In today's episode, Tyler dives into several key topics influencing today's stock market performance. Despite a rocky start with futures lower, three of our four major indexes closed higher on the day. We discuss the significant milestone in the cryptocurrency world with the launch of Bitcoin ETF options trading, driving Bitcoin to an all-time high. We'll also touch on the tense geopolitical situation as U.S. long-range missiles are used in Ukraine, and how it affects market sentiment. Tune into today's podcast to learn more.

Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Tuesday afternoon, everyone. Tyler Herriage here with you for today’s VRA Investing podcast. Hope you all had a great day out there today after what looked like it could have been a rough session, at least a rough start to the session today as futures were lower across the board. Some of our major indexes down by as much as 1% ahead of the open tomorrow actually turned into a pretty strong day for our markets today. We finished with three out of our four major indexes higher on the day today, only the Dow finishing lower just fractionally so, though, and we’ll get to our major market action here in a second. Got a lot to discuss here today, but if I am a little bit distracted is because we are just now 16 minutes away from the next launch of SpaceX’s Starship. This is the rocket that they were able to land in what they called the chopsticks last time.

[00:01:07]:
Were they able to catch the rocket out of midair? So, second test of it underway now today. Trump’s on site for it as well here in Texas, down in Brownsville, Texas, or at least nearby that area. So again, I got that on the side screen here. It’s just too exciting of an event not to watch. So if this podcast comes out in time before it happens, you know, make sure you tune into that one. It’s something you’re certainly going to want to see. But we got to start with bitcoin on the day to day here as we’re making headlines once again as it was announced overnight that the Bitcoin ETFs would begin options trading. And some of that did begin today.

We got IBIT. The Bitcoin ETF started trading options here today and the other ones expected to follow here in short order, if not by tomorrow’s trading. A lot of people expected that they’d all launch today. Didn’t look like that was quite the case. Didn’t see the options chains for some of the other ones like ARC B out there, but IBIT did begin options trading today. So the other ones are all soon to follow here. But this is so important because it’s just another feather in the cap of bitcoin believers. When the ETFs were announced, it was one step closer to a full or made it seem.

[00:02:34]:
I don’t want to speak, I don’t want to misspeak here. You know, it legitimized bitcoin further than it already was. Options trading is another step towards that. Even greater. So legitimacy for bitcoin and highlights the growing confidence in bitcoin. And I’m sure that there are other crypto ETFs and options trading that will take place going forward. But bitcoin continues to be the biggest winner out there. Now we have seen some love for the other altcoins, as they call them, the smaller cryptocurrency out currencies out there as well since Trump’s election, the pro bitcoin, pro crypto president.

So I think we’re due for a lot of exciting innovation from the cryptocurrency space as a whole. As you know, we’re big believers in bitcoin here, have been for a long time and we do remain extremely bullish here. And on the news of the options being announced, we hit another all time high during the session today for bitcoin crossing above $94,000 of bitcoin today. We’ve pulled back a little bit here. I’ll get a last refresh for you though in our VR at the end of our VRA commodity watch here. Now if you hadn’t heard that bitcoin news yet is likely because the drum beats of war were sounding in a big way today. It’s all you could hear about, you know, over the last 24 hours. A lot has happened here.

[00:04:05]:
Kev talked about this yesterday as well. The Biden administration allowing for the first time U. S Long range missiles to be used by Ukraine and they wasted no time in deploying them. According to Russian officials, six rockets were fired, five were in a intercepted. And of course, you know, the big story out there is going back to this kind of comments that Putin has made. You know, if NATO gets involved, then nuclear is on the table. Something I’m paraphrasing there, but essentially, you know, he signed another new nuclear doctrine here making it easier for them to retaliate with tactical nuclear missiles. We don’t see that happening.

You know, I think a lot of this is kind of strong arming here, nuclear blackmail if you will, that if saying that if, you know, you use this against us, we’ll use this against you. You know, lord willing, none of that’s going to happen. You know, it does appear though that the neocons that are currently in office that know they’re about to be pushed out, the Biden administration who knows that they’re about to be pushed out are doing everything in their power to start World War Three before Trump gets inaugurated on January 20th. So January 20th can’t come soon enough. It’s good to have seen already. You know, Trump and the people who will be in his administration already calling for some sort of peace negotiations to take place. You know, Putin’s not a stupid guy. So if he can wait it out till then, there’s going to be a lot of pressure on him to do something.

