In today's episode, Tyler unpacks today's Trump tariff announcement after the market close, highlighting the importance of getting this messaging right as we finally approach what Trump has called "Liberation Day." Despite our major indices taking a hit, we saw encouraging signs from the market internals, which affirm our continued bullish outlook. Tune into today's podcast to learn more.

Don’t Look Back because the market is closed. Good Wednesday afternoon, everyone. Tyler Herriage here with you for today’s VRA Investing podcast. Hope you all had a great day out there today.

There’s a bit of a rough day for our markets today on Once again. Drumroll. None other than tariffs here once again. And you have to wonder, at some point the market has to reach a fear fatigue level.On tariff fears.

We know what happened in Trump’s first term with tariffs. Everyone freaked out about it. Then it turned out not to be that big of a deal for the market. As a matter of fact, when Biden got into office, not only did he not repeal Trump’s tariffs from his first term, he increased some of them, particularly on China. And that was the main trade war from Trump’s first term that everyone was so fearful about. So we’ve got some info on tariffs that came in after the close from Trump’s press conference.

[00:01:13]:
Got the details for you here. That’s what we’re getting to you. A little bit late, later than usual today. That presser didn’t start until well after the plan time. But yeah, we’ve got some great coverage here for you today. Some really interesting topics. Again, we’ll start with the tariffs, get to our market action and some impressive action from our market internals on a day where The NASDAQ was down 2% over 2% on the day S&P down 1.1%.

And to get good action under the hood of this market is exactly what we’re looking for on days like today because we do remain very bullish here. If you’re a regular listener, you know just how bullish we are. You’re looking for the Dow Jones to go to 100,000 by 2030, NASDAQ 40,000 by that time. We think we might even be on the low side and especially for the Nasdaq here. So nothing has changed from that point of view so far. We get a correction like this every year, roughly every 16 to 18 months, more often in strong bull markets. So we continue to look at this as Kip covered, though today he was on Making Money with Charles Payne. We continue to watch the semis and housing here like a hawk.

[00:02:32]:
So we’ll get to some of that in our sector watch as well. Let’s go ahead and kick it off here with the tariff topic because again, it’s all you can see in the headlines. We’re already starting to hear it. You know, I know a lot of people have been fearful, especially with this pullback, but there is certainly tariff fear fatigue Building right now and today hopefully did something to alleviate a bit of that. So the announcement came out today. Trump was going to take action on auto imports after the close today. So market was all worried about it.

And I’ll get to maybe a few of the auto import stats if I have time here in a minute. But just to cover Trump’s presser, you know, began with, this is the beginning of liberation Day and there will be a 25% tariff on all auto imports out of small cars and light trucks everywhere in the world outside of the US at 25% tariff. And so I think that helps at least alleviate some of the uncertainty around tariffs because that really, the market more than anything hates uncertainty. But it’s got a new set of rules to play by. All right, we can figure out how to maneuver in this system, but we don’t have that right now. Right now it’s just speculation and some of it wild speculation.

[00:03:53]:
Especially with the EC coming out of the left leaning news outlets, which I’ve got another one on for that in a second when it comes to Tesla just here in a minute, excuse me, but going on from there, you know, talking about, they went on to talk about projections of what kind of revenue this will look like. And when you start talking about these numbers, it does start to sound a bit like a tax.

But no, this one might have been a little confusing for some. I thought it was a, you know, good clarification because Trump signed the 25% tariffs on the spot today. So that will go into effect. But that’s the point. They don’t go into effect today. They will go into effect with the rest of tariffs on April 2nd and they’ll begin collecting on April 3rd. So I think we can start to look for more stuff like this. And Trump hinted at one today with the pharmaceuticals.

It’s a very similar situation, even worse than autos, where we’re so reliant on other countries for pharmaceuticals. So he said, I think you’ll see something similar soon in regards to pharmaceuticals. So is it going to be the 25% same, is it going to be less? Because that’s another thing he went on to say in his Q and A today, which I think if a lot of people picked up on this, you know, it was an important signal, I think when he, when he was asked how high the reciprocal tariffs would be. Right, because this 25% tariff on autos is not a direct reciprocal tariff.

