In today's episode, Tyler dives into the impressive stock market performance for February and the beginning of March, and what that means for our markets looking forward. He also highlights the consistent bullish trends, the potential for a roaring 2020s, and the current state of various sectors, commodities, and bitcoin.

Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Friday afternoon, everyone. Tyler Herriage here with you for today’s VRA investing podcast. Hope you all had a great end to your week this week. A great start to the month of March. Got a lot to cover here today, mostly about our major index x’s and what a good end to the week it was, what a good month of February it was and what that means. Looking forward for our markets. And it’s always good to kick off the first day of the month with a solid day of gains across the board today.

Out the gate this morning, our major indexes were mixed really across the board here. But what was really good to see this morning was the semis continuing to lead the way. Just 30 minutes into trading and the semis were already up 1.75% on the day to day, hitting another all time high here. You just can’t stop this group Navidea on the day today as well, finishing up in a big way, up over 4%, closing for the first time above a $2 trillion valuation. So you can see a lot of exciting stuff to end the week and kick off the month of March here. So let’s dive right into it with our major indexes on the day today. Again, we did finish higher across the board here and we finally got that breakout we’ve been looking for from the Nasdaq. We’ve seen tech hit all time highs, we’ve seen the Nasdaq 100 hit all time highs.

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And of course the semis hitting all time highs. And even the Nasdaq, yes, had hit an all time closing high yesterday. But today we finally broke out to new all time highs here. That’s an intraday all time high. It’s a closing all time high any way you cut it, an all time high here from tech and the Nasdaq. So really good to see the first time that we are, I say the first time, but this is the first time we’ve broken out from those November 2021 highs for the Nasdaq. So over two and a half years since that time. So it’s November 2021 again.

And really good to see, as Kip has talked about here often, what his mentors have always told him was that the party doesn’t really get started until you’re at new all time highs. So hey, we’ll take it here. This is the sign for us, or yet another sign here that we are in now, just now beginning a new bull market. We got a lot of those all time highs or 52 week highs today. So again, folks, this market’s come a long way since the October 2022 lows. We still think it has a long way to run. We’ve called this the roaring 2020s, but could be even better than the previous roaring twenty s from the nineteen twenty s. We see this more as equivalent to the 1995 to 2000 dot melt up when tech rallied 575%.

This market could be even better than that. Something that we didn’t have in the 90s was a runaway Federal Reserve, right? Yes, that means that we will probably have to deal with higher than usual inflation, higher than inflation that we’ve become accustomed to. But hey, at the end of the day, we wrote about this in the big bribe. We can complain about inflation all we want, and rightfully so, right? Seeing our dollars being inflated into nothingness day after day is not a good feeling. But it’s exactly the reason why we talk about here that you have to own hard assets, right? Instead of leaving your money earning very little. Yes, some money market accounts now have very good returns, but compared to owning stocks, compared to owning real estate, compared to owning commodities, compared to owning bitcoin, you’re going to vastly underperform those assets if you’re just holding on to dollars. This is why, again, why we wrote the book the big bribe and how we want to protect ourselves from inflation. So if you haven’t given it a chance to give it a read yet, we are still currently offering, for a limited time here, our 14 day free trial.

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You can find it@vrainsider.com and with that, you’ll get a digital copy of our book, the big bribe. And if you want the hard copy, you can also find it@bigbribebook.com. Kip and I wrote that together a little over two years ago now. Tough to believe it’s been that long time really does fly. But it’s been an incredible run since then. And if you feel like you’ve missed out on this market, it’s okay. As we see it, it is not too late to take advantage of this new bull market. And yes, we are still here in the early innings.

Now, that doesn’t mean we’re not going to have pullbacks along the way. That is a normal part of a healthy market action. Even in the 1995 to 2000 scenario, there was a bear market in there. And I say bear market. That means a 20% pullback in a major index. Yes, there was one of those. There was multiple corrections along the way as well. But the key here for us that we’ve said since the October 2022 lows and we still believe is the smart money move will be to buy that dip.

And so when we get opportunities like that, we don’t look at it as a big negative and, hey, we’re headed into a recession. No, these are buying opportunities. This is a gift from the market to allow us to get in at lower prices and continue to ride these things to all time highs. We think that’s going to be the case for most of the latter half of this decade. So let’s dive into our major indexes again. Nasdaq all time high today, intraday and closing high. Very good to see. And also wrapping up four positive months in a row here for the Nasdaq, for the S and P 500.

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And I believe it was only small caps. That doesn’t make, let me just double check here. Yeah, just small caps. They’ve still been up two out of the last three months, had a down January for small caps, but the Dow, Nasdaq and the S P just wrapped up four months of gains in a row. And I have a stat I want to share on that. We’ve been sharing it here for a little bit, but I do want to reemphasize it here. I’ll do that in a second, but good. Month of February for the Nasdaq, up 5.48% in the month of February, starting the month of March off strong, up one point to 16,274.

