In today's episode, Kip breaks down a strong start to the week of trading for our major indexes, tech and the semis, and precious metals. He also breaks down the importance of investor sentiment and its key role in understanding market psychology. Lastly, don't miss Kip's take on the upcoming catalysts for this market. Tune into today's podcast to learn more.

Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Monday afternoon, everyone. Kip Herriage here with the VRA investing podcast. Hope you had a good day today. If you’re long and strong, you had a very good day today also. You had a great weekend as well. Let’s get right to it. It was a good day today.

Dow Jones, by the way, another strong smart money hour. These are, there are a lot of kind of finer points that are hidden within the VRA investing system. We talk about these here a lot, write about them a lot, but they kind of get lost in the shuffle because there’s so, there’s so much data, right, so many signals. It’s just if you are the kind of person that is prone to be guilty of analysis paralysis, say what, being an investor will absolutely eventually have its impact on you. We try to keep things pretty simple here, and we do that by staying connected to our primary themes, our base themes, our base case. Right. As long as that is not impacted, then it makes the rest of everything pretty simple. If you’re a trend follower, major, always on the right side of the market.

And again, these small tells that aren’t that small, but I just never hear people talking about them. And I was raised to believe that these are really important because they’ve held up after all these years I’ve been in the business. For example, today, again, another repeating pattern, folks. Smart money hour. We closed at the highest of the day today across the board. That happened twice last week. This is pretty rare that you see this kind of a, a pattern of this string of the, of closes that are this strong swap money hour wise, that, to tell the other thing, the semis leading higher. Now we had a couple of days last week where they lagged, but look, they’ve been a house on fire right from the, from the lows of last week.

[00:01:50]:
Really, they’ve just been nothing going parabolic today. The semis were down all day until about 130, about an hour and a half before the close. And then it’s like somebody, you know, it’s like, it’s like, it’s like a starting pistol went off. Boom, here they came. And so again today, we got to tell that the semis lead, the semis closed up today, 1.88% Nasdaq 1.4%. Both of those against semis lead tech. Tech leads the broad market. A smart money hour today, closing at the highs of the day.

This is textbook bull market action. And I also repeat, is textbook early bull market action. I covered this on Charles Payne show last week. And again, we talk about investor sentiment here a lot. Again, can’t over, I cannot overstate the significance of this subject when we have these market shakeouts. And granted, the Japanese black Monday when it fell 13.4% as the carry trade blew up. Yeah, that got my attention. If you, if you follow our work here, you know, you know that it did.

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However, that proved to be a one off, didn’t it? The Japanese have realized we’re never going to be able to raise rates. We’re never going to stop quantitative easing. This is the, this is the way for us and, folks, it is the way for the rest of the world that this is, this is our system. It’s not, it’s a perpetual money printing machine that is never going to stop. Matter of fact, when it does stop, we’re probably going to have a very, very, very bad bear market because this is now our addiction. This is what fuels the whole world. So that’s what the Japanese just admitted. And that’s where the markets now have recouped all of those gains that they had, that 13.4% decline.

But again, it’s these repeating patterns that we see happening here. And investor sentiment is such a place, a major role in it. This is the subject I want to spend a couple minutes on today. Again, if you’re long term follower of ours, then this won’t be new to you. But for a lot of people, no one’s ever just taught them this. Investor sentiment is such an important part of understanding market psychology, where you are in a bull market cycle. And that’s what we’re seeing now, because all these shakeouts that we get, all of a sudden, investors go from somewhat bullish to extreme fear. And it happens in no time.

It’s like in three days, we go from, okay, investors have gotten bullish again to whoop. Now they’re all selling and they’re all bearish. So here’s the, there’s the significance of that point. As this bull market grows up, as it ramps higher and higher and higher, you know, again, the Dow is at 40, just under 41,000. Now we’re almost back to all time highs, right? We were just down, what, eight, 9%, Nasdaq fell 60%, semis fell 28%. All of that’s being reversed now. But as this happened, again, investor sentiment got so bearish so fast that as this bull market gets going, and again, our target for the Dow Jones in this bull market, because we see this as a generational bull market, that’s our base case, is a hundred minimum of 100,000. We’re only just under 41,000 now.