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Countries in Europe don’t even let their countries import our vehicles. There’s many countries out there that don’t import vehicles made in the US So reciprocal would just be say, hey, we’re until you allow us to import export autos to you, we’re not buying any more vehicles from you. So that’s it again, that’s how far out you can get when you say there’s uncertainty.

So this is a good clarification. And then he made it there as well. When asked about this reciprocal aspect to the tariffs, Trump said, you know, we’ll have more announcements about this coming, but you might be surprised they may not be as high as some other countries are charging us now. That’s a paraphrase of what he said. That’s essentially what it all boiled down to, though. So with that in mind, you’d start to think that the market would start to feel a little bit better about the uncertainty.

[00:06:24]:
He was asked about the market as well, to which he said he thinks would resolve itself pretty quickly as the market does, and that he’s more focused right now on jobs, job recreation and the economy, which is what you want your president focused on.

Laser locked in to creating the best economy that we could possibly have. And then the stock market will follow.

But as Kip covered yesterday as well, of all of the wins that the Trump administration has stacked already, whether it’s the border fentanyl flowing into our country, getting rid of dei, I mean, those are just a couple there. We went through them all with members this morning. But those are just a few highlights.

Really the only thing that isn’t working here already, you know, companies coming back into the US Deregulation, doge fraud, waste and abuse, cuts, all of these things, these are major victories. The only thing that isn’t right now is the stock market, which we don’t expect to be the case for long. Sure, the Atlanta Fed can revise GDP lower all they want, doesn’t mean it’s going to be the case and just kind of doesn’t inspire credibility in the Federal Reserve and their 28,000 or so employees, who make more than the average American over their 12 different Federal Reserve offices. It’s amazing the amount of fraud, waste and abuse that probably occurs at the Federal Reserve for them to get these major economic policies wrong time and time again with a staff of 28,000.

[00:08:00]:
And that’s again, across our 12 branches. Estimates of 8 to 10,000 work at the main Federal Reserve building, which is classified. You actually don’t even know how many people work there. So, so many problems there. But again, Point being here, I think that the main takeaway is that this should hopefully alleviate the uncertainty. I think people will get the idea that these aren’t going to be as bad as we think thought. At least we hope the market takes it that way and it could be a good day for the market. If it does tomorrow, you have good chance that it will be.

Futures right now, since I’m recording so late, are fractionally lower, a little bit lower, you know, but we get a reversal tomorrow, slightly lower or maybe even a little bit of a rough open and finish near the highs of the day. I think that would be a nice risk on signal tomorrow. And two factors today that really tell us that this is more uncertainty fears than something like a recessionary fear or bigger fear for the markets. And that’s that yields were up today. You know, we do continue to look for yields to be lower long term, but this was like a more economic style of fear. Yields would be heading lower and behind that as well. Dr. Copper Kip talked about this yesterday as well.

[00:09:09]:
Hit another all time high today. That is a good sign for the health of the global economy. Right here we’ve got gold remaining at all time highs. So point being here, money getting out of the markets here, as we’ve talked about this rotation theme a lot, this isn’t scared money leaving the market, it’s money taking profit and rotating right into other positions. Whether it’s Europe, gold and some of the in other countries that have performed well since, since the US peaked at its all time high in February, early February. That’s what we think this is. We think the rotation is coming to an end as well here. And again, it’s not scared money and that’s what you like to see.

These aren’t signs of a bigger concerns here. So we think it could be a good day tomorrow. All right, so right before I get to our market action here, I wanted to talk quickly about Tesla because of this piece from the Financial Times that came out last week. I almost forgot about it because it’s usually a propaganda rag, but they claimed that Tesla basically had $1.4 billion unaccounted for. Astray, I think is what they said on their balance sheet. Well this morning they had to write a retraction of that piece. I mean, time and time again we see this, right? The story takes its hit and then they have to retract it later. So it’s just hilarious.

[00:10:47]:
The Financial Times, it’s in there. The Financial Times incorrectly reported the financials of Tesla. So long story short, Just embarrassing. But the level of incompetence from so many different, you know, organizations and institutions that, you know, a lot of us thought we could believe in, turns out just to be incompetent time and time again it seems like. All right, so let’s take a look here at our market action on the day to day. Again, bit of a rough day today, but we just had your first three days of gains in a row for the first time in a while. So hey, you know, we’ll take that at least. So today, excuse me, we were led by the Dow Jones down just 3/10 of 1% at 42,500.

