Trading the Markets: February 18, 2026

0:00Hey, everyone.

0:01Kris Bullock:As you know, on this podcast, I bring the best guests in the world at that nexus of understanding of macro crypto in the exponential age of technology. If you're enjoying the show, a quick five-star rating goes a long way. It helps us grow and keep these conversations coming with the best guests in the world. Thanks a lot.

0:24Kris Bullock:got another great show for you today we're going to take a look at the macro environment chris has a bunch of charts teed up and we're going to take a look at one stock that is acting like it's alt season so stay tuned we're going to dive into all of that i mean that's a 200 percent increase. But Chris is going to dive into all of that. Chris, happy Wednesday. How are you?

0:50Bijan Maleki:Doing well, thank you. Yes. So I want to start with talking about the stock markets, because that's really the story these days. Crypto is just doing what it's doing. And until it decides to reverse, we're going to talk about stocks. So really, the thing that's been going on with stocks lately is we know we've seen a decline off the top. We've seen a bit of a chop sideways in all the markets. We've seen the NASDAQ in particular bleed out a bit because of the tech stocks, software stocks primarily, and we've had a bit of a bounce. And so really what I've been looking at today is, is this bounce for real or is this just a dead cat bounce and we're going to leg lower?

1:28And so I wanted to dig into some just kind of macro indicators and some things I'm

1:34Bijan Maleki:seeing and see if there's some meat on the bone, so to speak. So let's look at just first of all, I want to kind of zoom in on the NASDAQ here. We had a, it basically came down and touched its 200 day moving average as support, which we can see it's touched on three different times, you know, really in the past year. Well, not past year, sorry, past four months, whatever. And it's sort of sitting right there. I had a nice bounce off of it too. And so again, I was like, this is at the bottom of the range. It's a nice bounce. Are we going to get rejected at the 20 day moving average here and roll back over?

2:06Bijan Maleki:or do we think we're going to move back up to the top of the range and start setting higher highs again? And so I pivoted over and started looking at a few things that caught my eye. And one of them, we've got a couple here. One is this chart here, we're looking at high beta stocks versus low volatility stocks. And we've seen a bottom and a bounce there. So this is telling us that there's more risk appetite coming into the market. There's basically more going into higher beta stocks. And that's a good sign. Also, another good sign is this chart here. Similarly, we've got consumer discretionary versus consumer staples.

2:45Bijan Maleki:Also a sign of just risk coming in, consumer discretionary bottoming, having a nice bounce. In addition, we have the financial sector down here also having a nice bounce. And then we've seen, again, I mentioned tech stocks bleeding out here and software stocks here, they look like they've also seen a bit of a bottom or at least a, you know, a stabilizing pattern, so to speak. So this is all signs that things potentially could keep going. And then I kind of took it a step further and I said, well, let's look at credit spreads because that's also going to tell us what kind of risk is going on. And right now, credit spreads actually remain historically quite tight.

3:25Bijan Maleki:Like they haven't moved much at all. And then this down here at the bottom is a breadth indicator that basically just tells us what percentage of the markets are moving in an upward trend, basically. And right now, that trend has been steadily increasing and is generally moving up. So all of this tells me that there could be a little bit more to it. It might not just be a technical relief bounce and that from a macro standpoint, we are seeing more risk into the market. We are seeing things generally stable, things sort of moving in the right direction. So I do feel pretty good about this. What I'm going to keep looking for, though, is for this breadth indicator to continue to rise up.

4:07Bijan Maleki:I'd like to see it get up into the 70s right now. It's at about 62, 63. So if it can get up into the 70s, that's going to tell me that things are moving really across the board and not just specific to a very narrow range of stocks. And that's what we want to see. We want to see everything moving sort of all at once. That's going to tell us that things are really ideally healthy. So I like what I'm seeing. It's not like blowing the doors off yet, but it's still just, again, moving in the right direction. I think there's a little bit more to it than just a technical reflexive bounce. And so I feel pretty good about things.

