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. It certainly was an eventful day. Another, I should say eventful day for our markets here today. Now, we weren’t higher across the board here on the day, but only the Nasdaq finishing negative. Will we continue to see a number of bright spots in this market today? We’ll cover those here.
We’ll also cover the latest from this morning’s inflation data and the reaction we saw today in yields and a few reasons out there, and some we saw even more evidence of today of reasons that yields should be peaking out here now beginning to top, and our continued view as to why yields will continue moving lower. Now, I’ll say this here, first and foremost, that yields at these levels at a 4.78 is where we finished at today. We do not see these as a reason to derail this market. We’ve said it time and again, these are restrictive. They are too restrictive as at these levels, but not prohibitive here. And we think we’re seeing some evidence from that or of that in the market here today. First one right off the top, small caps leading the way today are a sign as well. The smaller companies, the smaller public companies, I should say, are more sensitive to interest rates.
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We’re also seeing utilities had a nice rally today here as well. We’re at extreme overbought on steroids for yields. So just a few reasons there and we’ll talk about a few more today here on the podcast as well as to reasons why we do see yields moving lower from here. So on one of those notes, we’ll go ahead and kick it off here with this morning’s better than expected Producers Price Index this morning going into the reading, which came out at 8:30 Eastern Time, our major indexes were slightly higher on the day going into the report. The report came out coming in well below estimates year over year. Numbers here were expected for three and a half percent year over year, coming in better than expected today at 3.3%. So obviously still not quite back to the Fed’s 2% target. But core PPI came in better than expected here as well, but still technically a higher number here.
And that’s kind of what had the markets freaking out. What an interesting day of trading it was though, and I’ll get to this in more detail here in a minute. But after the PPI report, major indexes shot up on the news. Then as the market began to digest that news and to, to notice there that it was the Highest reading for PPI since February of 2023. That freaked a lot of people out, I think at least sentiment wise for this market. But I’ll pause there because we’ve talked about this. This has been our theme since inflation peaked at above 9% on CPI, that inflation was coming down. We saw the signs of it then, not right at the peak, but shortly after.
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But we said then it was never going to be a straight line move lower. So that’s what we see this as here. Yes, these were better than expected numbers. So exactly what we want to see. Yeah, yeah. A little bit of a rebound off of the lows, but that’s exactly what we see this as, as a bounce on the way to further disinflation here in the US and in the coming years. We do still continue to see the potential for deflation, even here in the United States. You we’ve talked about this at length here with what we’ve seen from China.
They’re in a bit of a deflationary cycle right now. We think China exports that to the rest of the world. And kind of on that note, one little side point here as well, one of the concerns for yields here and for inflation has been what we see is overblown concern about Trump’s tariffs. Right. There’s so much speculation about what they’re going to be. We don’t have any concrete plans here yet as to what tariffs will look like. And we know from Trump saying it himself that a big part of tariffs are a negotiating tactic as well. When you have other countries charging us massive tariffs to sell our products in their country, but we don’t have the inverse relationship.
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True. Then there’s a problem there. Something is broken. Right. So you can use the threat of tariffs to remove those tariffs that other countries have on our, on our products. And so if we can get those other tariffs removed, then you won’t even see tariffs going into place. You know, I’m not a fan of any of the financial big banks out there, I should say, and not a fan of Jamie Dimon. So I’ll just go ahead and say that first and foremost.
But he was on 60 Minutes, I believe, this week. I just saw this clip this morning when he was asked a question about the inflationary and, and potential disruptive factors of tariffs. You know, he kind of had a, a smirk on his face. Excuse me about it, though. He was definitely had a little bit of a smirk on his faces and said, you know, if you’re worried about that, you should really try reading the art of the Deal, which I, I thought was a pretty good response coming from Jamie diamond of all people, but that he’s exactly right though. You know, we don’t know what the impacts of these are going to be just, just yet. And I think a big part of it, I think we all, you know, on the Trump supporting side of things that these are, we kind of think that these are a negotiating tactic, but there’s not enough news out there for these fears that we’re seeing in this market right now. So, you know, we think that it’s just another brick in the wall of worry.
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And bull markets love to climb a wall of worry. So once we get past the inauguration and people can see that the tariffs aren’t as big of a threat to our economy here in the US and aren’t the potential inflationary driver that people think they are, you know, then the market can start to settle down on that. But again, right on cue here, we had utilities up big on the day to housing up big on the day to day. Again, small caps in interest rate sensitive groups here. All of these are interest rate sensitive groups and they’re outperforming at these levels. Again, another tell here we think from the market about what we can expect going forward because the market is a forward looking mechanism. It’s always important to remember that when we’re reacting to today’s news. Right.
