In today's episode, Tyler breaks down a whirlwind day on Wall Street, unpacking the latest parade of tariff headlines and what they mean for your portfolio. He breaks down the facts and paints the big picture on why, despite all the tariff talk and “trade uncertainty” chatter in the mainstream media, this market continues to head higher. Tune into today's podcast for actionable insights for your portfolio.

Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Thursday afternoon, everyone. Tyler Herriage here with you for today’s VRA Investing podcast. Hope you all had a great day out there today. Hope your week has been fantastic as well.

You know, just a couple hours here before the close, prepping for the podcast, going through the day’s market action. I had pretty much decided not to cover tariffs on the podcast today. It’s been in the headlines all day.

It was really since the April 2nd Liberation Day. It’s been in the headlines every single day.

So I was just going to avoid it a little bit here today. But just before the close, we got some news here that I just have to cover quickly here because it really was quite a turbulent day of headlines for our markets today. You know, the news last night, excuse me, to the news this morning, to the news after the close. You know, it really felt like you were a ball in a pinball machine just going everywhere, right? Or watching a tennis match just back and forth, back and forth. Because overnight we had a federal trade court ruled that President Trump didn’t have the authority to impose tariffs like he did on April 2nd. And what a wild ride it’s been since then, right? The April 2, beginning the 90 day pause, a few negotiations going through and getting started, you know, some massive increases, some massive decreases along the way. And then last night that we’re going to have to do away with it altogether. And then just before the close today, that ruling did not last long because an appeals court halted the judge’s ruling to stop President Trump’s tariffs.

[00:02:07]:
So like I said, a crazy 24 hours only to get back to essentially where we started here. Now that’s about it for tariffs on the day because we don’t know a whole lot more right now. A lot of people out there speculating, but I think the facts are few and far between those speculations right now. The point here, though, the takeaway was today’s action, right? Clearly the market either has tariff headline fatigue or just didn’t care, Right? Because our major indexes came out of the gate with some gusto this morning. You know, for some of our major indexes, we finished clear closer to the lows of the day, but we finished positive across the board. You know, and I say near the lows of the day. That’s really for the semis which stayed positive all session. Our major indexes, the Dow finished near its highs of the days day.

[00:03:00]:
All of our major indexes went red earlier in the session and we finished all green. So again, clearly this wasn’t an issue for the market today. And perhaps the most interesting story that I found on the tariff front from today, which I didn’t see a whole lot of from other financial analysts out there, but this was from Lisa Abramovitz at Bloomberg this morning, right. That we’re now approaching the end of Q1 earnings. Nvidia yesterday, yeah, we had Dell today, but that’s not really a market mover. We’ll have other big names as well, but not really outside of that day. Market moving kind of stuff. Stocks like Nvidia, like a Magnificent Seven name.

So of all of the macro stats you’ve seen about tariffs, this might be the most important one because we are now at the end of Q1 earnings. We’ve got a month until the end of Q2. It will be gearing up for Q2 earnings season then, but so far with just about all of the major S&P 500 components having reported Q1 earnings, like I said, there will be more.

[00:04:08]:
But a large number of S P 500 companies have reported so far. This might surprise you. Only 3% of those companies that have reported have pulled their 2025 earnings guidance. Remember when tariffs started and everyone said we’re gonna lower guidance, remove it all together, we’re not even going to talk about guidance anymore? Well, that didn’t happen. Only 3% of companies low, low removed pulled their guidance, right? But check this out. The number of upside revisions to downside revisions from this quarter, 2 to 1 positive outnumbered 2 to 1 positive upside on their guidance versus the entire, you know, mainstream media, financial analysts, all of them out there assumed that this would be terrible for earnings, right? And would cite tariff concerns and earnings reports, all those kinds of things. But look at what they’re actually doing with guidance. So when you see a stat like that, you start to question the headlines that the financial mainstream media is saying is moving the market.

