In today’s episode, Tyler breaks down a record-breaking day on Wall Street, with semiconductors hitting all-time highs for the first time in 50 weeks. He delves into the trends driving this bull market, such as the increasing M2 Money Supply and the declining U.S. Dollar, and explains why owning inflationary assets is crucial for retail investors. 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 fantastic day out there. Another great day from our markets here today as we head into the long holiday weekend for July 4th, which I actually didn’t know tomorrow will be the last trading day of the week. But not only that, it’s a half day of trading tomorrow. So markets will close at 1pm Eastern time, close on Friday. Then of course, we’ll see you back here again on Monday as well.

[00:00:53]:
So hope you have a fantastic week long July 4th weekend out there, you know, celebrating our great country and be careful with the fireworks as well. But now have a great time, eat some great food, hang out with some loved ones and it’s a good time to celebrate because we did get a number of 52 week highs, multi month highs and yes, even some fresh all time highs today as well. So we’ll cover all of that and more in today’s VRA Investing podcast. But since there are so many highs to cover here today, we’re going to go ahead and start off with a low on the day. Which is not to say that I’m leading with the bad news here because this is a call we’ve had for some time now. So let’s go ahead and take a look here we see a chart, as some of you might have already guessed, of the US dollar, which did not hit a 52 week low today. We although it did in yesterday’s trading. So this is a chart we’ve referenced here a lot.

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We’ve looked at a lot, especially compared to Trump’s first term. During Trump’s first term, the dollar and yields peaked just before the inauguration and moved lower consistently from there in his first year in office. Look familiar? That’s exactly what it looked like in 2017 as as well. Now we are getting to extreme oversold levels here. So we might see a bounce in the US Dollar. But this is the main reason here. We’ve been saying for a long time now since we wrote the Big Bribe and published it in 2022. This is why we all must own inflationary assets in this environment.

Cash as proven here, you know, down over 11% or so on the year already. Cash is trash compared to the rest of the market as we’ll get into these highs on the day. So what is owning inflationary assets look like? It’s one of the most important things that retail investors can remember right now in our view, right along with Our five mega trends. So if you haven’t read the Big Bribe yet, you know, come and join us. For 14 days, you’ll get a free digital copy. If you want a hard copy, go to bigbridebook.com you can check it out there. But we’ll cover a few more of them here today. So inflationary assets, that does mean stocks.

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Yes, stocks are an asset class, right? That of course does meaning thing owning things like physical gold, one of the oldest currencies in the world. It’s been a phenomenal run as well. Real estate and other assets are going to appreciate as the dollar continues. This doesn’t mean it’s going to be straight down, just like inflation. Like we talked about on last week’s podcast when we covered cpi, PPI and PCE inflation over the last five years and what that looks like, it was never going to be a straight line down. You can only say that in hindsight. So yes, there will be more moves upward along the way. But this really solidifies again why we must own inflationary assets and why the US Dollar continues to move lower here.

Yes, another all time high from M2 money supply here as Kip’s mentors told him. Another topic we talked about in the Big Bribe. When money supply is on the rise, you want to be long stocks in that environment. So last month, or excuse me, at the beginning of June we learned because it gets about two months behind. So at the beginning of June we learned that April’s M2 came back. That was the first all time high. We’ve gotten an M2 since. In three years.

It been over three years since this previous all time high.

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That we got in 2022. There you go, April 2022. So today we got back May of this year again all time high. We can go a little closer. Man, it’s kind of funny if you look at a one year chart. Watch this. Bam. Just up into the right.

Even on a five year chart. You know, this doesn’t look like too bad of a dip if it was a stock. That’s a buying opportunity. Totally different.

Right?

It’s a joke. But again, important points here.

And so now we’ll get into some more of the highs on the day to day. But that’s again back to the main point here. Absolutely crucial in this environment to own inflationary assets. We have many ways to do that. We do that here at the vra. We have our favorite positions that we monthly dollar cost average into. It’s not if you’re feeling like you’ve missed out on a move as we get through these all time highs today. I’ll show you multiple reasons why Blue sky territory is not a bearish occurrence.

