Economic data, including payrolls and retail sales, will not be a reliable indicator of economic trends over the coming months due to reporting issues and external price shocks.

“So, to be honest, any economic metric, whether it's, you know, next week, this week, last week, the month ahead, I don't think any of them are really going to be all that significant because I just don't think they're going to reflect economic trend over the next couple months.”

Ed Carson advises investors that when stock fundamentals and technicals begin to weaken, they should act quickly to scale out of their positions.

“when stocks, you know, there might be a positive story and there's reasons why you were bullish on it, but if the technicals start breaking down, you have to recognize that and scale out and sometimes scale out pretty quickly because these turned in a hurry”

The high year-to-date share price performance of retailers and machinery companies sets a very high expectation for their upcoming earnings reports.

“And I want to point out that the stock is up something like 19% year-to date. So the bar is pretty high going into these results.”

Deere's recent quarterly earnings results were strong and indicate that the machinery cycle is likely troughing in 2026.

“It was a really solid beat and race quarter and I think this kind of gives us the all clear on the cycle and that you know 26 will be the trough earnings year.”

Walmart's conservative financial guidance is a typical strategic approach for the company to manage expectations.

“They did come out with conservative guidance, which is pretty typical for Walmart. Come out with uh cautious guidance and then exceed it later in the year, which is sort of their playbook.”