In today's episode, Tyler breaks down another exciting week of market action. Despite a slight dip in the Russell 2000 today, all of our major indexes finished higher on the week, marking the longest winning streak for the S&P 500 in 2024. We will also discuss upcoming tech earnings and significant developments in Bitcoin and precious metals. Tune into today's podcast to learn more.

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 Friday out there and a great week this week as well. It was another good week for the markets this week and a solid end to to the week as well. The Russell 2000 might have finished negative on the day to day, but all four of our major indexes, Russell 2000 included, did finish higher on the week this week. And if I’m not mistaken, this now makes the longest winning streak for the S P500 on a weekly basis for 2024. So it has been an eventful series of weeks here in what is only going to continue.

We’ve got a busy next few weeks coming up. First and foremost, as you know, the election coming up in just a few weeks now, Trump continuing to pull away in the betting markets here, continuing as we’ve called for to look like a Trump second term. And with that we can expect Trump economic miracle part two, which is likely a a big part of what we’ve seen in the market so far is front running the anticipation of a second Trump presidency here. Now we’ve also got a lot of market events going on as well here. Earnings which I’ll cover some of here today. You know we had an eventful week of earnings this week, but that’s nothing compared to what we have coming over the next few weeks as we really kick it in to high gear with tech earnings over the coming weeks. So I’ll cover that here today we’ll get more economic data. We’re already getting forward looking data of GDP continuing to come in strong.

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And then just after the election of course we’ll have the next FOMC meeting. So the exciting part about that is that we’ll be entering the next Fed by Fed blackout period here where we don’t have to hear from any Fed speakers until their next meeting. That’s always a good time here. But again, good day across the board here except for the Russell 2000 today. We also got better internals on the day to day. So overall a good day and a good week for the markets today. And we’ll wrap with probably the biggest news of the day today coming out from Bitcoin. The SEC announcing that they will allow options trading on Bitcoin spot ETFs huge news there.

And we’ll also cover the big news out of precious metals and the miners as well which have just been on an absolute tear here. So let’s go ahead and jump right into this week’s market action. As I mentioned, the Russell 2000 couldn’t quite finish positive day, ended up down 2/10 of 1% to 2,276. It did still manage to finish higher on the week this week as did our other major indexes where we had green across the screen for the rest here. After that we had the Dow Jones up just fractionally but managed to hit an all time high today, up.09% at 43,275. After that, the S P500 not quite able to hit an all time intraday high, but this is an all time closing high here from the S&P 500 again, its best winning streak of 2024 on a weekly basis here. So hey, we’ll take it. The S P up 4/10 of 1% to 5864.

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Next up here, the NASDAQ leading the way. Exactly what you want to see is tech leading up over 6/10 of 1% to 18,489. Now I will point out here because as we often say, you not only want to see tech leading, but the semis leading tech and we did not have that today. The semis closed closer to their lows of the day today, finishing just slightly lower and also down 2% on the week this week. Well, you have to remember we had ASML’s earnings this week, the mistakenly released early earnings that we got with horrendous forward guidance. Right? Not bad earnings, bad forward guidance so that the market freaking out over something that has not come to pass yet. And from what I’ve seen from a lot of analysts in the semiconductor space is that that forward guidance can change pretty rapidly. You know, when these deals take place in the semiconductor industry, they’re often very big deals.

So just a couple of deals going through that they didn’t expect could totally change these numbers. But as I talked about on my last podcast as well, ASML is, yes, it’s one of the larger semi plays out there. It’s one tenth of the size of Nvidia, which is obviously the largest semiconductor name out there. But again, no real concerns for us there. ASML though was down nearly 14% on the week this week. So to see SMH, the semiconductor ETF down 2% on the week this week, you know, hey, it could have been a whole lot worse there. So no real concerns for us in that regard. But overall, again, good week this week.

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Our major indexes higher across the board on the week. The Roast 2000 did finish up on the week this week. And now we’ll kick it in to earnings High gear here with a bunch of big names. I’ll rattle off a few here for you early next week on we’ll have some earnings Monday. You know, no real massive names to talk about here. Tuesday we’ll get Verizon and 3M. And then after the close on Tuesday, Texas Instruments. And then Wednesday it starts to get fun.

