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Jeff Zients, the former White House coronavirus response coordinator who is succeeding Ron Klain as President Joe Biden’s new chief of staff, has faced left-wing criticism for his corporate past and the massive wealth he’s accumulated in the private sector.

Progressive Twitter users were quick to recirculate old articles criticizing Zients after the news broke on Twitter Sunday that Zients would be taking over for Klain in the coming weeks. Fox News Digital confirmed Zients would be the incoming chief of staff.

Zients held several positions in the Obama administration, including director of the National Economic Council from March 2014 to January 2017, before he returned to the private sector, sitting on the board of directors at Facebook and holding executive jobs at The Advisory Board Company and CEB. He has also worked closely alongside several of Biden’s senior advisers and members of his cabinet.

Upon joining the current White House as Biden’s COVID-19 czar from early 2021 through April 2022, Zients disclosed owning between $89.3 million and $442.8 million in assets, including various investment funds, real estate properties and cash shares.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) and Public Citizen, two liberal think tanks based in Washington, D.C., have been vocally opposed to Zients’ tenure as COVID czar, slamming him for not going far enough on mask mandates and not acting more quickly to ship vaccines overseas.

‘Jeff Zients failed, and the world paid the price,’ Public Citizen President Robert Weissman said in March 2022.

The CEPR’s Revolving Door Project, which frequently criticizes Zients’ wealth and corporate past, blasted his hiring as chief of staff on Sunday.

‘Americans are appalled by profiteering in healthcare – Jeff Zients has become astonishingly rich by profiteering in healthcare,’ Revolving Door Project Executive Director Jeff Hauser said in a statement Sunday.

‘Joe Biden’s best chance to fight for the American people and defeat the dark forces threatening our economy is to show real results via the branch of government he runs – the executive branch,’ he said. ‘We have long argued for a ‘corporate crackdown‘ on behaviors that violate federal laws and harm the American people in order for corporations to become richer. Those are the practices that have made Zients rich. We’re deeply worried that Zients will prevent the administration from exercising power righteously on behalf of an already cynical populace.’

In January 2022, one year into Zients’ stint coordinating the White House’s coronavirus response, the Revolving Door Project published an article in The American Prospect titled, ‘Fire Jeff Zients,’ which described Zients as a ‘former corporate executive whose track record bolsters the worst possible impulses for a Biden appointee in command of the federal government’s resources.’

Several months later, when rumors first surfaced about Zients succeeding Klain, the project published an article examining Zients’ ‘corporate past,’ which also looked at his investment firm Portfolio Logic LLC, where he was managing partner.

‘Taken together, an examination of the companies that made Zients rich paints a picture of a man who seized on medical providers as a way to capitalize on the suffering of sick Americans. In the end, it seems to have all paid off,’ the report said.

‘As rumors swirl about Zients succeeding Ronald Klain as President Biden’s chief of staff,’ it continued,’ his corporate record raises serious questions about his fitness to serve in an administration that has attempted to market itself as a champion of working people.’

The report cited a 2015 federal lawsuit in which Portfolio Logic, which Zients founded, agreed to pay almost $7 million to resolve allegations of fraudulent Medicare and Medicaid billing by a subsidiary that it acquired years earlier.

Zients did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Fox News’ Brooke Singman, Anders Hagstrom and Greg Wehner contributed reporting.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark’s daughter was arrested on Saturday evening for allegedly spray-painting a monument and assaulting a police officer during a protest. 

‘I love Riley, and this is a very difficult time in the cycle of joy and pain in parenting,’ Clark tweeted. ‘This will be evaluated by the legal system, and I am confident in that process.’

Riley Dowell, 23, was arrested and charged with assault with a dangerous weapon, destruction or injury of personal property, and damage of property by graffiti. 

The Boston Police Department referred to the suspect as ‘Jared Dowell.’ Clark has spoken in the past about how one of her children is non-binary.

