlines every day.

But it is where I suspect many are not looking. And I do believe strongly that it is much simpler than many are making it. As I’ve said before, I have not seen everything in this business. But I’ve seen a lot!

So this week, we’re doing 3 things in the Weekly ROAR:

1. I’ll provide some insights from the ROAR Scores we maintain for thousands of ETFs and stocks every day at ROAR.PiTrade.com, where you will also find my model portfolios. I’ll include a quick update on some of those here too.

2. I’m going to show you 5 charts that help me size up where we are right now. And where I think the odds are taking us.

3. I’m going to preview FRESH CHARTS, which is a separate post we’ll reveal here tomorrow. It is a description of, and rationale for, our new addition to our ETFYourself.com subscription service.

^{*reminder: As of August 15th, our monthly Substack will increase to $25/month and $200/year. Our current price is $15/month or $150/year so if you are looking for more in depth research or want to continue attending live sessions, consider taking advantage of this deal while it lasts. Try us out for a month and cancel at any time. If you’ve been paying monthly and are enjoying what we’re putting out, take advantage of the savings now. Try us for a year and make a small investment in your portfolio building skills.}

And away we go (Think happy thoughts, Rob. Happy thoughts!)

I’ll start this week with what I’m seeing in my ongoing persusal of the many tickers…

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The market is flashing warning signs, but most investors are too busy chasing the next “hot dot” to notice.

This week, we look under the hood of the S&P 500’s massive 2026 gains to expose where the foundation is beginning to crack. From the hyper-inflated private valuations of the SpaceX frenzy to the sudden slowdowns in highly anticipated AI IPOs, the structural shifts happening right now will define the winners and losers of the coming quarters.

Whether you’re looking to hedge against a tech slowdown, deploy options strategies to sleep better at night, or cut through the noise of social media “finfluencers,” this edition is your tactical roadmap.

As of August 15th, our monthly Substack will increase to $25/month and $200/year. Our current price is $15/month or $150/year so if you are looking for more in depth research, consider taking advantage of this deal while it lasts. Try us out for a month and cancel at any time. If you’ve been paying monthly and are enjoying what we’re putting out, take advantage of the savings now. Try us for a year and make a small investment in your portfolio building skills.

Subscribe now

Here are this week’s deep dives:

⚠️ Market Warnings & Tactical Shifts

• When the Mag 7 Becomes the Drag 7: Why Technicals Suggest a 30% S&P 500 Drop Is on the Table

  • The market darlings that carried your portfolio to new heights are starting to pull it down. A deep dive into the technical indicators showing why a massive 30% correction could be closer than you think.

• Crash Warning: Barchart’s Ultimate Trader Cheat Sheet Alerted Me That Even Mega-Cap Tech Stocks Are Starting to Deteriorate

  • The biggest names in tech have felt bulletproof, but the data says otherwise. Here is why the tech foundation is fracturing—and why no stock is truly safe.

• When the AI Trade Collapses, These 3 S&P 500 Sectors Are Your Best Bet

  • The AI hype train won’t run forever. When the inevitable rotation happens, these three overlooked sectors are primed to absorb the capital.

• Why the Roku Buyout Is a Cautionary Tale for AI Stocks

  • Hype is a powerful drug, but reality always wins. We look at Roku’s history to extract a critical lesson for today’s overextended AI darlings.

🚀 The IPO Frenzy & Hunting Value

• 25 ETFs Are Launching to Cash In on the SpaceX IPO Frenzy. Gamblers Could Quickly Lose It All.

  • Wall Street is rushing to package the SpaceX hype into shiny new ETFs. Don’t take the bait until you understand the hidden structural risks.

• How to Hunt for Mega-Cap Value After the SpaceX IPO

  • When speculative dust settles, real value emerges. Discover where the smart money is looking for institutional-grade stability.

• If You’re Looking for the ‘Next Big Thing’ Before the OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs, Try This Barchart Stock Screener

  • Stop chasing headlines. Use this precise filtering strategy to spot genuine, under-the-radar opportunities before they go public.

🛠️ ETF Strategies & Risk Management

• Ignore the Financial Influencers Pushing a ‘Trifecta’ ETF Strategy. Manage Risk and Volatility with 1 of These Savvy Funds Instead.