[00:05:45]:
You know, we just got to get through to that point here. But again, we don’t. We think it’s unlikely that something would happen. Of course, in war, you never know again. Lord willing, nothing will happen before that time. But it was good to see our major indexes higher on the day following that news. Remember, it’s not the news that matters, it’s the market’s reaction to that news. Now there’s also kind of the old adage that when bullets fly, stocks are a buy.

So hopefully that wasn’t the case here today. But regardless, just taking it at face value on the day, when that kind of news comes out about the potential for World War 3 and stocks are up, it’s not the worst thing in the world, that’s for sure. So, you know, we’ll stay tuned. We’ll continue to report on that here as well. But also something we saw today, the that was good to see is yields starting to pull back here as well. We’ve talked about this here often. Yields in the 4 and a half percent range are no concern for us here as far as the potential to derail this market. But we do believe that yields will continue to move lower, continuing their 40 year bare market that we’ve talked about for the last couple of years.

[00:06:59]:
Yields falling back below a 4.4% today now at a 4.37. So another interesting day here for yields as well. Then a couple other minor side notes on the day. Some interesting side notes though, I will say Google, yeah, I’m not a big fan of Google and certainly not what they’ve done with their platforms. But it was interesting to see Last night the DOJ, the U.S. department of justice, whatever I can call them that, I guess. But they will ask a judge to force Google to sell off their Chrome extension, their Internet browser, Google Chrome. But Google was up on the day on that news.

Now the argument could be made for a lot of these tech companies that the sum of the parts may be worth more than the whole. Right. If you look at Tesla, we talk about this here often, that if you spin off Optimus, their robots division, right. The autonomous driving division and then also their AI divisions, right. These are three companies, all standalone. You could even spin off the car aspect of it and separate it from autonomous driving and sell that autonomous driving to other brands. And we’re looking at multiple 500 billion trillion dollar companies there all packed in right now to a company with roughly the valuation of $1 trillion. So again, you can make the speculation there that the sum of the parts might be worth more than the whole.

[00:08:31]:
But again here Google being up on the day, it’s not the news that matters. It’s the market’s reaction to that news. Now Google and some of the other big tech names still have some work to do to get back to their all time highs. And it’s time for the generals to start putting in that work and making up some ground to all time highs. This could be the beginning of that kind of movement. Now speaking of the generals, we can’t forget earnings. We are still in the last stages but still in earning season from Q3. You know, this morning before the open, Walmart reported beating in a big way up nearly 3% on the day to day and hitting an all time high as well.

Now all eyes will be on the earnings after the close tomorrow. And that is Nvidia. You know, Nvidia really kicked off the AI innovation revolution in May of 2023 where they came in and crushed and it’s been, you know, just look out above from there for Nvidia stock and continued earnings beats here. So we want to see another big beat. It is, you know, a pretty crucial moment for the market in the short term I think until we can get some more other positive catalysts out there under the Trump administration. You know, this will be, this will be an important earnings report tomorrow. Dan Ives, you know, kind of a legendary tech investor who has absolutely nailed this move in both Tesla and Nvidia has called for a massive beat tomorrow saying Nvidia is going to have a mic drop moment after its massive beats tomorrow. So let’s see if we can keep that going.

[00:10:12]:
Stay tuned here. We will be reporting on that as well. All right, let’s take a look now at our major action major indexes on the day today. As I mentioned earlier, we finished with three out of our four major indexes higher on the day to day and exactly what you want to see finishing near the highs of the day today. As I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, futures did open lower this morning and in some, some instances open lower in a big way. So this was a good session today. Nasdaq leading the way. Exactly what you want to see up 1.04% to 18,987 below.

Its all Time highs as we have seen a pullback here. Next up were the small caps. Russell 2000 up 810 of 1% to 2,324. After that the S&P 500 up 4. 10 of 1% to 5,916. Again, both the Nasdaq and the S P finishing near their highs of the day. Today is exactly what you want to see then. Our one laggard on the day still didn’t finish far off its highs of the day, but was positive for a little bit earlier was the Dow Jones down just under 3/10 of 1% to 43,268.

[00:11:34]:
Next up here, looking at our internals on the day to day. You know, a little bit of a mixed bag here you could say, but no bad numbers, right? And compared to earlier in the session, we finished pretty good. We had more advancing stocks than declining stocks on the Nasdaq. Just barely negative though on the NYSE looking at 52 week highs and lows. Came in positive on the NYSE, was negative on the Nasdaq. Now you know, there’s a time where that concerns us. Now is not that time though. The Nasdaq plainly put is not made up of all prime time players here.