Officers were called to the Parkman Bandstand Monument in the Boston Common around 9:30 p.m. on Saturday evening about a protest. 

When they arrived, they saw Dowell allegedly spray-painting ‘ACAB,’ which stands for ‘All Cops Are Bastards,’ and ‘NO COP CITY,’ an apparent reference to a police training facility in the suburbs of Atlanta that has sparked protests after officers shot and killed a protester who opened fire on them earlier this week. 

While police arrested Dowell, a group of 20 protesters ‘began to surround officers while screaming profanities though megaphones on the public street causing traffic to come to a standstill,’ according to police. 

The protesters were ‘interfering with the arrest’ and ‘an officer was hit in the face and could be seen bleeding from the nose and mouth.’

Dowell will be arraigned in Boston Municipal Court. 

Clark, 59, is the second highest-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives after being elected whip last month. 

Another protester accused of spray-painting the monument, 27-year-old Andrea Colletti, was arrested about an hour later. 

Protests erupted in Atlanta this week over a new police training facility after officers shot and killed 26-year-old environmental activist Manuel Esteban Paez Teran. 

Teran first shot and wounded a Georgia state trooper before police returned fire, according to authorities. 

On Saturday evening in Atlanta, protesters smashed windows, set a police vehicle on fire, ignited fireworks, and threw rocks at the Atlanta Police Foundation Saturday evening, according FOX 5 Atlanta.

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After the fall in stocks on 1/19/23, someone asked me if I was still bullish. And my answer was: “as long as the New York Stock Exchange Advance Decline line (NYAD) remains above its 200-day moving average, the bulls get the benefit of the doubt.” On 1/20/23, the market moved decidedly higher, regaining much of what it had lost in the prior two days.

Don’t get me wrong. Neither I or anyone else knows what’s going to happen at any moment in the stock market. Yet there are reliable indicators that smooth out the daily price gyrations. One of them is the market’s breadth. And my favorite indicator with which to smooth things out is the New York Stock Exchange Advance Decline line.

That’s because the market’s internals (the term used by technicians to refer to the market’s breadth as measured by NYAD and similar indicators) now lead the indexes more often than in the past, where indexes were the primary indicators of the market’s trend.

The reason for this is twofold. First, indexes are capitalization-weighted. That means that mega-cap stocks can swing the price of an index wildly, distorting the price trend. For example, a bad earnings report for a major stock can cause a fall in the S&P 500 (SPX) during a period when the NYAD is either moving higher or consolidating. 

In this case, where one heavily-weighted stock brings the index down when the rest of the market continues to move higher, you would see a positive divergence, meaning that the market’s breadth is better than what the cap-weighted price distorted indicates. The current market is displaying a positive divergence, which by definition is bullish.

The second reason is the fact that algorithmic trading (bots) can further distort the action in the market on an intraday basis. This often happens when meme stocks attract money and the algos magnify the current trend as they pile on in order to grab quick profits.

In both cases, the NYAD filters the price distortion because any single stock gets only one vote in this indicator. So, when NYAD goes up or down, it’s because the majority of stocks are respectively rising or falling. In other words, a rising NYAD is a more meaningful indicator of an uptrend than a rising S&P 500, where a handful of stocks can distort the index.

The reverse is also true. If NYAD is falling and SPX is rising, this is known as a negative divergence. Negative divergences often precede bear markets or meaningful declines.

Until something changes, this market is under the influence of a positive divergence, which is why I’m still leaning toward the bullish case. If the situation reverses, I will change my mind.

I have more details on NYAD and SPX below.

Checklist Review on Bull Vs. Bear Market

As I noted here last week, for the past several months in my weekly portfolio update to subscribers, I’ve noted that, when the following conditions are met, I would turn bullish. Here they are, with updates:

The NYAD moving well above its 200-day moving average;A rally in XED, which would mean liquidity has improved; VIX trading near its lows for a long time, which would mean that put buyers have mostly gone away, leaving the market makers no choice but to buy calls and index futures in order to hedge their bets;A clear sign from the Fed that the interest rate hike cycle is not just slowing, but coming to an end.