And there will be plenty of buying opportunities along the way as we continue this bull market into 2030. And now it is increasingly looking like beyond as well that even our ambitious goals that we set for the market in 2022 might be on the low side from what we saw or what we saw at the time in 2022. So we’ll go through a few of those. But again we monthly dollar cost average into our favorite inflationary assets again Gold Bitcoin, our favorite stocks and then around that we’re also market timers. We use leverage ETFs to get take advantage of those short term gains and use those gains again. That’s what we monthly dollar cost average with. So you know, if, if you’re not here with us, I know we’ve got a bunch of great listeners here on the podcast as well. So thank you as always for being here with us and we hope you come and join us, you know, for our daily updates and everything that the VRA has to offer.

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Check it all out on V letter.com you’ll see our podcast there as well. So without further ado, we’ll get to the all time highs here. Let’s take a look at some of our market action. This wasn’t even our leader on the day, but we got another all time high today from the s and P500. And really we’ll get into this a little bit more as well. A mirror image of yesterday’s action where we saw the Dow finish higher but the the S and P and the NASDAQ finished lower on the day today looked like similar action this morning right out of the gate. The Dow ended up being our our major index, our only major index to finish lower on the day today. The rest of them, you know, really finished at or near their highs of the day today, which is exactly what you want to see from this market.

But again, if you feel like you’ve missed out, it has been a phenomenal V shaped recovery. But we’ve compared this a lot to the V shaped recovery of 2020. Not as dramatic of a move lower and a very fast move higher. Right. We didn’t get back to all time highs depending on which major index you look at August and September of 2020 despite bottoming a little bit earlier in March of 2020. March 23rd was the low, I believe. All right. Of 2020.

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That is so What I want to point out here is that we are at overbought levels. Now, there’s two things here. If you have your positions, this isn’t necessarily the best time to sell again. Blue sky territory can often mean the beginning right of that move, as you’ll see here in a second. But as we do hit extreme overbought levels, that’s when we pause that monthly dollar cost averaging in our favorite positions. Again, applying that to the S and P here right now. So one thing first and foremost, there is nothing more bullish than a market that gets overbought and stays overbought. Now obviously that presents a challenge for buying opportunities.

Like I said, that’s usually when we pause.

You already want to be positioned at that point. So on a day to day basis, it might hurt you might feel like you’re missing out a little bit. Let me show you exactly what, why you are not missing out. So here’s a chart of the S&P 500. We went through this one last week as well. And what happened in 2020. Okay, I’ll let me condense this a little bit here. We’ll go from.

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Instead of yeah, go to January. I didn’t condense it too much more, but okay. So pre Covid, those are all time highs, big drop, like I said, bottomed move March 23 and it took us until August to get back to all time highs in the S and P 500. You are here.

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That’s why I drew this on here. That’s essentially where we are right now. Now that doesn’t mean that this is going to be. We’re going to see another similar 4% move and then that’s the all time high pullback. That mean all of this is going to come true after this. Because like I said, a market that gets overbought and stays overbought, it could exceed this trajectory here. Point is, even if it exceeds this trajectory, it’s going to look like this in the future. Buying opportunity.

Buying opportunity. Buying opportunity.

[00:09:55]:
Time after time. So again, no reason to get FOMO here, but now if you look at the chart at a similar time here, look how extreme overbought we were. We’re nearing similar levels now. So again, not that not a sell signal, but a time to proceed with caution on putting new money to work and what we believe we saw yesterday here. I’m going to zoom out so we can discuss this here for a second because Kip wrote this up. Great, In this morning’s update as well. Exactly what we saw yesterday was Textbook bull market action. Exactly what we want to see because we do have tech, we do have S and P, we do have smh all at all time highs. I’ll get to that more in a second as well. But, but they are at overbought levels. So it’s not uncommon to see some people who did get in maybe a little bit early taking some profits. Could be institutional taking profits

Point is though, they’re not taking profits and going to cash. They’re taking profits and putting it into undervalued areas of the market. They’re putting that money back to work. This is the kind of rotation that, that is fuel to the fire football markets. Again, they’re not taking their ball and going home, not taking their cash out and going to the sidelines. They’re taking it and putting it into something else. When you’re at all time highs, you might have seen this chart and it’s a very, can be a scary looking chart from time to time of PE multiples. Right now, you know, at or near all time highs.

