Ryan Redfern took his portfolios from fully invested to about 80% in mid-July and moved what is left toward value, and he is still bullish — on a calendar that starts in November.
Most of the caution on air this month is about what the Federal Reserve does on Wednesday. Redfern's is about the price of oil. A rate rise, he said, is the one thing the market will ignore.
"I think the probability is there but I'm not I don't think the market cares at the moment. I really don't."
Redfern is chief investment officer at Shadowridge Asset Management and allocates by the charts — moving averages, the advance-decline line, the count of new lows on the New York Stock Exchange — rather than by earnings, and will run a portfolio at 80% invested or at 150% with leverage depending on what those charts say.
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Here are the 12 predictions that matter.
👤 Guest: Ryan Redfern, Chief Investment Officer at Shadowridge Asset Management, who allocates on technical signals and is a repeat guest on the show
🎙️ Host: Chuck Jaffe, financial journalist and host of Money Life
🧩 Other segments: Eric Zwick of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and Steve Niccastro of Clever Real Estate
📰 Published: 15 September 2026 on YouTube (Money Life with Chuck Jaffe)
🔴 YouTube | 🟣 Apple Podcasts | 🔗 Episode page | ⏱️ length not available
Key Takeaways
The eight months from the midterm election to the following June have never been negative in the data he uses
His explanation is gridlock: the party in power loses seats, less gets done, and the market pays for the stability
A rate rise this week is the one event he expects the market to ignore
The 2-year Treasury yield sits about 50 basis points above the Fed funds rate, which on the rule he follows implies two more increases
What he thinks the market actually cares about is oil above $100 a barrel
The market's internals and its price have stopped agreeing
The advance-decline line has fallen off a cliff while the index holds, and new lows on the New York Stock Exchange are over 200 against a normal 100 to 150
He cut from 100% invested to about 80% in mid-July and shifted into value
Value beating growth is itself the bearish signal — it goes with sell-offs and choppy sideways markets
He expected 2026 to be the bad year, on an 18-year real estate cycle, and it did not happen
A 40-year cycle in Treasury yields has three or four years run so far, and he says that makes government bonds not worth owning
A 5% coupon does not pay for a 10% fall in the principal
Stocks and bonds will keep falling together the way they did in 2022, not the way they did in 2020
1. The Best 8 Months Ahead
Jaffe opened by asking whether there is more upside potential or downside risk in a market that keeps climbing the wall of worry and flirting with record highs. Redfern's answer was both, and the split runs on the calendar.
Seasonality is against him right now. September is historically the worst month of the year, and the next stretch of October is part of the same problem.
The trend signals are not. The market is above its 200-day long-term moving averages, which is where it historically holds up, and both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq were holding their 50-day exponential moving averages on the day, which he called good support.
The reason to wait is a fixed date rather than a level: "But what I'm looking forward to big picture is we're about to hit the best eight months of the four-year cycle of the presidential cycle."
"So once we hit November, I'm like, okay, game on. We should be in a really good place to run. But until then, I'm very cautious. I don't love some things that are happening. I'm taking a little risk off the table."
Asked for the historical context, he defined the window precisely. The best eight months run from the midterm election through the following June — November and December through to June — and that is the third year of the presidential cycle.
The claim he makes for it is absolute rather than probabilistic: "That cycle has never been negative. It has been either huge gains or a little gains, but there are always gains in that period." He dated the series back to what he believed was 1941.
2. Why Gridlock Pays
Jaffe pressed for a mechanism. Election years have an obvious story — promises, and an incumbent wanting things to look good — and midterm years are historically weak. What makes the period after a midterm different?
Redfern's answer is that the winner of a midterm is usually the opposition, and the result is that less happens. "My guess is usually the whoever's in charge loses a little bit of control and then we get a little more gridlock. I think the market likes the certainty of nothing new happening."
He marked it as an observation rather than a political view, and described the shift as going from a party with a lot of control to one with a lot less.
What the market is buying, in his framing, is certainty and stability, and that is what the run is made of.
Jaffe agreed and drew the distinction himself: the market is comfortable with political gridlock and hates gridlock in the market.
3. The Fed Hike Nobody Minds
Jaffe set up the rates question with his own rule of thumb — it is not one rate rise or even two that damages a market, it is a series, or a big unexpected move.
Redfern agreed twice over, then gave the measure he uses. Comparing the 2-year Treasury yield with the Fed funds rate implies about two more increases from here.