So here is where we stand at the moment. NYAD and VIX are still bullish. XED is still moving sideways, which is essentially neutral. Meanwhile, the Fed is speaking out of both sides of its mouth, recently leaking that it would raise rates by only 25 basis points, while more recent Fed speakers are still talking about raising rates above 5%.

Putting it all together, we have two positives and one neutral. That means the environment for stocks is better than it was at the end of 2022, because the market’s breadth is better and bears are less willing to buy put options, which eventually drive stock prices down. As long as liquidity remains stable, even if Fed remains focused on raising rates, the market is more likely to grind higher than to fall. If any of these parameters changes for the worse, the down trend will resume.

Check out what’s working with a Free trial to my service. Click here for more.

Buy Homebuilders Dip as Mortgage Rates Decline

Investors who are focused on the most recent housing data, which features rising inventories, falling home prices, dismal existing home sales and reports of homebuilders using gimmicks to sell their swelling inventories, aren’t watching the bullish effects of falling mortgage rates on homebuilder and related stocks.

Last week, we saw the average 30-year mortgage drop to 6.15%. That’s nearly a point below the late 2022 peak. Meanwhile, the data that is being reported is from December. On the ground, there is a pickup in activity. For the first time in several weeks, I’m seeing new housing being framed in new developments, along with the sale of lots for future builds. Moreover, I am starting to see a trickle of traffic in some existing homes I keep an eye on as indicators. This suggests that the awful housing data will see some improvement in the next few months.

That means that the recent slight pullback in the homebuilders (SPHB) is likely a buy on the dip opportunity for those who have missed the rally from the October bottom.  

If you’re looking for ideas on which homebuilders to buy, take a Free trial to my service here.

Bullish Development: NYAD Breaks Above 200-day Moving Average and Makes New High

The New York Stock Exchange Advance Decline line (NYAD) has established itself above its 50-day and 200-day moving averages on 1/6/23. This puts the stock market is an uptrend.

For its part, the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) has failed to rise meaningfully, marking a significant change in the market’s sentiment. This is also bullish. When VIX rises, stocks tend to fall, as rising put volume is a sign that market makers are selling stock index futures in order to hedge their put sales to the public. A fall in VIX is bullish as it means less put option buying, and it eventually leads to call buying, which causes market makers to hedge by buying stock index futures, raising the odds of higher stock prices.

Liquidity is flat, despite the Fed’s QT maneuvers, as the Eurodollar Index (XED) has been trending sideways to slightly higher for the past few weeks. Note the market’s most recent rally, off of the October bottom, has corresponded to this flattening out in liquidity.

The S&P 500 (SPX) has found support at 3800-3900 three times in the last few days, and is now back above its 20-, 50-, and 200-day moving averages, but closed just below the 4000 area. At the same time, Accumulation/Distribution (ADI) has been steady, and On Balance Volume (OBV) has bottomed out while attempting to turn up. That means that there is now net buying in stocks, even if it’s in spurts.

The Nasdaq 100 index (NDX) has made a fairly concrete triple bottom, even as it continues to lag SPX. It is still possible that it may have made a triple bottom with the 10,500-10,700 price area bringing in some short-covering. The index is now above 11,000, while the real test is what will happen at the 12,000 area and the 200-day moving average.

To get the latest up-to-date information on options trading, check out Options Trading for Dummies, now in its 4th Edition—Get Your Copy Now! Now also available in Audible audiobook format!

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Good news! I’ve made my NYAD-Complexity – Chaos chart (featured on my YD5 videos) and a few other favorites public. You can find them here.

Joe Duarte

In The Money Options

Joe Duarte is a former money manager, an active trader, and a widely recognized independent stock market analyst since 1987. He is author of eight investment books, including the best-selling Trading Options for Dummies, rated a TOP Options Book for 2018 by Benzinga.com and now in its third edition, plus The Everything Investing in Your 20s and 30s Book and six other trading books.

