The trade war with China is heating up, while France is melting down and both are not good indicators for the global economy. Luxury living in Paris has been reduced to living with a gas mask as our friends photo sent to us this Saturday attests to.

US equities continued their wild ride, going from deeply oversold to overbought and back to oversold where it currently sits when measured on a short-term basis.

U.S. Stocks ended down -4% on average for the week, putting the Russell 2000 down -5.5% for the year. This is not a big surprise as tariffs have hit domestic companies the hardest. These smaller companies are not in a strong position to weather the storm.

FANG stocks, including Apple, have not fared well either with Apple giving up all it gains for 2018.

Domestically, indictments for Cohen and Manafort are coming to a head and the fallout for President Trump is yet to play out. The Fed is backing off on more raises based on weaker job growth and a very shaky stock market.

The selloff has been exacerbated by Trump’s tweets attacking the new Fed Chiefs aggressive policies.

This week’s takeaways are:

• Risk Gauges retreated to full risk off.
• Both the Dow Industrials (the leading index) and Value Stocks (VTV) fell from bull to distribution phases by Friday’s close.
• Most key sectors are in bearish market phases apart from Utilities which is in a bullish phase.
• The Long Bond ETF (TLT) roared, and is now poised to take out its 50-week moving average as investor flee equities.
• Gold is breaking out to the upside and pushed thru its 200-week moving average and about to punch thru based on our Triple Play Indicator (If you’d like more information on our Triple Play Indictors, go here)

All in all, the picture for global equities is eroding and finding decent safe havens is getting harder to find.