The rule comes from Tom McClellan, who argues the 2-year yield is where the Fed funds rate should already be, and that following it would save a great deal of money and time. That gap is currently about 50 basis points.
His forecast for the meeting itself was a rise, and his forecast for the reaction was nothing: "I think the probability is there but I'm not I don't think the market cares at the moment. I really don't."
"Maybe we get some short-term jitters. We always do. But from there I think that sets us up beautifully for November." He added that he would like that setup for a run the following spring.
4. Oil Back Over $100
Jaffe's follow-up was the obvious one: if the market does not care about the Fed, what does it care about?
"I think the big thing it cares about is the price of oil, which is back over a hundred last I saw this morning."
The level matters more than the direction. He said $100 is usually where the market really struggles to move forward, and that it then hangs over everything else.
The second-order worry is inflation staying higher for longer even if rate rises arrive.
He was careful about what kind of signal this is: "Those are not technical events but they become technical events." He also said he is not a fan of the energy sector or of trading oil himself.
5. The Charts He Watches
Asked whether moving to the sidelines is his only tool, Redfern named the specific indicators he is reading.
Support levels, first.
"I'm watching the NYSE advance-decline line, which has really fallen off a cliff here in the last few weeks. But what's interesting is the market's not following it." He called that push and pull intriguing rather than decisive.
The advance-decline line counts how many shares rose against how many fell, so it measures whether a rally has most of the market behind it or only the largest names.
"Another big factor I love to watch is the new lows on the NYSE. That's over 200 today."
His thresholds are explicit: 100 to 150 new lows is natural, and past 150 there is something up.
What would make him buy is the shape rather than the level — new lows expanding and then contracting again is usually the point to get back into the market more aggressively.
6. A 5-6% Pullback at Worst
Jaffe asked how bad it could get between now and the midterms, and whether a full correction is possible.
Redfern called it hard to say, and named two things that would make it worse: a further rise in oil, and the situation in Iran escalating.
His base case is shallow. "I don't think we see much more than a five, six% pullback at this point. Real mild, real natural."
He put the frequency of such a move at three, four or five times a year, and said the market is due for one.
His phrase for the setup was that the signs all align, and that a drawdown of that size would not be unreasonable.
7. The Crash That Didn't Come
Jaffe moved to the long cycles, teasing technical analysts for their habit of announcing that the market is due. He asked whether the continued bull market is creating a monster.
Redfern had expected this year to be the reckoning. "I would have thought 2026 was going to be the big bad year."
The reason was an 18-year real estate cycle that lines up with 2008 and, before that, with the savings and loan crisis around 1990. It has not turned up, and his description of why was the standard one — they are kicking the can down the road.
He did not withdraw the warning, only the date: "Do I think there's something hugely bad gonna happen? Yeah. But I feel like I've been saying that for years and years and we all have and we really don't get much more than a, maybe a 20% correction."
He allowed one exception to that record. 2022 was reasonably ugly, and bonds did not help.
The trigger is unknown and the rule is mechanical: "But I think something bad will eventually come. I don't know what it is. I don't know what the catalyst is for it. And until the charts tell me to get out fully going to hang out and be invested."
8. Down to 80%, Into Value
Asked how invested he actually is, Redfern gave the number and the date.
"We back down somewhere mid July from 100% to like 80%. So, we're not fully in but we're not out of the market fully. We're also shifted largely into value which is holding up better."
The value position is a defensive one, and the signal that produced it is the ratio of value to growth. When value is beating growth on that ratio, he said, the market tends to do badly — either a bad sell-off or a choppy sideways market.
His reason for parking there is volatility rather than valuation: value does not move as violently as growth while he waits.
What he wants to see is the opposite signal. Growth coming back and leading the market higher is what would take him past fully invested and into leverage.
"I could be up 150% invested if we had some leverage funds into the mix."
9. Nothing He Really Likes
Jaffe asked where the opportunities are, noting that every industry is now within two degrees of artificial intelligence rather than six.
Redfern called it a tough question and did not pretend otherwise.
Energy usually follows the oil price higher, but he does not take that trade.
Gold has gone the wrong way on him: "I would have thought gold would be holding up well, but it's not. It's getting crushed the last two three four weeks."
Financials are a maybe, and fit the same value tilt.
He described his own positioning as broad rather than selective, because he does not like much specifically at the moment.
On artificial intelligence he agreed with Jaffe's framing and gave the condition for getting involved: if growth starts beating value, the leadership will be semiconductors and technology, and everything rises with it.