The Everything Investing in Your 20s and 30s Book is available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. It has also been recommended as a Washington Post Color of Money Book of the Month.

To receive Joe’s exclusive stock, option and ETF recommendations, in your mailbox every week visit https://joeduarteinthemoneyoptions.com/secure/order_email.asp.

President Biden’s former COVID-19 czar Jeff Zients will soon replace Ron Klain as White House chief of staff, Fox News confirmed on Sunday.

Zients served as Biden’s COVID response coordinator from early 2021 through April 2022. Klain plans to step down as chief of staff in the coming days after serving in the role since Biden’s inauguration.

President Biden has touted Zients’ work since the beginning of his administration when he tapped him to lead the administration’s COVID-19 efforts.

‘There is no one better at delivering results than Jeff,’ Biden said at the time.

Biden credited Zients for putting ‘decades of management experience to work formulating and executing on a plan to build the infrastructure we needed to deliver vaccines, tests, treatment, and masks to hundreds of millions of Americans.’

The President’s former COVID-19 coordinator also led efforts to fix HealthCare.gov after its bungled launch in 2013, and once he takes on the role will continue to build economic growth through the creation of jobs, a manufacturing and small business boom, and lowered costs for American families.

Zients once served as the acting and deputy director of the Office of the Management and Budget under President Obama, and it is anticipated that his strong relationships in the business community will be an asset to the Biden Administration.

Zients was previously a co-chair for the Biden transition team and has worked at Facebook, The Advisory Board Company and CEB.

He has also been in President Biden’s inner circle for many years and has developed relationships with every member of his senior advisor group.

Klain, a longtime Biden confidante and Democratic operative, was the longest-serving chief of staff to a Democratic president. He previously served as Biden’s chief of staff when he was vice president during the Obama administration and is an attorney and former lobbyist.

A graduate of Harvard Law School, Klain began his career working for the then-senator from Delaware. In the late 1980s, when Biden led the Senate Judiciary Committee, Klain served as the committee’s chief counsel. Furthermore, he was an adviser and speechwriter for Biden’s unsuccessful 1988 and 2008 White House campaigns.

The shake-up comes as Biden is facing the biggest scandal of his presidency so far, with stashes of misplaced classified documents continuing to be found at his private residence in Wilmington, Delaware.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate the matter earlier in January, tapping former U.S. Attorney Robert Hur.

The timeline for Klain’s departure and Zients’ arrival as chief of staff remains unclear.

The White House did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Fox News’ Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

A gunman killed 10 people and injured 10 others at a Southern California ballroom dance studio Saturday amid Lunar New Year celebrations. 

Twenty to 30 minutes later, a man with a gun entered the Lai Lai Ballroom in nearby Alhambra but patrons wrestled the gun away from him and he fled, authorities said. 

Despite police not releasing the suspect’s identity or race, some liberals on Twitter were quick to pin the horror on white supremacy and anti-Asian hate before all the facts were known.  

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., tweeted: ‘We must stand up to bigotry and hate wherever they rear their ugly heads, and we must keep working to stop gun violence.’ 

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Saturday’s shooting was ‘A horrific example of needless gun violence. With bigotry toward AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) individuals as a possible motive.’ 

Meanwhile, #StopAsianHate many Twitter users condemned the violence, punctuating their tweets with ‘#StopAsianHate.’ 

Wisconsin State Representative Francesca Hong, sharing her condolences for the victims, tweeted: ‘We are broken as a nation to have mass shootings and white supremacy reign terror.’ 

Though not all details were known Sunday afternoon, authorities say that the suspected gunman was an Asian man between the ages of 30 and 50.

Authorities said Sunday they know the suspect’s name but declined to release it because it could complicate their ability to apprehend him. They released a photo showing an Asian man wearing glasses and a winter hat. The image was taken from the attempted shooting in Alhambra.