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Especially for some companies who big high numbers, you know, that’s also, it’s one indicator there’s not a holy grail just because they’re at all time highs. I mean they can’t go a whole lot further first. You know, maybe that’s investors telling the market they’re missing part of the story here.

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So again this is what we kind of said to members this morning. Yesterday represented a classic short term rotation into sectors and stocks that were undervalued. We’ll see some of that and some other stocks that hit multi month highs today. Sectors that have been unloved and again not a warning sign of a top in the semis or tech. But classic bull market action. Money not leaving the market, simply moving to other areas to find short term value.

We think that’s very bullish in the long run for this market and exactly the kind of action you see at the beginning of bull markets, not at the end. So again we’ll cover some of our rest of our major indexes here quickly. The Dow was our only major index to finish lower on the day. Again near mirror image of yesterday’s action, but just slightly lower. 0.02%. You know, nothing to write home about. Still 44, 484 near its all time high. Not quite there yet.

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Our leader on the day was a small caps up 1.3% to 2,226 for the Russell 2000. Let’s see, we already covered the S&P 500 the NASDAQ. While we weren’t quite here, I’m going to run this real quick. While we weren’t quite at the all time highs today, which we hit just two sessions ago, we got exactly what we want to see for this market and you may have guessed it, semis leading tech. Believe it or not, we hit an all time high today in smh. Still have a little work to do for the semiconductor index. That’s dollar sign sox but still, you know, multi month highs there as well. But this is the first all time high for SMH since July of last year.

While you’ll look at charts of the Nasdaq, we saw all time highs earlier in the year. If you really like I said, I mean we can go look at the S and P all time highs earlier this year. We saw a lot of sectors in that boat but the semis did not get there right. That was a, you know, in hindsight a bit of a warning sign that they couldn’t get back to that level. But it was, you know, new high. All kinds of things that this market’s throwing at you. But what I saw from today’s action, you know, if you can zoom in here and look at that candle right there, that’s today. Go back to the July 11th all time high from last year.

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Okay, July 11th, the all time high, 181, 82. Sorry, let me get that for you. Ah, it’s tough on a two year chart to pick out one day. There we go. Okay, look at this hidden all time high that day. Look where it finished. It closed at 269. It finished down over three and a half percent that day.

And the previous all time high right before it finished down 2.8% on that day. Look at that. That looks just like strength. You know, may mean nothing in hindsight but that’s what you like to see. Finishing near the highs of the day on a day with all time highs. That’s an all time high with conviction there. And like I said, our other major indexes also finished at or near their highs of the day for those that finish positive at least. So exactly what we want to see.

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You know, know we are at. Look how overbought we are here. Let’s go back to the one year chart. You know again, extreme overbought readings. Maybe you got a little bit on money flow there. So again we’re not at extreme overbought on steroids. In a market that can get to overbought readings and stay overbought. There’s Nothing more bullish than that.

But again, there will be more pullbacks along the way. We see this bull market running through 2030. So again, we’re still early here. All right, let me zoom out a little bit because we’re going to take a look under the hood of this market. Now, the internals on the day, also compelling here. Coming in strong, over 2 to 1 positive. Both NYSE and NASDAQ 52 week highs lows, not huge numbers here, but good. 4 to 1 positive combined NYSE and NASDAQ.