Congratulations to all the bulls out there. But the real winner for the month of February, when you hear the Nasdaq’s up five and a half percent on the month, the S and P was up four and a half percent on the month. When you hear those kind of gains, you know those are good numbers. But the real winner here, that continues to be the semiconductors, which I’ll go ahead and say here, sMH up 4.5% to kick off the month of March. That’s just an incredible day after an incredible month, the semi ETF SMH was of a massive 13 and a half percent in the month of February, also hitting an all time high today for our VRA members here. We do own Soxl and continue to own it here. It was up twelve point 82% on the day today, almost as much as SMH was up for the month of February. Again, just an impressive session all around to kick off the month of March and close out the week as well.

And I’ll point out, I was going to do this a little later. Not only do we end the week strong, but we finished at or near the highs of the day. That’s exactly what you want to see. If you’re bullish, you want to see a strong, smart money hour. And we got that today as well. Next up, after the Nasdaq were small caps up 1.5% to 2076. Also a good month of February, continuing its outperformance of the S and P 500. IWM, the small cap ETF up 4.84% and did hit a 52 week high today as well.

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That’s its 1st 52 week high since the end of the month of December. And keep in mind here we are still below small cap’s all time high. So as far as bull markets are concerned, that party hasn’t even really begun yet. So we still got some work to do there. I believe between ten and 12% now from its all time high. So again, the party hasn’t even really started. We are still in the early innings of this year, but small caps up 1.5% to 2076 for the Russell 2000. Next up, the S and P 500 hitting an all time high today as well.

Also wrapping up four positive months in a row. And this is interesting. In 2022, we had just one record high from the S and P 500. We had zero, zero in 2023. So far in 2024, the S and P 500 has posted 14 new all time highs. As we say here, often new highs beget new highs. Again, another sign here of just the early innings. And this is the statistic that I was talking about.

We’ve shared this for about the last week or so, but now that we’ve wrapped up the month of February, let’s share it one last time. When the S and P 500 is higher in November, December, January and February, 4 months in a row. As we just wrapped up here, the S and P 500 is higher in the next twelve months 100% of the time. Not a single case going back to 1950. This has happened 14 other times since 1950. Again, 100% of the time the market has been higher with average gains of 17.4% this year, looking like it could even outperform the average there. So really good stuff to see there. Next up, the Dow Jones was our laggard on the day today, up just over two tenths of 1% to 39,087.

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But still a very good month of February from the Dow up just over 2% for the month. And so yes, it was our laggard. That’s okay. It did get an all time high in that month as well. And one area has been an underperformer here that is starting to show a little bit of life is the transports. If you’re a Dow theory subscriber, you really want to see the transports begin to play some catch up here. And they did that in the month of February, up nearly two and a half percent for the month. We want to see that continue as well.

All right, so lastly here for our major indexes, we are starting to approach overbought levels, but there is still room to run before we hit extreme overbought levels on the VRA investing system. These little minor pullbacks we’ve seen kind of bunched together of two to three days in a row of really slight pullbacks. Not much at all. But that has kept us out of extreme overbought territory. That’s very bullish action as well, that these dips are very short lived right now. And we’ll continue to alert you here as we do start to hit extreme overbought levels. And then our highest distinction, extreme overbought on steroids. But I’ll tell you right now, we do still have some room to run before we get there.

I’ll also point out today, yields falling here down big on the day, 1.69%. The ten year yield now back below 4.2% at a 4.18. Also finishing at its lows of the day today. If you want to see yields lower, then this is exactly what you want to see. We are now 19 days away, not trading days, 19 actual days away from the next Fed meeting. It’s looking increasingly likely that they won’t have any action other than the fact that they’re talking about ending quantitative tightening. So getting back to QE, you know that they cannot wait to get back to these easy money policies on the CME’s Fed watch tool. Roughly a 95% chance that the Fed stays put in March.

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And you got to go out to June to find the next majority view of a rate cut with roughly 57% chance that the market is looking for right now for a rate cut, that would be June. So we’ll keep you posted on here. We’ve got a lot of economic data still to come, and we’ll be reporting on that here every day at the market close. You can sign up with us@vraletter.com click that podcast link at the top. And we’d love to have you with us next up here looking at our internals on the day today. Really strong readings here, too. Across the board, advancing stocks beating out declining stocks for both the NYSE and the Nasdaq. No two to one beats here or anything, but still strong numbers.

And for anyone out there who continues to tell you it’s only seven stocks, the magnificent seven, leading this market higher, that’s simply not the case anymore. We’ve seen some great readings from advancing stocks versus declining stocks in the internals as of late, and we’re seeing it in the hard data as well. Actual price action. There’s nothing better than price, right? As Helene Meisler likes to say, nothing like price to change sentiment, because only at the end of the day, only price pays. And so let’s take a look at that. The equal weight ETF for the S and P 500 is the RSP. That’s the equal weight ETF. It also just hit an all time high as well.