Chester Chong, chairman of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce Los Angeles, told ABC 7 that the mass shooting was over a ‘domestic dispute.’ 

By midday Sunday, police in tactical vehicles and bomb squad trucks surrounded a white van in a parking lot in Torrance, located roughly 30 miles southwest of Monterey Park. A law enforcement source told Fox News that an individual inside the van had shot and killed himself. 

Hours earlier, Los Angeles Sheriff Robert Luna said authorities were looking for a white van after witnesses reported seeing the suspect flee from Alhambra in such a vehicle.

The sheriff declined to say what type of gun was recovered in Alhambra. He said investigators believe the gun used in Monterey Park was not an assault rifle.

The shooting and manhunt sent a wave of fear through Asian American communities in the Los Angeles area and cast a shadow over Lunar New Year festivities around the country. 

Monterey Park is a city of about 60,000 people on the eastern edge of Los Angeles and is composed mostly of Asian immigrants from China or first-generation Asian Americans. The shooting happened in the heart of its downtown where red lanterns decorated the streets for the Lunar New Year festivities. A police car was parked near a large banner that proclaimed ‘Happy Year of the Rabbit!’

The shooting occurred at Star Ballroom Dance Studio, a few blocks from city hall on Monterey Park’s main thoroughfare of Garvey Avenue, which is dotted with strip malls of small businesses whose signs are in both English and Chinese. Cantonese and Mandarin are both widely spoken, Chinese holidays are celebrated, and Chinese films are screened regularly in the city.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said Sunday that President Biden should have ‘a lot of regrets’ over his mishandling of classified documents that has led to a federal investigation and search of his Wilmington, Delaware, home.

Biden raised eyebrows last week after he declared he had ‘no regrets,’ after several batches were discovered at his home and the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C.

Manchin told ‘Meet the Press’ anchor Chuck Todd the controversy could likely be blamed on human error, but that the president should at least admit he was ‘irresponsible.’

‘To put those in unsecure spaces is irresponsible,’ Manchin said. ‘I think he should have a lot of regrets.’

‘I’m going hold someone accountable, but basically the buck stops with me,’ he said. ‘We’re all human and make mistakes. I can tell you, I don’t think anyone intended – he sure didn’t intend for it to fall in the wrong hands and use it against our country. I know he didn’t intend that to happen. Could it have happened? I don’t know. And, yeah, you just might as well say, ‘Listen, it’s responsible. It was something we should have had a better check and balance on.’’

While touring California to observe storm recovery efforts on Thursday, Biden said, ‘We’re fully cooperating and looking forward to getting this resolved quickly.’ 

‘We found a handful of documents were filed in the wrong place,’ Biden said. He added: ‘I think you’re going to find there’s nothing there. I have no regrets. I’m following what the lawyers have told me they want me to do. It’s exactly what we’re doing. There’s no there there.’ 

During a press briefing, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced Biden was retreating to his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, for the weekend. Asked what he meant when he said ‘no regrets,’ Jean-Pierre refused to comment further. 

‘I’m not going to get into specifics, or I’m not going to go beyond what the president has said,’ she told reporters. 

‘I will reiterate from here … basically what he said to all of you, many times at this point, that he does indeed take classified information seriously, he does indeed take classified documents seriously. I’m just not going to go beyond that,’ she added. 

Jean-Pierre refused to comment on additional follow-up questions, letting ‘the president’s words stand for itself.’ 

The White House said Biden attorneys discovered Obama administration-era classified documents and official records on four separate occasions — on Nov. 2 days before the midterm elections at the offices of the Penn Biden Center in Washington, on Dec. 20 in the garage of the president’s Wilmington home, and on Nov. 11 and 12 in the president’s home library. The discoveries only became public this month after CBS News broke the story and the White House was forced to respond.