We got Boeing AT&T, Coca Cola. And then after the close, Tesla. That will be a much watched earnings report here. We remain long and strong Tesla here. So if you’re not already a VRA subscriber, there’s a little freebie for you. We like Tesla a lot at these levels. After the close that day we’ll also have IBM. And then later in the week this week we’ll also have Amex, ups, Southwest, sorry, American Airlines, not amex.

And then we’ll continue to roll on into further earnings season. You know, as you can hear there, that’s not even all of the big tech names. We still got some big ones to wait for in the coming weeks. Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon, Shopify, those kinds of names out there. So stay tuned. We’re just getting rolling on earning season, but so far for earnings season it has been a solid start. Yes, we’ve only had a small percentage of S&P 500 companies reporting so far for Q3 earnings, but they’ve been very positive. As a matter of fact, these we’ve seen above average for recent averages, above average reporting of positive earnings surprises so far.

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So unlike many market watchers out there that have been calling for an earnings recession for a long time now, we do expect this trend of strong earnings to continue here. Also for our VRA subscribers, I’ll go ahead and give another quick little freebie out there. We have Extract One coming out with earnings next week. They’ve got their call as well. I believe it’s on Thursday of next week. And so again for VRA members, we’ll have a special VRA members only podcast with Extract 1 CEO Peter Evans in the next couple of weeks here. So if you’re not already a member, come and join us. We’ve got a two free week trial going on right now.

You can check it out@vra letter.com that’s also where you’ll find the podcast as well. So come and join us. Always great having Peter on for our members here. We’re looking forward to doing that interview here once again. And for those who are not members out there, you can come and join us for two free weeks to give it a shot. And for VRA members, be on the lookout for the details of that call. It’ll be a fun one for sure. All right, next up here, let’s take a look at our internals on the day to day.

You know, yesterday Kip talked about this on his podcast yesterday as well. The internals were not great yesterday, which was interesting given we had mostly solid action yesterday. But today’s numbers started out stronger and finished strong as well. Positive here across the board for the internals. We had more advancing stocks than declining stocks on both the Nyse and the NASDAQ. Not big beats here but we’ll take it 52 week highs to lows. Good numbers here over right at 550 stocks hitting 52 week highs to just 64 stocks hitting 52 week lows. And lastly here, volume coming in positive on the nyse.

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No big beat there or anything. But on the NASDAQ, 73% upside volume on the day to day. So good readings from our internals. Exactly what we want to see here. Next up, taking a look at our sectors on the day. Strong end to the week, finishing with 10 out of our 11s P500 sectors higher on the week. And we got some all time highs here as well. We were led by communication services which is as we talk about here often, essentially a proxy for tech.

Meta and Google make up something like 40% of the portfolio of communication services. So again a proxy for tech and just hit an all time high today. After that we had real estate which we like to look at the home builders as opposed to the real estate sector. Home builders also hit an all time high today and we’ve got a number of these sectors that I won’t dive into. All of them that are just one day’s move really. 12 days move away from all time highs. 52 week highs. Good action coming from our S P 500 sectors right now.

One other all time high that we had today was materials as well. Then for our one laggard on the day, energy as I’ll get to oil prices here in just a second. Oil did break below $70 a barrel again here today so it makes sense to see energy stocks moving lower. Now let’s go ahead and take a look at our commodity action on the day to day. Exciting day for our precious metals today. Gold hitting an all time high today, up 1% now over 1% to 2,736. This is a group I’ll we’ll Say it here often. I’ll say it again.

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We expect big moves here going forward. Still, even though we’re at all time highs, we expect big moves higher taking place in gold going forward. Over the last 12 months, gold is up 48% and what you want to see from this group is the miners outperforming the metal which we have seen. GDX over the last 12 months is up. I mean after today’s move, roughly 65% in just the last 12 months, we expect that outperformance to continue and very likely to increase from here. GDX was up another 3.93% on the day to day. And I’ll point this out, finished near its highs of the day to day as well. Exactly what you want to see and just broke to a 12 year high today by $0.01.