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But I say as we start getting, Mike, my guess is as we, as the Dow gets to 50,000 and then 55,000, you’re going to start really seeing this much more prevalent where there will be declines. But these investors sentiment surveys and indexes, they just won’t show it. People will stay bullish. Now, that won’t be a sell signal necessarily, but it will be a sign that the bull market’s personality and characteristics have changed. It’s evolving, it’s growing up that yet that’s when the risks are greater. But again, we think this is a long term probably, folks, this economy is going to be so strong based on the innovation revolution that I hate to sound pollyannish, but we could be talking about a bull market for the record books that may never be broken. This is so many things, so many stars being aligned at the same time. But again, investor sentiment is one of those.

We could track in that for you. But if you’re bullish, this is what we should always want to see. On the first sign of trouble, the dick skyrocket. So the first time in trouble, the people that just turned bullish, they sell. Investor sentiment goes to hell in a handbasket. That’s what you want to see. That should give you confidence that we’re early in this bull market. Again, that helps you to use our other indicators that we have here in the very investing system.

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Use that as a buying opportunity. We combine all of that here, try to make it as clear as possible, but that’s how we see things, and we are very confident about our call. The lows are in. And again, very good day today. Dow Jones up 236. That’s up six cents. One percent. SVF 100 up 1%.

Rush 2000 up 1.2%. Nasdaq up 1.4%. Again, semi up 1.9% now. So it’s a very, very much a textbook day all the way around. We’ve got three catalysts we’ve been talking about. I’ll cover that just more in just a moment. Gold, GDX, the miners sword again to the assay. Sword up 2% today.

They’re up 3% on Friday. This is right, this is right in our kind of, in kind of, it was kind of our sweet spot here because seasonality now is turning, is about to turn positive for this group. And everything else is so bullish. I’ll cover that more. Just a moment as well. Evercore, this is Evercore broke news today. You know, the Nick Tamros at the Wall Street Journal has been called the Fed whisperer. Oka

Because he always breaks stories about the Fed. So they’re feeding, they’re feeding him information. He’s their chosen guy. All right, excuse me. So people follow his work very carefully because they clearly link to him. He’s almost never wrong, which means he’s being told from the horse’s mouth, Jay Powell, or someone that Jay Powell has told to do this. Well, today the market’s got a surge on this, by the way, when evercore, of course, that’s home to, well, we like a lot of the guys at Evercore. You know, Ed Hyman, of course, is the economist here that we talk about a lot here.

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Best Commons business 50 gears. Ed Hyman’s legend, right? Their technician, Rich Ross, someone we also like to follow a lot. But today it was evercore. And I’m assuming this had to come from Hymen, certainly someone on Hyman’s team, because the quote was the Fed is a Jay Powell. Again, this is directly from Evercore. Jay Powell, let me read it exactly to you. I just tweeted this out, so it’ll be hard to find. Yeah.

Jay Powell will indicate that the Fed is open to a 50 basis point rate cut during his speech at Jackson Hole, according to analysts at Evercore. That has to come from Ed Hyman. We’ve been told. I think this, I think just based on the way I’ve seen Jay Powell react to various things, I think this is true. Jay Powell reads Ed hyman every day. And it would make sense that he, that they would, I mean, again, Ed Hymen has that reputation. They do the best surveys, industry surveys in the business. They have a great economics team.

So I think there is truth to that. So I think that, yeah, evercore gets credit for a good leak today. And that’s what really, the market started gravitating even further higher after good open on that news. Nine straight today, folks. Today is nine straight days that the SP 500 has been higher. This streak will end. They all do. But again, the market is broadening.

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So it doesn’t matter. Obviously we’re going to get shakeout. Until I saw evercore’s comment today, I actually kind of thought we might get one shakeout this week before. Jay Powell’s speech was Friday morning at 10:00 Eastern at Jackson Hole. I thought we’d get a shakeout. These are pretty common, by the way. Somebody plants a story. Jay Powell is going to be, is going to, is going to be.