4:44Bijan Maleki:We've seen a huge bounce just in like AI stocks. If you can see my watch list, I'm not going to get into detail of what these are, but just the point being, there's a lot of green here we can see and very little red. And so we're seeing generally a bounce in terms of like hardware scarcity, things that are AI adjacent, you know, across the board are doing well. So I like what I'm seeing there too. Kind of a wild story that you touched on at the top of the show, Bijan, as part of that narrative, rack space technology that they're an IT company. They make like server racks and sort of hardware infrastructure for data centers and things like that.

5:22Bijan Maleki:They announced a partnership with Palantir just this morning. And we can see based off the back of that announcement, just since yesterday, their stock is up 240 % on the day. I mean, so, you know, again, this, like you said, this is, your alt season right here that we keep talking about in crypto that everybody's waiting for. Like it's happening. It's just in AI stocks right now. So that's the headlines these days. We can get into crypto in a minute. But yeah, I just wanted to kind of start off the show, give a brief sort of breakdown of what we were looking at macro wise and then go from there.

6:01Kris Bullock:Yeah, absolutely. And just a reminder, guys, if you have any questions, just throw them into the live chat on X or platform and we'll see what we can get to. Now, Chris, we saw some promising signs just a moment ago about the market having a potential rebound. And I love that it's not just one sign, it's multiple things that give you kind of your reasoning behind that. Now, how connected do you think that is to the crypto market? Is it as simple as once these things start turning or we get confirmed turns on this, it'll start trickling into crypto or is that correlation just completely broken at this point?

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7:03Bijan Maleki:It's largely, I think it's largely broken. Now, that's not to say it's permanently broken, but certainly the correlation is off right now. So if we look at Bitcoin right here, we can see that a lot of people have been sort of equating Bitcoin to like a software stock. That's been a constant narrative. And if I overlay, let me just show what I mean by that. So if we look at this, so here's Bitcoin. If we overlay IGV on top of it.

7:38Bijan Maleki:So this is like the software sector in tech. And we can see that, I mean, they're moving almost right like neck and neck with each other. And so, yeah, crypto is sort of the bastard stepchild of the software tech sector at the moment, essentially. And I think that until that narrative breaks, it's going to continue to go down. Now, that's not to say that it won't. I think that crypto and Bitcoin in particular will have its day. I just don't see it happening right away. And I think really what needs to happen for that to take place is just we're not seeing enough risk on yet. Like we're still seeing things are still a little tenuous, still a little choppy.

8:23Bijan Maleki:There's plenty of geopolitical uncertainty right now going on. There's plenty of, you know, Fed uncertainty going on right now. And there's a lot of things that we need to change. We need to have the Clarity Act come into place. I think until the new Fed share comes in and starts implementing some of those policy changes, crypto is going to stay just sort of meh. You know, it probably will go down lower than it is right now. It's been chopping sideways, as we can see here, for a week or two. I don't expect this to last. Even if we do get a rally up to like the 74 level, I would look at that as more of a like sell into the rally kind of thing, short the rally.

9:03Bijan Maleki:Then like we're back on and it's going to go to all-time highs again. I still think that I've been maintaining for a while now that it's going to be some months really before we ultimately bottom out in crypto. And I continue to say Q2, Q3 for the bottom and the resumption of any kind of real bull trend. And that's provided a lot of those things that I just mentioned go right. You know, the new venture coming in actually implements policies that are conducive to, you know, a good liquidity environment for crypto. Same thing with the Clarity Act. You know, like none of those things in and of themselves are going to flip the switch, but we also need all of those things in place in order for the shift to happen.

9:45Bijan Maleki:And so that's really what I'm waiting for in the sense or with crypto, like there are still some good things going on. I keep mentioning like Hyperliquid as a thing, although Hyperliquid has since leveled off a little bit, but it's holding support right here. I still maintain that it's a good buy. And that's primarily because of its involvement with or its ability to trade commodity perps on chain now. So people are trading gold and futures perps basically on Hyperliquid. That's benefiting it. And then separately from that, PAX Gold continues to be the story because gold continues to be the story.