On Saturday, the FBI searched Biden’s Wilmington home and found additional classified documents dating back to the president’s time as a senator.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Robert Hur, a former Maryland U.S. attorney, to serve as special counsel to oversee an inquiry into the documents. The special counsel investigation into Biden was launched just months after a similar one into former President Donald Trump, who kept classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida. In that case, the FBI raided Trump’s property after the agency suspected there were more documents than previously believed based on interviews and failed negotiations to hand them over. Trump has claimed he did no wrong in the matter.

The White House has emphasized that Biden’s case is different because his team cooperated with the DOJ and National Archives, while Trump’s team resisted requests to turn over the classified documents. 

Manchin appeared to agree with that assessment Sunday, but said the duel investigations of two presidents is still incredible.

‘I mean, it’s just hard to believe that in the United States of America we have a former president and the current president basically in the same situation. How does this happen?’ he asked.

‘Is one more reckless and irresponsible than the other? I can’t answer that question,’ he said. ‘But I think the special counsel will do a better job than the politicians and the political circus that’s going to follow.’

Fox News’ Bradford Betz and Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

President Biden’s former COVID-19 czar Jeff Zients will soon replace Ron Klain as White House chief of staff, The Washington Post reported Sunday.

Fox News Digital has not independently confirmed the plans. Zients served as Biden’s COVID response coordinator from early 2021 through April 2022. Klain reportedly plans to step down as chief of staff in the coming days after serving in the role since Biden’s inauguration.

President Biden has touted Zients’ work since the beginning of his administration when he tapped him to lead the administration’s COVID-19 efforts.

‘There is no one better at delivering results than Jeff,’ Biden said at the time.

Biden credited Zients for putting ‘decades of management experience to work formulating and executing on a plan to build the infrastructure we needed to deliver vaccines, tests, treatment, and masks to hundreds of millions of Americans.’

Zients was previously a co-chair for the Biden transition team and has worked at Facebook, The Advisory Board Company and CEB.

Klain, a longtime Biden confidante and Democratic operative, was the longest-serving chief of staff to a Democratic president. He previously served as Biden’s chief of staff when he was vice president during the Obama administration and is an attorney and former lobbyist.

A graduate of Harvard Law School, Klain began his career working for the then-senator from Delaware. In the late 1980s, when Biden led the Senate Judiciary Committee, Klain served as the committee’s chief counsel. Furthermore, he was an adviser and speechwriter for Biden’s unsuccessful 1988 and 2008 White House campaigns.

The shake-up comes as Biden is facing the biggest scandal of his presidency so far, with stashes of misplaced classified documents continuing to be found at his private residence in Wilmington, Delaware.

Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate the matter earlier in January, tapping former U.S. Attorney Robert Hur.

The timeline for Klain’s departure and Zients’ arrival as chief of staff remains unclear.

The White House did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Fox News’ Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

Democrats have been noticeably silent on the anti-police violence that unraveled in Atlanta over the weekend after rioters set a police vehicle ablaze and smashed windows in response to the police-involved shooting of an armed activist days earlier.

Protesters had gathered Saturday in response to the death of 26-year-old Manuel Esteban Paez Teran, who was killed by officers on Wednesday after he allegedly refused demands from authorities and shot a state trooper at the site of the new Atlanta Public Safety Training Center.

The protests on Saturday began peacefully before spiraling into chaotic riots, resulting in at least six arrests. 

Photos showed the activists allegedly lit an Atlanta PD vehicle on fire in addition to targeting the Atlanta Police Foundation building with rocks and fireworks.

Caution tape was also wrapped around several buildings, including a Wells Fargo location that suffered several broken windows, photos at the scene showed.

Fox News Digital reached out to multiple Democrats, many of whom had previously been vocal on defunding the police, about whether they condoned the violence and if these types of protests were considered a threat to democracy. However, inquiries sent to the White House, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Reps. Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, Summer Lee and Delia Ramirez went unreturned.

Georgia Democrats and Georgia state Rep. Park Cannon also did not return requests for comment.

However, Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., released a statement Saturday evening saying, ‘Peaceful protest is a sacred Constitutional right but violence is unacceptable, cannot be permitted or tolerated, and must cease immediately.’