[00:11:40]:
Excuse me, 40,454. Let me get one screen here. And the transports were actually higher today. That is what you want to see at least. That’s another bright spot on the day today. After that, the s and P500 down just over 1% to 5,712. Russell 2000 about the same amount at 2,073. Lastly here, the NASDAQ did lead lower.

So not what you want to see on the day, down just over 2% to 17,899. And the semis did lead lower down 3.3% on the day again, as Kip talked about on Charles Payne today, this is an important moment here for the semis. We want to see the recent lows from March 11th hold here. And we really want to see the semis reclaiming their 200 day moving average. Similar story with housing and the homebuilders here as well. Important moments here. So stay tuned with us. We’re watching these very closely right now.

[00:12:42]:
But to the bright spot here in an area where you might not expect it on a day like today was in the internals. Now if you’re a regular listener, you know, we usually cover just NYSE and NASDAQ internals. But I thought this was worth noting today. The s and P500,500 stocks right today, when the SB is still down 1.1%, closed down 1.12% on the day and we had 266 stocks closing higher on the day to 235 closing lower. I mean, maybe slightly positive, but you take that on a day like today and you want to see those kind of signs under the hood of the market tells you the market is broadening. That’s exactly what we want to see. So let’s take a look at the rest of our internals here quickly. On the day we had, excuse me, we did have more declining stocks than advancing stocks on both the NYSE and the Nasdaq.

[00:13:41]:
Little shy of 2 to 1 on the NYSE, little worse on the NASDAQ. 52 week highs, lows actually pretty even on the NYSE. Slightly worse on the Nasdaq. And then volume. Here’s what we found really interesting today. Nasdaq down over 2% and volume was positive by a billion. Big volume day today, 9.3 billion in volume. Again over 5 to the upside, just over 4 to the downside.

Beat by over a billion though on a day again down 2%. Interesting. And then slightly negative on the NYSE. But nothing, no two to one beats or anything like that there. Looking at our sectors here on the day to day, we finished with 5 out of our 11s P500 sectors higher on the day. So maybe more than you might have expected, but they were primarily defensive. Consumer staples led the way, followed by utilities. And then we had energy, which energy has probably been, I mean really been on a great move, but a bit of a sleeper pick here.

[00:14:45]:
Not a whole lot of people talking about it as much right now. But it might surprise you to find out that at midday today we’re just less than 3% away from an all time high in the energy sector.

[00:14:59]:
Forgive the dogs here. Got somebody at my door it looks like. But we’ll keep moving forward. Our laggards on the day today were tech. So again, not what you want to see. Followed by communication services. So a big part of those two sectors. Communication services is really a proxy for tech, mostly made up of meta and Google in the Magnificent seven.

Didn’t do us any favors today. You know, they all had good days yesterday, you know, which is good to see the generals taking over here again. We want to see that continue. It’s time. This is when the generals earn their stripes here then for our laggers covered there finally for our VRA commodity watch here. Sorry, I got somebody ringing my doorbell non stop. We’re almost done here. All right, last trades here.

[00:15:52]:
Gold, we’ve got gold at $3,054 an ounce. So I just want to run one more chart which is just $2 an ounce away from its all time high of 2 of 3,056. Yes, at 3,054 here. I mean just adding again, as I mentioned earlier, gold, one of those rotationary aspects right now. Sorry, switching screens up here now we’ve got silver down just over 1/10 of 1% at $34.16 an ounce. Copper again, all time high here at $5.24 a pound. Very good to see again, Dr. Copper bodes well for the global economy.

Lastly, oil just below $70 a barrel at $69.71 a barrel. And finally here for today, bitcoin was a little higher earlier in the day, got up to 88, 276. Now just below 87, 86, 830. All right, folks, that is all we have time for here today. Please be sure to subscribe to receive our VRA podcast every day at the market close. You can sign up@vra letter.com, click the podcast link at the top, and we’d love to have you with us.

Thanks again for tuning in. Until next time. We’ll see you back here. Oh, forgive me again if I didn’t say it earlier in the podcast. We we actually will not have a podcast tomorrow. We’ll be back here with you Friday after the close.