10. A 2018 Rerun
Jaffe asked what this market reminds him of, noting that fundamental analysts keep saying it does not look like a bubble because the earnings are real.
"I'm kind of curious if we see a 2018 similarity."
The mechanism he has in mind is a surprise from rates or from the Fed producing a big sell-off, in a year that was also a midterm year and also drifted choppy sideways and slightly up — until October, when it went "straight down very very dramatically."
On the long cycles he agreed with Jaffe's suggestion that the 2020 crash may have pushed the schedule out by a year and a half or two years, which would leave nothing genuinely problematic until 2027 or 2028, or later.
11. The 40-Year Bond Cycle
Jaffe asked how a technician reads the headlines about long Treasury yields, which fundamental analysts treat as a warning sign.
Redfern watches them for orientation rather than for signals, and his conclusion is a long-cycle one: "I mean but then I also think we've started the next 40-year bond cycle. Treasuries tend to have this 40-year cycle where they go steadily up and then steadily down. We're probably three to four years in of bonds being garbage."
He dated the damage from 2022 and said bonds have not really helped since.
The exceptions he named are floating rate and possibly high yield — "There's a couple bright spots here and there, but Treasuries and the aggregates are just not worth owning at this point."
His use for the chart is avoidance: he watches it, in his words, not quite for amusement, to confirm there is no reason to be in it.
12. 5% Yield, 10% Principal
Jaffe pushed back with what he hears from financial advisers, who have gone from TINA to TARA — "you went from TINA, there is no alternative to stocks, to TARA, there exist reasonable alternatives. At 5% on the long bond, that's for some people a reasonable alternative."
Redfern's objection is arithmetic rather than philosophical. Investors look at the coupon and not at the capital: the yield is 5% and the principal has fallen about 10%, which leaves them behind.
He said this comes up with individual clients who ask why they are not making money when they can see the yield.
"I think there's more risk in owning and principal loss than the gain you're going to make by a little bit of a yield like 5%."
"Who cares when you lose 10?" His reference point is the much larger losses of 2022.
He left the door open on one condition — a rebound or recession in rates would lift bond prices, and until that happens the trade-off does not work.
Jaffe's last question was whether 2022, when stocks and bonds fell together and bonds were no safe haven, is going to stop being an anomaly.
"I don't think they're going to offer the benefit next time because they did in the COVID crash." Owning Treasurys through that crash, he said, was awesome — and it was not in 2022.
He tied that directly to the 40-year cycle: while it runs, he expects stocks and bonds to stay correlated, and he sees nothing that suggests the correlation is about to break.
Bonus Insights
Jaffe told the audience this interview was unusually hard to trail, because it went in so many directions that a different choice of clips would have given a completely different impression of it. He said he decided to leave out the bond quote from the opening and use two others instead.
He flagged the rate comment as a first for the programme: "You've heard somebody on the show say the market just doesn't care if the Fed raises rates."
Jaffe used the segment to make a point about the show's booking policy — that a guest most listeners have never heard of is often the reason to turn up, and that unfamiliar guests are not booked for outrageous opinions.
His metaphor for technical analysis was the medieval cartographer: chartists are the modern equivalent of the mapmakers of Christopher Columbus's day who wrote "here there be monsters" at the edge of what they knew. Redfern's reply was "Love it."
In the closing wrap Jaffe set Redfern's bond call against a guest coming up in the next week or two — JoAnne Bianco of BondBloxx, who he expects to disagree. His framing for listeners was that this is a decision they have to make rather than a question with an answer: whether locking in an absolute 5% or 6% return does the job, or whether that money could do more elsewhere.
Redfern's next appearance is booked for 2027, which Jaffe noted would still be interesting market times.
Redfern's bottom line is that the next eight weeks are for defense and the eight months after the midterms are for offense — with about 80% invested and a value tilt until the charts turn, and with government bonds left out of the portfolio entirely for as long as the 40-year cycle runs.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Shadowridge Asset Management (Redfern's firm, which allocates on technical signals and moved from 100% to about 80% invested in mid-July)
BondBloxx (Named by Jaffe as the firm whose JoAnne Bianco is booked within a week or two and is expected to take the other side of the bonds-are-garbage argument)
Books & Resources Mentioned
Tom McClellan's work on the 2-year Treasury yield (The source of Redfern's rates rule — that the 2-year yield is where the Fed funds rate should already be, and is currently about 50 basis points higher)
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