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Posted January 14, 2026 at 12:02 pm
Markets may look calm on the surface, but beneath the flat tape are growing questions around rates, bonds, earnings and sector risk. In this fast paced Midweek Minute, Jeff Praissman and Scott Bauer break down what’s really driving sentiment and what investors should be watching next.
The following is a summary of a live audio recording and may contain errors in spelling or grammar. Although IBKR has edited for clarity no material changes have been made.
Hey everyone. This is Jeff Praissman with the Interactive Brokers Podcast. It’s my pleasure to welcome back to the podcast studio Scott Bauer from Prosper Trading Academy. Hey Scott, how are you?
I am great, Jeff. How about yourself?
Good, good. I hope you had a happy New Year. I know we’re like halfway through January already, but I haven’t seen you in a while. Hopefully, good New Year, good holiday season. And as we do every Wednesday when you come in, we talk about the markets—not just what happened the past week, but also what might be coming up ahead with the market and economic events. So let’s hit the ground running. How did the major stock indices perform last week? And you?
It’s funny, Jeff, because right off the top of my head, I would’ve said that the markets were down, right? But when I actually went back and looked at the week, we’re almost flat across the board. The S&P literally flat, the Dow up slightly, the Nasdaq flat. It certainly seems like the overriding trajectory would be that we are negative, that we’re down, but we’re actually not.
Yeah, it’s funny what whole, I guess, mental image goes into it, right? ’Cause you would think we’re down. But when you actually look at the data, like we’re flat. But I think you’re not alone in thinking—if you pulled eight outta 10 people in the street that follow the markets, I think they would probably agree with you. “Oh, we’re down,” but we’re not.
There’s no shortage of headlines, right? No shortage of real events. And unfortunately, not all of ’em positive. But what were some of the key ones—events just popping up as far as economic events or real events—that seemed to be taking center stage, at least for the short term, that you think had some impact on the market?
Absolutely. Geopolitical events are all over the place right now. There’s too many to actually name, so there’s a lot of headline risk there. When we take it to what’s happening here in eco data—CPI yesterday, good print; PPI data this morning, really hot. So that is very confusing, in my opinion, for the marketplace. Not for what the Fed’s gonna do in January, because the consensus was they weren’t gonna do anything anyway. But moving forward here, what are they going to do? And then obviously, with the kickoff of earnings season, we all always look to the banks, which do kick off the earnings season. And so far, those reports have not been great. I would say that the numbers for the banks haven’t been bad, but the market reaction—certainly not positive at all. That could have something to do with the 10% limit on credit card fees. Maybe not. But as you said, there’s just news completely across the board here.
And you mentioned earnings—it’s basically kicking off earnings season. So the week ahead, what are some of the big earnings, and are there any big economic indicators coming out that investors would be on the watch for from now until, like, next time we talk next Wednesday?
We get more banks. The big guys like Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet—they’re all the following weeks. So there could be some lead-up. Those stocks have really been under pressure recently, so we could see some lead-up to that. But I think what we really need to watch is this bond market, as we have talked about. And you know that 4.2 on the 10-year—that has been that magic resistance. And I think it’s been four months since it traded over that. We’ve tested it repeatedly, and the market has hung in there, and we haven’t seen it break through. And if we start to see this eco data, much like PPI was—some strength here—and even retail sales, which was pretty good, that could push bond yields on that 10-year over 4.20, which I believe would be somewhat negative for the equity markets.
And so you led me right into my next question—my final question. But I was gonna ask you: what trends or sectors might present some opportunities or risks for investors for the next couple weeks, end of the month, or whatever. Obviously, like 2025 is the year of AI, so I think we can just maybe ignore AI for right now and see if there’s anything else out there.
Yeah, a couple I have my eye on is energy-related. I think with this rally that we’ve seen accrue over the last week or so, pretty much based on geopolitical events, I think it’s a good opportunity to get short in that sector—whether it’s through an individual stock, oil, crude futures, whatever it might be. I think there is an opportunity there because we’re still seeing record production. Demand is still not up to snuff. I also like cybersecurity. Some of the stocks that have gotten hit recently—Snowflake, I know Palo Alto was in the news. There’s some news this morning as well. So cybersecurity is one that I would watch for potential upside.
Scott, as always, this has been great. For our listeners, you can find more from scott@prospertradinguh.com. And also on our website, go to ibkr.com, go to Education. You can see past podcasts, webinars, and articles as well from Prosper Trading Academy. Scott, thanks a lot for coming by, and yeah, look forward to seeing you next week again.
We will see you next week. Thanks so much, Jeff.
All right.
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