Oh, and volume, let me see if they’ve got a refresh on this one from where we were because this looks like some pretty good numbers here. Let’s take a quick run. 71%, you know, not the 80% you like to see, but we already got those breath thrusts earlier in the year which we’ve seen that one year later looks incredibly bullish on. And now in hindsight, those another round of success there for those kinds of indicators. So again, 71% upside volume almost three to one, two and a half to one esque slightly below that. And then Nasdaq even better, which we’ve seen some interesting action from this volume 75 upside volume there for the NASDAQ. I know a lot of that has been penny stocks, but again, we’re not trying to rationalize data here. We’re looking for trends.

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You know, I talked about this a couple weeks ago on the podcast. It’d be so interesting if penny stocks got their meme coin era. Got their shitcoin era, right? Not just meme stocks coins, I guess. Yeah, these really small market cap coins that you’ll go from 20 million dollar valuation to 250 million dollar valuation in a matter of days. You know, at some point we will get there. And I was going to save this till later in the podcast, but we talked about stable coins over the last couple of weeks as well. And I gotta do a little more homework on what exactly this would look like. But this was from Odd Lot.

Matt Levine was on their show. We’ll read a little bit of this here together. If you want to find it, you can go to Joe Weisenthal’s Twitter account. But so this is, this is interesting, right? We’ve talked about for years, why don’t regular investors, what they would say is unaccredited investors, why don’t we have access or they, I should, you know, have access to these private opportunities like a SpaceX.

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Or a smaller project than that. Even when you can go buy meme coins, you go Buy shitcoins on the market.

And those have almost no regulation around them whatsoever. So here’s kind of the point. I think with private companies it’s hard to imagine an argument for why retail should not have access to it.

You can spend your money on Amazon, buy trinkets, those things devalue. And then he goes on to say, you buy zero day options on the market, you can bet on the Super Bowl. Meme coins, you know, in a lot of states you can play poker, online gambling, all of these things. So the rules don’t really make sense anymore at all for private companies. These are way riskier than investing in a private company. You’re literally gambling versus buying a piece of a private company. So and the fact that accredited investors have access to it, it’s really not even private in that kind of a way anymore. So again, it goes on to say, just want to be clear about what’s happening this.

The general public should be able to buy shares of private companies. An oxymoron? Exactly that what makes a company private is that 1 not available to the general public. 2 not required to follow us publicly public company disclosure rules like meme coins don’t have to.

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Therefore the general public should be able to buy shares of private company means. Here’s what it means in practice that companies should be allowed to sell stock to the public without following disclosure rules. Now to some extent, you know, as a, you know, a libertarian minded thinker, that sounds great, right? Let’s get rid of these rules. Let people do what they want. Of course that means that there will, that will open it to the door for scam artists out there. We should find new rules for them and ways to prosecute that probably.

That means as he goes on to say, okay, so we’ll go back, it means that they should be allowed to sell into public without following disclosure rules. That’s not a crazy thing to think. Maybe the disclosure rules are outdated. Maybe they’re expensive, maybe they’re too onerous.

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Maybe it’s red tape now, not used for the intended purposes. A lot of times it gets used in a way that excludes retail investors from these kinds of opportunities. It’s insane to think about. So maybe they shouldn’t be reformed at all. Maybe they should be done away with completely.

Get rid of them and we’ll see what new laws apply to this day and age. Anyway, that’s kind of a side topic there, but that’s what we’re seeing. I think that’s what these type of stablecoin assets lead to and some of it is kind of a work around it in ways there. So I think we’re just beginning to scratch the surface of what this really means. Right. I’m not saying I don’t have all the imp implementation metrics of what this will look like in actual use cases, but I’m, I do agree with this statement here. Absolutely. That retail investors should have access to these things.

If that means we don’t call them private versus public companies anymore. Sure, why not? I mean if accredited investors are allowed in and again if retail investors are allowed to gamble, if they’re allowed to bet on the super bowl, that’s way more speculative, right? Yeah, you might have your payoff sooner than being able to trade shares of SpaceX. But why can’t we trade shares of SpaceX on the private market?