Another factor telling us that this market is continuing to broaden here. Next up, 52 week highs to lows coming in strongly positive today. Over 600 stocks hitting 52 week highs. We had a combined 623 stocks hitting 52 week highs for both, again, combined Nasdaq and NYSE to just 108 stocks hitting 52 week lows. And on the NYSE, that was just 23 stocks. The majority of those came from the Nasdaq, which has more, I would say, of some of the lower quality names. So you might expect to see more lows there. It was still just roughly, what, 83 or so stocks, little over 80.

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Well, let’s take a look. I have it right here in front of me, 87. 87 stocks on the Nasdaq hitting 52 week lows. And it actually looks like we got a refresh here. These numbers continue to update roughly about to 30 to 45 minutes after the close. So I said we had 623 stocks hitting 52 week highs. The latest refresh on this, 665 stocks hitting 52 week highs. We won’t really look at being in an outrageous market, in a euphoric market until we start hitting 1000 stocks a day hitting 52 week highs.

That’s something that we would look for here. Yes, we are hitting extreme greed levels on the fear and greed index. We are starting to see a lot more bulls than bears in the AI investor sentiment survey as well. But until we’ve hit extreme bullish greed from both of these for months on end, we won’t be looking at a market top. It certainly doesn’t feel like euphoria out there. Every time we get some of these record closes, bears get quiet for a little bit. You got one day of a pullback and you got all the bears out there saying, anyone who’s long is about to get f’d. That’s what they would say we simply don’t see that as the case yet, especially as we’re not at extreme overbought levels here.

Next up. Oh, sorry. Finally, volume. Having a good day here as well. Not necessarily anything like what you really like to see, like an 80% upside volume day, but we were strongly positive on the NYSE and almost two to one positive on the Nasdaq. So good day overall from our internals. Next up here, looking at our sectors on the day, we finished with eight out of our eleven SP 500 sectors higher on the day today, with four of those hitting either an all time high or a 52 week high today. Just what you want to see.

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We are led by the tech sector, which hit an all time high today. After that, we had energy up nicely on the day today. Oil prices hitting their highest level of 2024 today. After that, real estate, which have you been tuning over with us here for a while? You know that we don’t really follow the s and p real estate sector as closely as we like to follow the housing. Well, let me just take a step back. We don’t follow it as closely because it’s mostly made up of reits. That doesn’t really give you the full example of what the housing sector is doing, even though we got poor housing data coming back this week. HGX, the housing index, hit another all time high today, up 1.44%.

And the home builders as well hitting an all time high today. XHB, the home builder ETF, up 1.28%. Really good readings. Those are two of our leading economic indicators hitting all time highs today. Semis in tech and housing. Really, really good to see here at the VRA. Based off the VRA investing system, we continue to be at ten out of twelve screens. Bullish here.

Nothing has changed in that department. Next up for our leading sectors, healthcare was after real estate, which is actually just shy of an all time high as well. Just below that is consumer, excuse me, communications services, just shy of an all time high as well. Then we had consumer discretionary hitting a 52 week high today. And then materials hitting a 52 week high today. And lastly, the industrials hitting an all time high today. Our laggards on the day were utilities. Interesting to see.

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One, it’s a defensive sector. So when you have tech rallying, no one wants to be in utility stocks. When tech’s rallying like it is when the semis are up 13% in a single month, who wants these defensive names? Nobody. Even with yields lower after that, financials, which are not far from an all time high either. And lastly, consumer staples pretty close to flat on the day today. Finally here for today, our VRA commodity. Watch. A lot of green on the screen here.

Let me get a refresh of my screens. Gold now up 1.84% to $2,092 an ounce. That is its highest level of 2024. Just roughly $60 an ounce away from its all time high. And just what you want to see on the day, gold miners starting to show some life outperforming. Two to one here. GDX, the gold mining ETF of 3.68%. That’s a trend.

It’s not a trend just yet, right? One day does not make a trend. But that is what you like to see is the outperformance by gold miners. We want to see that continue to outperform gold on roughly a two to one basis here. So really good that we got that kind of a day today. Silver also up nicely on the day, 1.92% to 2000 and $823. And next up, copper up slightly. Zero point 34% to $3.86 a pound. And oil, as I mentioned earlier, its highest level for 2024, its highest level since November of last year, up nearly 2% to $79.80 a barrel now.

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And then finally here for today, crypto up as well. Zero point 83% now holding nicely above that $60,000. A bitcoin level at 62,614. And this is another one that until we get to new all time highs, the party has not even started. So if you’re thinking that it’s too late to get into bitcoin with the happening coming up, we certainly don’t see that as the case. And the fact that we haven’t taken out all time highs yet is also very bullish to us. That’s when the real party will start, when it gets back above its all time highs. That was from November of 2021.

So we’ll look for that. We’ll be continuing to report on it here, especially as we lead up to this happening, which is expected to take place in about a month and a half now. So we’ll continue to report on that here. But folks, that’s all that we have time for here today. Please be sure to subscribe to receive our VRA podcast every day. If the market close, you can sign up@vraletter.com click that podcast link at the top. You can also find our transcripts and all of our notes there as well. So thanks again for tuning in.

Until next time, we hope you all have a great weekend, and we’ll see you back here on Monday for the close.