‘Atlanta Police have arrested 6 people so far, some of whom were carrying explosives,’ Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, a Democrat, tweeted Saturday evening. ‘These individuals meant violence and used the cover of peaceful protest to conceal their motives. Our law enforcement teams were prepared and resolved the situation swiftly.’

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, on Saturday slammed the destruction and said violence of any kind will not be tolerated. 

‘While the state continues to respect peaceful protest, acts of violence against person or property will not be tolerated. Those committing such unlawful acts will be arrested and prosecuted fully,’ Kemp said.

Activists had been camped out for months on an 85-acre planned facility known as ‘Cop City’ to protest the planned training center in Atlanta. Teran was shot and killed after authorities tried to remove the protesters from the plot of land on Wednesday.

A total of seven people were arrested and charged with domestic terrorism when the campsites were cleared Wednesday.

The Twitter account Scenes from the Atlanta Forest had called for a ‘Night of Rage’ to enact ‘reciprocal violence to be done to the police and their allies,’ according to a post.

Fox News’ Emma Colton and Lawrence Richard contributed to this report.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

Say what you want, but January has proven to be a very reliable predictor of U.S. stock market action from February through December since 1950 and, with just a little more than a week left to go in January 2023, market action is suggesting that we’re going to have a very strong year. It’s just one more historical fact that suggests higher prices are ahead of us. I’ve also mentioned recently that of the previous 13 bear markets since 1950, excluding the 2022 cyclical bear market, 6 ended during the calendar month of October. If October 2022 proves to be the ultimate low, that’ll make 7 out of 14, 50% of all bear markets. That’s another piece of compelling evidence that the bear market low is IN.

If I step away from historical tendencies, however, and simply look at the S&P 500 chart, the downtrend line since the beginning of 2022 is what nearly every technician is watching:

The downtrend line currently intersects at approximately 4000, depending on how you draw your trend line. In my view, that’s the first critical level to clear in order to confirm the end of the bear market decline. Check out the subtle difference that we’re seeing in January 2023, though. After the last 3 death crosses and bearish PPO centerline crosses, we saw selling accelerate and new lows quickly reached. We’re seeing something entirely different this time. The PPO has turned back above centerline resistance in bullish fashion and we’ve also seen a bullish “golden cross” just a few weeks after the death cross suggested we’d head lower. What’s happening? Well, I can tell you what I think is happening. We’re chopping in preparation for a solid year ahead. Many are waiting for price action to confirm what’s been taking place beneath the surface for months. I told our members and the entire investing public that June 2022 had the characteristics of a major market bottom and that it was time to concentrate on long positions, letting go of the bear mentality that was appropriate during the first six months of 2022. I don’t think I could have been much clearer:

Did we eventually move slightly lower in October? Yes we did. I’m still pretty happy, though, with my signals that suggested shorting the S&P 500 at the beginning of the year and moving to a long position in mid-June 2022. The S&P 500 closed lower than 3636 on 5 separate trading days from September 30th through October 14th. Since my bottom call, the S&P 500 has closed higher on 143 different trading days. I think I’ve been on the right side of the market since June and 2023 will prove that the October 2022 low was THE ultimate bear market low. Waiting for further signals, in my humble opinion, will result in lower returns, but I suppose time will tell. I remain very bullish and said throughout 2022 that the bear market was of a cyclical (short-term) nature.

Another critical technical component that tells me the worst is behind us is that we’re seeing buying with bad news. The October low saw a massive reversing candle after a much-worse-than-expected September CPI inflation report. After a gap lower, buying was intense ALL DAY LONG. Check it out:

Another very positive development is that after a brutal 4th quarter for many growth stocks, the sun is suddenly shining in 2023. The 10-year treasury yield ($TNX) set a new recent low and this time, growth is performing much better than value. That’s a very important change in market character, because many of these growth stocks have large market cap valuations and can much more easily move our benchmark indices like the S&P 500. Check out the sudden improvement in growth stocks in 2023:

The drop in the TNX in November/December didn’t have quite the same bullish effect on large cap growth stocks (IWF) that the June/July drop had. Growth vs. value (IWF:IWD), however, is moving solidly higher in 2023, clearly benefiting from the lower TNX. I have highlighted in red the months of negative relative momentum that growth stocks have experienced. While things have certainly improved, we haven’t seen any significant confirmation of long-term renewed strength. The bulls still have work to do.