  • Social media “finfluencers” love complex, flashy portfolios. Cut through the noise and protect your capital with these proven, single-fund alternatives.

• These 3 AI ETFs Have Been on a Rocket Ride Higher. Here’s Why I’d Skip Them All and Just Buy QQQ Instead

  • In a crowded and expensive trade, simplicity wins. Here is why paying a premium for pure-play AI funds might be a structural mistake.

• Dear Investors: Don’t Act Your Age, Act Your Risk Tolerance

  • The traditional age-based asset allocation models are broken. It’s time for a foundational reality check on how much volatility your wallet can actually stomach.

• 6 Simple Questions to Ask Yourself So You Can Survive (and Maybe Thrive) Even in a True Bear Market

  • You don’t fix a leaky roof during a rainstorm. Go through this definitive market survival checklist before the next real downturn hits.

🐻 Trading Corners: Bears & Shorting

• NVD: For Nvidia Bears To Feast On When The AI Hype Fades

  • For the aggressive traders timing the AI cooldown, this targeted inverse tool is the ultimate weapon.

• TSLQ: Understanding This ETF Built For Aggressive Tesla Bears

  • Shorting high-beta tech requires precise execution. Learn the mechanical inner workings—and risks—of betting against Tesla.

• How Barchart Helped Me Make a Big Return on an Options Trade in Just 24 Hours. It Can Help You Too.

  • A real-world, step-by-step case study on how to leverage actionable data for rapid, tactical options execution.

Subscribe now

🚀 Level Up Your Strategy

Reading is the first step; execution is the second. Take action with these exclusive tools and community events to maximize your market edge:

• 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.

If the current decade has taught me anything as an investor, it is what my late father, my first investing mentor, had as his first 2 rules. They were as follows:

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Welcome to this week's breakdown. From the potential cracks forming in mega-cap tech to navigating a high-stakes IPO environment, here is your roadmap for the week ahead.

🔍 This Week’s Deep Dives

Market Warnings & Tactical Shifts

• Crash Warning: Barchart’s Ultimate Trader Cheat Sheet Alerted Me That Even Mega-Cap Tech Stocks Are Starting to Deteriorate – Why even the biggest names in tech might not be safe anymore.

• When the AI Trade Collapses, These 3 S&P 500 Sectors Are Your Best Bet – Positioning your portfolio for the inevitable shift.

• Why the Roku Buyout Is a Cautionary Tale for AI Stocks – A critical lesson in hype vs. reality.

The IPO Frenzy & Hunting Value

• 25 ETFs Are Launching to Cash In on the SpaceX IPO Frenzy. Gamblers Could Quickly Lose It All. – The hidden risks of the latest investment craze.

• How to Hunt for Mega-Cap Value After the SpaceX IPO – Where to find real value when the dust settles.

• If You’re Looking for the ‘Next Big Thing’ Before the OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs, Try This Barchart Stock Screener – How to spot true opportunities early.

ETF Strategies & Risk Management

• Ignore the Financial Influencers Pushing a ‘Trifecta’ ETF Strategy. Manage Risk and Volatility with 1 of These Savvy Funds Instead. – Cutting through the social media noise to protect your capital.

• These 3 AI ETFs Have Been on a Rocket Ride Higher. Here’s Why I’d Skip Them All and Just Buy QQQ Instead – Why simpler is often better in a crowded trade.

• Dear Investors: Don’t Act Your Age, Act Your Risk Tolerance – A foundational look at asset allocation.

• 6 Simple Questions to Ask Yourself So You Can Survive (and Maybe Thrive) Even in a True Bear Market – Your ultimate market survival checklist.

Trading Corners: Bears & Shorting

• NVD: For Nvidia Bears To Feast On When The AI Hype Fades – A targeted tool for those timing the AI cool-off.

• TSLQ: Understanding This ETF Built For Aggressive Telsa Bears – Navigating the mechanics of shorting high-beta tech.

• How Barchart Helped Me Make a Big Return on an Options Trade in Just 24 Hours. It Can Help You Too. – A real-world example of quick execution.

Subscribe now

🚀 Level Up Your Strategy

Reading is the first step; execution is the second. Take action with these exclusive tools and community events to maximize your market edge:

• 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 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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🚨 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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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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🚨 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.

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📊 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.

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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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.

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