Right. There’s a lot of small caps in there and other areas again just not quite prime time players. So 2 to 1 negative on the day. No concerns there for us. Volume though was interesting as we got positive volume on the NYSE and 70% upside volume on the Nasdaq today. So overall, good day from the internals, not great, but mostly positive on the day. All right, next up here, looking at our sectors on the day today we finished with 6 out of our 11s P500 sectors higher on the day to day, led by the tech sector, exactly what you want to see. Followed by communication services, which is essentially a proxy for tech, mostly made up of Google and Meta.

[00:12:59]:
That makes up about 40% of communication services. Both of those stocks up nicely today. Certainly helped the sector after that. Utilities, we talk about this here often. They’re the largest borrowers of debt in the nation. Lower yield should help them. And we’ve looked at utilities for some time now as a sign that yields were going lower because the stock market is a forward looking mechan mechanism. So when utilities are hitting all time highs after all time high, you know, then you start to say, all right, the market’s expecting that in six months to a year they’ll be able to borrow at lower rates with lower yields.

Right? It hadn’t Been the case so far but we do continue to believe and the utilities continue to head higher. Is some evidence for that here. Then our laggards on the day day we were led lower by energy, financials and healthcare on the day. Finally here for today, our VRA commodity watch. We get a quick refresh of my screens here. Gold now up 810 of 1% to 2,636 as it’s starting to look like, you know, this pause in gold, this pause in the miners is coming to a close. These are two of our. Well, I’ll say the miners are one of the best setups we see on a chart here.

[00:14:22]:
The other one would be semis. You know, semis still have some room to go before getting back to their all time highs from earlier this year. You know, Nvidia’s earnings tomorrow could be a big spark for that. And then on the other end, GDX had just hit an all time high in mid October and since that time has pulled back, hit extreme oversold territory, really extreme oversold on steroids here and stopped right at support levels. So this is a very healthy looking setup here. We think that this pullback was nothing more than that, a healthy pullback, you know, part of a natural bull market. And then we got today exactly what you want to see. Gold again up 8/10 of 1%.

GDX, the gold mining ETF up 2.3% on the day today. So that’s what we want to see from this group is the stocks, the miners specifically outperforming the base metal. And that applies to a lot of areas. You know, same thing with semis and tech. You want to see tech leading and semis leading tech. Dow Jones, you. This one kind of goes back and forth but you want to see the transports leading the Dow or vice versa is kind of the Dow theory approach there. When one of them’s hitting an all time high, the other is going to follow.

[00:15:40]:
So again that applies here as well to a lot of different sectors. Next up, silver also higher on the day, up 210 of 1% to $31.29 an ounce. Copper now up 1.15% at $4.16 a pound. Oil still trying to get back above $70 a barrel. Not quite there yet, up 2/10 of 1% today to, excuse me, 69.31 cents a barrel. And finally here for today, bitcoin as I mentioned earlier, rallied on the news of options trading. Beginning for these, for bitcoin specifically, not for cryptocurrencies. This is one we’re looking forward to trading some options on here.

It’s kind of like trading options on a leveraged etf. There’s a lot of potential for these. So again, IBIT got trading traded today. We expect the other ones to continue here in short order. And again, just adds more legitimacy to the space as a whole, provides confidence for investors. You know, just until, you know, these Bitcoin ETF started trading, you couldn’t own Bitcoin in a retirement account, which limits the access to Bitcoin. When hedge funds cannot buy Bitcoin, you know, you’re missing out on a huge portion of the addressable market. Yeah, they can buy it in their personal accounts, but you know, for an older investor who doesn’t understand what Bitcoin is, they have no option to get in it with an advisor.

[00:17:17]:
Just, you know, side note Here again this SpaceX launch is happening right now. So I’m going to wrap up this podcast pretty quickly and get to watching. This is this is exciting stuff. This is what we have to look forward to in our country again is exciting things like truly getting back to innovation, getting the government out of our way so that we’re able to innovate and do what we do best here in America. Get back to American exceptionalism where we’re leading the technology race, we’re leading the economic race and the rest of the world is running to catch up with us. That is what we think we have to look forward to here in America in a Trump second term. But to wrap up on bitcoin there did hit an all time high earlier in the session today of 90. I saw some, some readings got as high as 94,000.

Tyler Herriage [00:18:10]:
My last quote here has 93, 918 as the high of the day. We’ll have to wait till some of this settles now. Still higher on the day, but slightly below that at $92,326 of Bitcoin. Our year end target remains at 100,000. We think we’ll likely be on the low side there for bitcoin

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 and and we’d love to have you with us. Thanks again for tuning in. Until next time. We’ll see you back here tomorrow for the close.