10:22Bijan Maleki:Gold has really, I think, bottomed out and is going to continue to remain strong, certainly outpace Bitcoin and the like. And I think, too, I wanted to touch on the story. I saw the story this morning that Wintermute, that large market maker, they are going to start offering a OTC desk for tokenized gold products, basically. And so that's great because the more liquidity into that sector, the better. That makes it more of a viable option for larger holders that want to stay within the crypto ecosystem and continue to sort of hedge while using crypto rails. I was surprised to see that basically on-chain gold trading volume exceeded the top five gold ETFs combined in Q4.

11:09Bijan Maleki:So this is a viable sector that people are using and they like it because you can trade gold 24-7 basically on crypto rails as opposed to having to go through the traditional finance ETFs and only do it during market hours and things like that. So this is going to continue to grow. And I think that that's only a good thing. And I think that that remains a really strong option for people right now who want to stabilize their bleeding crypto portfolio and don't want to like leave the crypto ecosystem. I think PAX Gold is a really, really strong approach and, you know, get on it, basically.

11:46Kris Bullock:yeah and i think that's great for the people that are trading gold like you said you're trading 24 7 so even people that aren't normally on crypto rails could be interested in coming into this because they they just have a new avenue to trade and and just more time to trade it and then i love that it just keeps that money within the crypto ecosystem so making it easier to eventually swap that pax g into a bitcoin or you know whatever else uh that that you're interested in so that That could be something promising down the line once the gold hype dies down a bit, if that does happen. Let me see here.

12:24Kris Bullock:We got a question that came in from Zara to here. What about oil? Why is oil surging now? I know there's probably a better question for Mikkel and Andreas. but Chris, do you have any thoughts? Can we help Zahra to hear out here on that one?

12:49Bijan Maleki:Well, to be fair, you're right. It is a little out of my wheelhouse, but I do believe it has a lot to do with what's going on with the US and Iran nuclear talks right now and just is the US going to go to war with Iran? And that's playing a role in the price of oil, I think. But beyond that, yeah, I think you're going to need to talk to Andreas Mikkel to really get some more depth on that. But yeah, that's my basic knowledge of the situation.

13:16Kris Bullock:Yeah, and I mean, like whenever you're talking war games, right, the price of oil is always going up. Iran, what, they control, the Strait of Hormuz controls what, like 80 % of like oil transport? I'm not sure, don't hold me to that. And then when Iran is talking about shutting that down, um well you'll you'll get wild fluctuations in oil prices um so that's probably why zara

13:43Bijan Maleki:yeah i mean oil is really the most uh volatile when it comes to geopolitical tension you know um i think it's the stuff going on with venezuela of course as well too you know so there's a lot going on that that impacts oil directly with both iran like you said and and venezuela so So that, in a nutshell, is why.

14:08Kris Bullock:Yeah. Zarta here, definitely tune into Macro Mondays because Andreas and Mikkel usually touch on that kind of stuff every Monday. So hopefully that helped you get a little idea. But for more in-depth, definitely check them out. Eli wants you to talk about SPX. We need SPX 6900 stock trading. Believe in something.

14:39Bijan Maleki:Well, I mean, you know, with SPX, it's just like the rest of crypto. Everything is moving in sync right now. And SPX is no exception to that. It is showing some strength lately. One thing I can tell you, here's what I can tell you with SPX. I made a little dashboard that I've been digging into with SPX. And we've seen declines in holders across the board, again, with every crypto right now. That's obvious. We know because everything is down. But we've seen a nice bounce in particular with whales, you know, sort of 100 ,000 plus token holders. That sector has bounced more than any of the different sort of token holder sectors.

15:19Bijan Maleki:So that tells me that large buyers are stepping in to buy the dip with SPX right now. And to me, that's a good sign. That means that people believe in it and people believe in it with conviction. And so, yeah, I mean, I can't say go buy it or don't, but I can just tell you what I'm seeing here and that we are seeing an uptick in large 100 ,000 plus token holder buyers. They've bought the dip off the lows and that's continued since going back to, what is this date February 4th. So two weeks, it's been in an uptrend as far as large holders. So do with that what you will. Yeah, I just can't help but think that there's going to be a time

16:04Kris Bullock:where this starts coming back again, fast and furious, like it has done so many times. And these mean coins aren't going to go away. And MSPX is going to be one of them that likely comes back when the memes start pumping again, when risk on is the environment. Absolutely. Okay, we have a question about gold, actually, from Justin, an investor here. Hey, happy to see you guys. I had a question about gold. Whenever it rallied, it stayed up like five months more or less. Any thoughts on that? It's about to be five months.