So now all eyes will be on consumer price index data coming out tomorrow morning ahead of the open. So maybe a little bit of anticipation ahead of that as well, but certainly just an interesting day overall. So let’s cover that here in our market action because again, out of the gate this morning, our major indexes were higher across the board and then we got a pullback into midday and then we look to want to rally again. Our major indexes were higher across the board, even, you know, closer to a couple hours before the close. The Q’s were higher. The Nasdaq was higher as well. Only the Nasdaq finished lower. We did have both small caps, the Russell 2000 and the Dow finishing at or near their highs of the day to day.
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So again, very interesting session from that point of view. Excuse me. So let’s cover it here. Russell 2000 leading the way up 1.13% to 2219. After that, the Dow Jones up just over half a percent to 42,518. And just what you want to see, the transports continuing to perform well here up 1.3%. So vastly outperforming the Dow on the daytoday. Again exactly what you want to see.
Bit of a coiled spring there on their 200 day moving average after their sell off from the highs in late November. You know we want to see the transports continuing to act well here along with the small caps after that. The S P 500 up just over 1/10 of 1% still finished well off its lows of the day today at 5842. Lastly here the NASDAQ was down just over 2.10of1% on the day to 19044. But I’ll also point out here it finished well off the lows today in the NASDAQ 100 while it did finish lower on the session is now positive in after hours trading. Now keep in mind we do have Earnings season for Q4 kicking off this week as well. We’ll get the banks later on this week so stay tuned here. We’ll be recover, we’ll be reporting on earnings as they come in.
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As KIP covered yesterday, KB Homes crushing earnings was up big again today. I’ll get to that a little bit more here in our sector. Watch in just a second. Next up here though looking at our internals on the day to day. Even when our major indexes had pulled back at midday today the internals were just about positive across the board. Advanced decline stayed positive all day and volume did as well at least every time that I saw it today was checking it regularly throughout the day but advancing stocks coming in nice on the nyse coming in over three to one positive on the day, just slightly positive but still a win for the NASDAQ 5052 week highs and lows were our 1 negative spot on the day to day coming in just slightly negative for the nyse. A little bit worse on the NASDAQ though today. Now a big part of that as we talk about here often is there are some not quite prime time players in the Nasdaq so you know that reading is tough to tell much from as a bit of a lagging indicator as well.
Volume on the other hand coming in well over 2 to 1 positive on the NYSE. Good day to day there and also coming in positive on the NASDAQ as well. One other tell we saw from today that I forgot to mention with our market action it was so interesting day because we were positive negative, you know big move off the off the highs then a big move off the lows and the Vix closed down 2 1/2% on the day to day. We think that’s another tell from this market as well. So let’s get to our sectors here because I do want to cover this housing info. And one more time what we’re expecting to see from yields. So as I covered KB Homes crushed earnings yesterday was up. Let’s see what it finished up on the day today finished up 4.8%.
It was one of our leading sectors here was real estate finishing up almost 910 of 1%. But if you’ve been with us here for a while for sectors we don’t like to track, the real estate sector we like home builders which had a very good day today as well, up nearly 3% on the day to day. Exactly what you want to see. The housing index also up 2.7%. Nowhere near overbought levels there. We want to see this action in the housing sector continue then for our outright leader here, utilities again as a forward looking mechanism we think utilities are telling us here that yields are about topping out at these levels. You know may not be an exact top here in yields but we are hitting right up against resistance. We’re at extreme overbought on steroids and we think that the pressures of the inflationary pressures at least are weighing too heavily on the bond market right now.
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Now the argument that that bond yields are higher because we’re going to see incredible economic growth. Sure. But then again we don’t see that as a bearish thing for stocks and would you could say yields could go even higher. We’ve compared it so much and I’ll say it here one more time, we’ve compared this time period to the 1995 to 2000.com melt up when the NASDAQ rallied 575% with yields averaging above a 6% at that level. So again you’re just seeing so many perma bears out there talking about yields here. And so I wanted to present the other side of that argument here. After that we also had financials higher on the day, another kind of counter trend move to yields that could be signaling yields heading lower as well. After that value sectors materials, industrials and energy continuing its move higher here as well.
Our lagging sectors on the day to day, Communication services, healthcare and consumer discretionary. Finally here for today, our V Commodity watch. Let me get a quick refresh of my screens here. All right, Gold now up about half a percent on the day to day to 2,900. Excuse me, 2900. Right. I wish that would be an all time high from gold which would be very nice. 2,693.
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There we go. And GDX, exactly what you want to see from this group is the gold miners outperforming the base metal. We got about four times outperformance today. The GDX Gold Mining ETF up over 2 1/2% on the session today. Next up, silver up 8. 10 of 1% to $35. 5 an ounce. Copper now up half a percent to $4.34 a pound.
Let me run a quick chart on copper here. That is, you know, we’re at right at the upper end of their downtrend channel there. Be interesting to see where copper goes from here. Dr. Copper, as they call it when it’s on the rise. It bodes well for global economic health. Then finally here, oil now down slightly on the day today to 76.89 a barrel. And Bitcoin now up two and a half percent on the day today to 96,534 dollars a Bitcoin. Folks, that is 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 at VRAletter.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 tomorrow for the close.