He won’t be dovish, right? He’s going to be, he’s going to be, he’s going to, he’s going to be talking about raising rates, some, some nonsensical story that would be leaked, you know, and all of a sudden, you know, the Dow loses two or 300 points and, you know, it’s a big shakeout, but it does are short lived. A lot of times those are planted by people that have a lot more power than yours truly, and then they use that sell off to jump in for the next big move higher. But now that Evercore has leaked what Jay Powell is likely going to say on Friday, I think that we’re looking at a risk. I think we’re looking at a buy the rumor, sell the news event going into Friday. And that’s just for short term traders. This is what we’re going to do in our, almost certainly in our parabolic options program as we go into Friday. We’ll take some more profits and we’ll advise, of course, for vrade what we’re going to do there as well, whether we take some profits. We’ve added some new positions that are doing well.

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I doubt we’ll take profits, but we’ll play by year and see what happens, because we’re not short term traders in the VRA portfolio that is primarily for our parabolic options program. But if nothing else, it’s a sign to stop buying. That’s just stop buying. Let’s let this little overbought shakeout take place because I think that’s probably what’s going to happen. I think the market will remain strong all weekend as we the mark money is front running into Jay Powell’s very dovish, right, not hawkish, but very dovish speech that he’s going to give on Friday. But you also have to notice about Jay Powell. And again, Tyler is our resident Fed watcher here. Jay Powell has been known to destroy bull markets.

He doesn’t like it when he goes to speak and the market’s up big, so he’s probably not going to like it come Friday when the market just keeps steamrolling higher. He’s going to take some air out of it. I guarantee you that’s what he does. He’s almost like offended by it. How dare you front run me? I mean, this guy is very easy to read, I must say. I think he’s very, very easy to read. Tyler’s had a good handle on that and I’m catching up. So we’ll play that by year.

We got a long week in front of us, of course, and we have our other catalysts that are coming up as well. But after Jay Palace beach is Friday, Nvidia earnings on 828. The stocks been taken up to the woodshed as if all semis. What a great buying opportunity. We didn’t, we didn’t buy Nvidia. We own Soxle right? Soxl the three time leverage semi ETF. We like that for the exposure, diversification, exposure to many companies, not just one. And because it’s leveraged, we actually may often get a better move than you get in Nvidia.

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So that’s what we like to play it, especially for our trading positions, using socks instead of Nvidia. But I do think Nvidia is going to keep running and I expect that they’re going to blow away earnings on August 28. And then the final catalyst is a September 18, which is when the fed, of course, is going to cut rates for the first time, maybe a half a point. I think that’s probably very smart. They’re behind the eight ball already. They should have already started cutting rates. It’s time to go ahead and become less restrictive. And they got to try to help their team.

Right? They got their team, Democrat party. They got to try to help their team. So, yeah, I am looking for a half point cut coming up next month. All right, before I get to the internals, I want to talk to us for a second about the gold and the miners. Look, we’ve been pounding the table in this group again. Gold all time highs overnight. GDX again in the last two days has been up 5% now. But you got to remember, these miners are still like more than 40% to 50% below their all time highs of 2011.

Kip Herriage [00:13:43]:
They have a long way to run the volumes. This is what I can’t figure out. I really cannot figure this out. But I know the end result. I just don’t know why it’s not happening already. GDX, the miner ETF traded again. It’s starting to go parabolic again. And it traded 20 million shares today.

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That is Trump chains. That is such a low number. Look at a chart. Go back over a chart over 1020 years. And when the miners are going and they are going, they’re leading the market as is gold. Both have outperformed the market from the bear market lows in 2022. It’s a stealthable market. We talked about that a lot here.

But when this volume starts getting going, the big move that’s coming in, the miners will take place when volume finally starts to rise, because that’s how we’ll know institutions are finally jumping into this group. So that tells us a couple things, doesn’t it? It’s early. We should keep loading the boat, right? That’s what it tells me. Because on the back end of this and the volume comes in, we’ll get a chance to take some profits at much, much higher prices, both for the large cap and the junior miners. Because when they get going, you know, they’re, they’re a house on fire, right? One of our holdings today, snowline gold, was up 8%. We only own two, two mining stocks outside of an ETF. And I think that our other Vista gold was up 8% as well. So the junior miners may just be starting to get some legs.