16:44Bijan Maleki:Whenever it rallied, it stayed up five months or more.

16:50Bijan Maleki:I'm not quite, I understand the question.

16:53Kris Bullock:I think he was saying it rallied. And then, you know, if I'm, if I'm getting the question, right. He thinks he's saying it rallied and then it stayed at that level, kind of trading sideways for five months before rolled over.

17:05Bijan Maleki:I see. I see. Okay. Well, let's look at it just like on a monthly, on a monthly. So I can kind of see what you're saying. We've got, here's a five month chunk where it, and then it stabilizes. Here's about another four or five months chunk and then it stabilizes. Yeah, to be fair, you're not wrong. Looking at just on a monthly basis, we are sitting at like DMARC 13 levels. So it's definitely due for a bit of sideways price action based on this. So that's a good question. Will it do that? Will it stabilize and trade sideways for two or three months or will it continue to rally? um based on the history the odds are it will kind of go sideways um if not even correct a little bit but because like here here's a well here's a nine that it kept going but here this was a 13 and also here and it did go sideways this was a 13 here it actually corrected a bit um also a 13 here and it went sideways for a while so we'll see um but you're not wrong that's i mean yes that's a that's a good observation.

18:10Bijan Maleki:And, you know, this doesn't, the past results don't predict the future. So that doesn't mean that because it's done it four or five times in a row that it's automatically going to do that again. But the odds are in, in favor of that happening, I would say. Yeah.

18:25Kris Bullock:And just like, it's just been running for, for so long, it's broken all time highs. It just feels like it's due for a correction just outside of, of the chart. It just feels like it's been running for a very long time for something that traditionally doesn't like have the moment that it just had so i can't help but feel that's gonna die down soon but just an investor we shall see but thanks for the observation definitely something we'll keep an eye on um speaking of keeping an eye on things ai guys obviously as you know we've been talking about it more and more. You've been seeing it all over the timeline more and more.

19:06Kris Bullock:You've been seeing the AI stocks ripping, the infrastructure ripping. So we're going to be keeping an eye on AI a lot more on this show as well. Chris, do you want to tell them a little bit about what we have coming to trading the markets?

19:26Bijan Maleki:Yeah, yeah. So starting next week, I think, Next week, the format of the show is going to change. And we're going to focus basically on AI, like you said. And not AI stocks or AI investing, but rather how we use AI to become better investors. And what I mean by that is how we use AI to research and distill information from podcasts and Substack and whatever articles and things like that. or how we use AI to create indicators or dashboards or news releases or anything like that. So much of us within the Real Vision community are using AI every single day to improve just our efficiency in how we go about our investing practices.

20:14Bijan Maleki:And so we thought it would be good to actually focus a show on that and just talk about how we're using AI specifically. I'm going to talk about, hey, I made an indicator that I needed. So I went on Claude Code and I said, I need an indicator to do XYZ. And it made me an indicator. And so I'm going to talk about that indicator and why I needed it and maybe what I typed in to sort of get that output and actually share in depth how we're using AI and have it be like a community type show where we have community members come on every week and share how they're using AI too, so that we can use the show as like a hive mind, like a giant AI show and tell so that we can inspire each other to get out there and get our hands dirty and use AI more to improve our just investing skills and investing outcomes and things like that.

21:01Bijan Maleki:And so I thought it would be a really fun show. I don't really know of anything else like that out there. If there is, I haven't seen it. And I think it's cool to like, spend some time talking about ways people are using AI and so that we can be inspired to go out and use AI that way ourselves. And so I'm excited. I think it's going to be great. And I'm looking forward to it.