An encouraging part, however, has been key individual stocks’ resilience to bad fundamental news. Take Salesforce.com (CRM) as an example. It downtrended throughout 2022 and was the Dow Jones worst-performing component stock for the year. But then, after announcing 8,000 layoffs, or 10% of its work force, CRM rallied strongly:

The green arrow highlights the successful 20-day EMA test the day that the layoffs were announced and you can see the subsequent rally. CRM has now broken above its recent downtrend channel and is on the verge of clearing important relative strength resistance vs. its software peers ($DJUSSW).

Last week, at our quarterly “Sneak Preview: Q3 Earnings” event, I highlighted Netflix (NFLX) as one of my favorite companies heading into earnings season. NFLX absolutely loves the month of January and January 2023 has been no exception. Check out this seasonality chart:

Over the last 20 years, NFLX has averaged gaining 15.7 during the month of January. That’s incredible and is the reason why NFLX was our favorite seasonal stock for January 2023 and passed along to our EB.com members to open the month. Those bullish thoughts proved to be correct as NFLX is currently higher by approximately 17% this month. Quarterly results were reported on Thursday and were solid, as expected.

Tomorrow, I’ll be hosting our “Q4 Earnings” event at 4:30pm ET and I’ll be providing my favorite 10 companies that will report earnings over the next 2-3 weeks as earnings season really heats up. I’ll also disclose the 10 companies that I’d completely avoid heading into earnings. I’ll discuss dozens of other companies reporting quarterly results as well. I use a key technical indicator to evaluate companies prior to their quarterly earnings report and it’s proven to be extremely effective in predicting reported results. If you’d like to join me tomorrow, simply CLICK HERE and sign up for a FREE 30-day trial. You can check out our entire service at no cost for an entire month! I hope to see you tomorrow!

Happy trading!

Tom

Justice Department prosecutors are reportedly considering requesting a search of President Biden’s home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware after several sets of classified documents were found at his Wilmington, Delaware home in recent weeks.

News of the consideration comes days after FBI officials searched Biden’s Wilmington home at the invitation of the White House. There, officials uncovered a fourth batch of misplaced classified documents, leading DOJ officials to consider searches at other locations connected to Biden, according to CBS News.

The DOJ has not pursued a search warrant for any of Biden’s properties, however. The Friday search in Wilmington was consensual, and prosecutors would plan to request access to Biden’s other properties.

Friday’s batch of documents were the fourth to be found since November, and the third to be found inside Biden’s Wilmington home. They date back to his time in the Senate, while the other three batches date back to his time as vice president.

FBI and other DOJ personnel arrived at Biden’s Wilmington home at 9:45 a.m. Friday and searched the house for roughly 12 hours, leaving at 10:30 p.m. 

U.S. Attorney John Lausch coordinated the effort. He is maintaining a prominent role in the investigation while special counsel Robert Hur gets up to speed.

Officials recovered six items consisting of documents marked classified and took them into custody.

The search came after White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre assured reporters in mid-January that the search for new documents was over. Nevertheless, new documents were found at the Wilmington residence Jan. 14 and again on Jan. 20.

Biden’s lawyers uncovered the first batch of classified documents inside the Penn Biden Center offices in November and said they immediately handed over the documents to the National Archives.

The trove of mishandled documents led Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel to investigate the matter, tapping Hur.

Meanwhile, Republicans on Capitol Hill are ramping up scrutiny into the investigation, with House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer, R-K.y., suggesting there may have been a ‘coverup.’

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