And when they move, boy, do they ever move. And the timing again, I think is perfect with the setup. We have lower rates, lower us dollar. Central banks are buying gold handover fist. This will be a third year in a row. The central banks the ultimate in smart money. This would be the third year in a road that central banks have bought all time record high ounces in gold, either right at it or just more. I mean, it doesn’t matter.

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The three year trend is parabolic. They are loading the boat on gold. Why would they do that, I wonder? Why would they do that? How about maybe they know money printing our system we have in place is not going to stop until it blows itself up. When is that going to be? I think that we are in the roman empire 100 year period of collapse. I think that we’ve got 20 years to go, but it could be ten again when it starts. It’s going to. You will know. We’ll know.

We’ll know when the thing starts blowing up. Okay? And we’re not seeing those signs now, by the way. But I think we, I think we get 20. I think we get 20 years, and I think that at least ten or 15 of those years are going to be extraordinary. For those of us that are open minded, paying attention to what the markets are telling us, entrepreneurs, aggressive investors, I think this is the time to build some generational wealth. And again, that’s been our theme now for a couple of years. Why would we change it now? It’s just starting to really pick up speed in the direction we want to see it go. All right.

Under the hood today. Let’s take a look at the internals. Another, again, smart money hour. It’s incredibly strong today, right? Semi slight tech, tech fed, the broad market boom. Textbook, just what you want to see. And it just keeps getting better. Here are the internals today, again, we’ve seen a string of these really strong days. Thought today, again in volume, 83% up volume date.

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NYSE. I think that makes for three or four days in the last week, we’ve had 80% plus. That’s very, it’s a very good thing to see. Nasdaq volume also very strong, closing at volume day. In our same thing, advanced decline three to one positive. NYSE. Three to one positive for Nasdaq. These are very good numbers.

We also had 336 stocks at new PTUK high to just 78, hitting a new 52 week low sector watch. The good news just keeps on coming. All eleven sectors finished high on the day, led the upside by two, both of them tied at 1.4%. Communication services technology. And again, nothing to the downside. Very strong day across the board commodity watch. This is what was interesting, right? Gold. Yeah.

Gold closed higher today, closing at an all time high. Not an intraday, but a closing all time high, 25 42 announced. That’s a $5 announced on the day. Had been higher. The high was 25 48. So about $16 below the all time high. But again, closing at an all time high today. But again, when you see the miners, GDX today up almost 2% when gold was only barely higher.

That’s another tell that’s, I don’t think there’s a stronger buy signal for this group. Silver today up a big 2%. Plain little catch up here at 29.43 an ounce. Copper today also surging higher again. Remember, after surging over $5 a pound, dropped to what? 380 a pound, now back to 420 a pound, up another 1.2% today. These are just resets. That’s what we just witnessed. We witnessed a reset, and this is the normal ebb and flow of a bull market.

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These are all what these represent are extraordinary buying opportunities. We don’t own a copper stock, by the way, because we’re so heavy in gold and silver, and we just couldn’t really find a copper stock that would do better than the stocks we already owned in this mining space. So that’s the reason there. Crude oil today back down another dollar. 70, back down to 73.83 an ounce. A lot of cross currents there. A lot of cross currents there. And I will maybe cover those on another day.

We got a little more time. We love mining. We love energy stocks. Oil, we’re about 50 50 on in the short term, but the trend will be higher. But we like, we think the energy stocks represent much greater value here. Cash flows really still off the chart. And finally today, bitcoin over the weekend, Sunday, actually, yesterday morning, it traded back over 60,000. Gave that away this morning, traded down to a low of 57,800.

Now back to 59,200 on the day. I think I just saw they’ve mined, 97% of all bitcoin has been mined. You see that? I think I’ve got that right. 97% of the 21 million bitcoin that will ever be in existence have already been mined. So it’s just a great supply demand story.

All right, folks, that’s it for today. Hope you had a great day and even better night. We’ll see you back here again tomorrow after the close.