Just barely made it, but hey, we’ll take it. That is the Highest level for GDX, the gold miner ETF since 2012 here and now I’ve got to point this out as well. GDX is still roughly over 30% away from its all time high. What does that mean for investors here? Yeah, we just hit a 52 week high, so maybe somebody wants to wait for a pull back there. Yeah, yeah, you could wait for a pullback. But given that we are over 30% away from its all time high, that tells us that the party hasn’t even started. The party doesn’t begin until you get to new all time highs. So any, any price point that you’re buying this below an all time high.

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We look at that as a gift from the market. Again, once you get into blue sky territory, that’s when the party really begins. So we think there’s got to be going to be a lot of exciting action taking place in this group over the next few months and the next few years as well. Speaking of 2012 though, which GDX just hit its highest level since then. Silver also hitting its Highest level since 2012 today up a massive 6.77% on the day to $33.92 an ounce. Copper also higher on the day up 1 1/2% to $4.39 a pound. Then oil as I mentioned earlier, back below $70 a barrel here. Again, this could be some of the market anticipating a Trump victory here.

If we can get back to the deregulation of the energy space. Get back to drill baby, drill for oil and then yes, we could see cheaper oil prices. And we completely agree with Trump on this one as well. You want to Bring down inflation, bring down energy costs. Right. Because it’s not just gas in your gas tank. It’s having to pay people to transport things. Right.

As well. So cheaper oil means cheaper prices. Simply put. Right. Occam’s razor applies to so many things in life. You don’t have to have all these complex things out there that just confuse people. Really keep it simple. Right? Cheaper energy means cheaper prices.

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Simple as that. Next up here, the really exciting one on the day today as well. Of course, gold hitting an all time high. It’s tough to beat that kind of excitement. But bitcoin has been on a tear here. Now up 2.17% on the day to 68. 397. Still has some room to go as well before we get to an all time high.

Excuse me, but it has been an exciting week for bitcoin. Moving to the upside and culminates today with the SEC approving options on these Bitcoin spot ETFs. Not only does this further legitimize bitcoin, it will add liquidity in here as well. You know, you always get the concerns about market manipulation when you start to see things like this happening. Right. But talking about market manipulation, why has bitcoin been going up this week? It was likely in anticipation of this event. You know, we’ve seen it time and time again under the Biden Harris administration that economic data gets leaked, insider trading happening across the board from our congressmen and women. You know, they are the ones who are working on these types of bills.

Yes, this was done by the sec. But if you don’t think that the SEC is also leaking this kind of information, then I’ve got a some oceanfront property to sell you here in Austin, Texas. Right. You know, we’ve seen it from Nancy Pelosi making trades on Tesla. Right. Or other EV companies. And then a month later, the government announces they’re going all EV by 2030. And all the EV stocks shoot up.

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Right. It’s little stuff like that that most everyday Americans have no interest in. Why would they? Right. No one’s paying. You know, you got a job to work. You know, let’s say you’re an electrician out there working all day. You’re probably not paying attention to stock market moves. These kinds of deals fly under the radar every day.

And it’s only become worse under the Biden Harris administration. Now, I know we’ve got a great smart money audience here. You probably don’t need another reason from us of why Kamala is absolutely unelectable and honestly disqualifying as a candidate. But this is another massive one here. We’ve got to get rid of this corruption because we’ve seen it time and time again, whether it’s again the government types of deals, right, contracts, economic data being leaked, all kinds of things. But it happens time and time again. But hey, here we’ve been long and strong Bitcoin for a long time now. So hey, whatever reason, we’ll take it.

We’re in it anyway folks, that is all that we have time for here today. Please be sure to subscribe to receive our VRA podcasts every day at the market close. You can sign up @ vraletter.com click the podcast link at the top. While you’re there again check out our 14 day free trial, but on the podcast page you’ll also find our transcripts and comments as well. So thanks again for tuning in. Until next time, have a great weekend. We’ll see you back here on Monday for the close.