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If people own them and they want to need liquidity, why can’t they do things like that? Now there are creative structures where they do that exact kind of thing for private companies. So it’s just if there’s a market for it or not. But without proper access, you never know what the market really looks like. All right, so that was a little bit of a side note there. We’ll get getting back to the all time highs here and start to wrap this up for you here today. So looking at our sectors on the day to day, we finished with 7 out of our 11 sectors higher on the day today. Oil had a good day today, so energy stocks led the way. The next one materials another rotation to value possibly hitting its highest level of 2025 on XLB.

That ETF another one that I found really interesting today here. We’ll go ahead and take a look at both of those. Why not quickly here again, this is what I found interesting today. Consumer discretionary multi month high not as high of 2025.

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Highest level since February since really the tariff deals took off. But if the market is a forward looking mechanism, what does this chart tell you?

I’m not talking about tariffs and in hindsight all of this let’s you know, that’s what’s done is done right from here. What is this candle tell you if the market is a forward looking mechanism? We just broke out from a resistance level there. It’s hit that once, twice, you know, three times. A little bit of fail there kind of, you know that looks like quite a clear breakout from that level if we zoom in a little bit. I won’t do that for you here right now. Oh, why not? You Know zoom in there again, closing above. That’s a higher high right there. Exactly what you want to see.

So again, we now have a position in xly. We might know some of the names within it. I have to go look at the holdings there again. But, but point is, Consumer Discretionary should have been hit the hardest by tariffs, theoretically, right? Maybe not in practice, but in theory should have been hit hardest. So what does this tell you again? Forward looking mechanism. The market’s looking six, possibly even 12 months out and we’re making new highs. That’s bullish right there. That is another sign of conviction from this market.

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In our view, if the market was saying, oh no, in six months tariffs are going to get worse, this is going to be bad, bad, we would not be hitting highs today. That didn’t mean that something else, another exogenous factor can’t come in. But as far as tariffs go, this tells us they’re in. Our tariff concerns are in the rear view mirror.

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Anybody who’s still talking about it, it’s yesterday news. Unless something new of material comes up again, that can always happen. But this chart today tells you exactly that. And that’s why following charts is so important, because price is sentiment. If people are willing to pay above this level and, and buy at this level, that’s sentiment.

[00:24:10]:
And Helen Meiser loves this quote. There’s nothing like price to change sentiment.

It’s, it’s how you keep score out there. So it’s important to look at the charts not just from a technical point of view, but, you know, a picture is worth a thousand words, A chart’s worth even more than that. Every day is a story from the chart. All right, so for the rest of our sectors here on the day, you know, just to wrap up the winners on the day, Real estate having a good day today. Let’s just check one more chart here. Instead of, you know, the real estate sector because it’s in the S P made up of so many REITs, you look at the housing index, up nearly 1% today. You look at the home builders. And just on a sector basis, big day yesterday.

And then up another 1% here today. You know, looking good on a chart here too. All right, here for today, let’s close it out with our VRA commodity watch. Quick refresh of my screens here. Gold now slightly higher on the day to $3,374 an ounce. Again, another one of those inflationary assets we see as a must own here. Showed on the chart last week how it’s Outperformed the S&P 500. Now going back to 2003, silver now up a quarter of 1% at $36.52 an ounce.

[00:25:34]:
Let’s take a look at that chart as well. We’re about 8020 silver to gold here. Sorry, gold to silver, that is 80% gold, 20% silver. But that’s our personal weighting there. You know, there has been. The ratio of, of silver to gold has not kept up. So there’s certainly an argument to be made that silver is due for a big run. And hanging out near those, you know, recent highs, you know what high since 2011 or so at 37.30 an ounce.

Maybe that’s on the miners. Why don’t I zoom out real quick if you don’t mind hanging out here with me. Yep, that would that the 37 an ounce. Highest since 2011, 2012 era. Similar deal for the gold miners, which is another group that we have liked and had some good trades in copper. Dr. Copper Again, this is one that a lot of people, they call it Dr. Copper because it bodes well for economic health globally when copper is on the rise.

[00:26:31]:
Because that means there’s demand, right, for this which goes into every tech appliance, right into cabling for those appliances. That’s why it’s looked at as copper. Even though they do have alternate materials now it’s still looked at in that way. You know, copper hanging out near those highs from earlier this year now at $15.15 a pound. Oil, excuse me now, lower on the day was a little bit higher earlier in the session. Now down a quarter of 1%. This might be an after hours trade still at $67.37 a barrel. And finally here for today, one last choice chart here for you of bitcoin.

You know, not quite that all time high level at 112 there hit a high today of 109. So you know, really healthy looking action in this chart. Nice little short term base here before a potential breakout as we see it. And even if we are early on that trade, we remain extremely bullish on, on bitcoin. And for those in my generation who feel like they’ve missed out on the housing market.

[00:27:40]:
A lot of people have said, oh man, look at what previous generations had to offer here in Austin, Texas especially. I mean some of the downtown area properties are Austin proper properties since the 70s to today have gone from, you know, a $50,000 lot in a side of town you wouldn’t go to at night to a million and A half dollar lot in the same area.

Some of that I’m even on the low side of, really. And so that’s why I’m so against property taxes. If your parents bought that home and passed it down to you and anything happened, you can’t pay those property taxes. The state will take your land. That’s not government tactics, that’s mafia tactics. Greg Abbott, Come on, man. So, but reasons like that, though, they don’t. There aren’t the same level of taxes on bitcoin.

And you know, the goal with bitcoin is as they say often when it comes time, you know, like people ask, when should I sell my bitcoin? The answer would be when the time is right, you won’t have to.

That’s the theory out there. And as we see it, one of the greatest supply and demands, probably the greatest supply and demand story out there right now, you know, 21 million is all that will ever be created. And for a while there, you kind of wonder because you can buy 0, 1.2 all the way out to eight decimal places. They call those satoshis.

[00:28:59]:
So for a long time, a lot of people would say, oh, why can’t they just expand and go nine, 10, right? Well, one, it would take a lot of infrastructure built out in order to do that. It’s just the way it was. It wasn’t designed that way.

Eight is the max that it will go to. There is a finite amount. It’s not like some of the other, you know, cryptos out there. They’re really still viable options and some of them great buys, but for different reasons than bitcoin. So here’s the point that I was making with the housing price, you know, boomers. And I don’t know who Lindsey Samp is, so, you know, forgive me for that one. I thought this was just a good point. Boomers bought homes for a hundred grand that sell for one and a half million.

Like I said here in Austin, Texas, I’ve heard some even crazier stories than that. But now today, with Bitcoin at 100 grand, I don’t think it’s that big of a stretch unless something catastrophic happens in society, which could always happen anyway, in which case, I guess ammo might be your best option for currency and actual skills outside of digital ones. But, you know, barring that conclusion, or, you know, cryptos being a Trojan horse, all of those things, maybe we’ll look in anyway, we’ll get into all that right now. I don’t think it’s crazy at all to think that crypto will be worth a million and a half for one bitcoin in a couple of decades. It could even be sooner than that, right? So for those in my generation who feel that way, like you’ve missed out on so much opportunity, you’ve got the stock market at all time highs this that, right? Stock market hit all time highs in the last generation too. You know, you go and zoom out on a chart of the major indexes and it looks like bitcoin is just that on a compressed level. So, you know, we still think above a hundred thousand is still an incredible buying opportunity. There will be more dips along the way though as well.

[00:30:50]:
Folks, that’s all that 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@ VRAletter.com click the podcast link in the top and we’d love to have you with us. We’ve got a lot of exciting stuff coming for the second half of 2025. We like our positions here a lot as well. So come and join us. We want to help you fully fund your retirement account. Account.

That’s what Kip and I are passionate about. You know, we tell you exactly what we’re doing with our own money here day in and day out. We’d love to have you with us as well. So again, come and join us@ VRAletter.com until next time. You will see you back here tomorrow for the short day of trading and if not, we’ll see you back here on Monday for the close. Have a great holiday weekend, everyone. Happy July 4th.