[00:05:16]:
They’re not moving the market. This is a sentiment thing. Sentiment moves the market, Right. This is the phrase tariff uncertainty or trade uncertainty. It’s a propaganda talking point for the mainstream media and nothing more than that in my view, especially at this point now and beyond that as well, trying to think of how to transition here because these are two very closely correlated things. You know, what we’re going to see from companies going forward and what we’ve seen in their earnings announcements, but perhaps even a bigger headline than that which is really has gotten much love either is money supply, M2 money supply hit another all Time high in April for the first time in three years.

[00:06:07]:
We started cutting back on money supply, Fed tightening all of those kinds of things. We had a bear market in 2022. Now we are back to all time highs on the money supply. Now, from an inflation standpoint, not saying that inflation is going to come back to the way it was in 2022 at all, but from that point of view, you know, we’re looking at a further devaluation of the dollar. Again, not at the same pace that we saw in the last four years, but it will continue nonetheless.

Which is why we, we’ve said this since 2022 and it still remains the case. It is more important now than ever to own inflationary assets.

We are hearing it from the Trump administration. You’re starting to see it in money supply data. Right. Cash is trash because they’re just gonna make more of it. And you really, you can’t vote your way out of a money printer.

[00:07:02]:
So what I find so interesting about this though, so again, you got to own inflationary assets. That means stocks, real estate, commodities, gold, silver and cryptocurrencies as well.

Assets that are going to appreciate against a devaluing dollar. And what’s so interesting about this though, again from the administration, this is and appears to be what has been the strategy all along from the Trump and Besant side of things. Because they know Trump and Bessant know that if they can reduce the US dollar index by another 30% now that is a long way.

Right, certainly. But if they can increase it or decrease it by another 30%, then our trade deficit goes away.

And what the big beautiful bill shows us as well is exactly this. This is what their intentions are. There’s nothing in there about saving money in the bill. They’re increasing the budget.

Not putting doge cuts into law. That might still happen.

[00:08:03]:
But point being, this isn’t a budget of austerity and Trump never claimed he was going to be the president of austerity either. So now it appears this is the game plan.

They’re going to devalue the dollar, do what other countries have been doing to us for decades.

This is just leveling the playing field in the Trump Besant view.

And again, how do you prepare yourself for this? You own inflationary assets.

That will continue to harp on that point here. So we think we see the game plan here, which is again a recipe for a melt up higher in stocks. Kips mentors one of the we wrote about this in the big bribe, you know what they would say when they saw money supply growing is that it is a high confidence tell from the market. A high confidence indicator that the bull market was will continue to run right again. With inflationary assets on the rise and dollar being devalued, stocks have almost no choice but to go higher in that environment. And it’s not even as much that real estate prices are going up or commodity prices are going up. It’s that your dollar can buy less of those things now. Right.

[00:09:20]:
So I think it’ll be for stocks, gold crypto, it will outpace that level of devaluation though. So you’re more than keeping up with the devaluation and beyond of the dollar. All right, so one final stat here before we get to our market action as well. I know I’ve covered a lot of stats here to start off this podcast, but we wrap up the month of May tomorrow. And as you know, we were big fans of Ryan Dietrich here. Great analytical work on the market. Right now. The S and P is up 6.13% or so for the month of May.

Six around that 6.1%. Call it right. When May finishes the month up more than 5%, there is never a lower market. One year later is also up nearly 14% on average one year later as well. So certainly not a bearish occurrence here. Of course, we got to finish strong tomorrow. Can’t lose more than 1.1% I guess, but we don’t see that being the case. Anyway, tough to tell one day’s market action in advance, but you know, looking pretty good for that set here in the month of May.

[00:10:38]:
So that being said, let’s take a look at our market action on the day today. Again, we finish higher across the board here. One more stat. Sorry, I keep checking my notes and seeing these because this is pretty incredible, right? We just ended one of the longest streaks on record of more bears than bulls in the AAI Investors Sentiment Survey. Months on end since we had more bulls than bears. That ended last week. So when I went to check AI today, I expected more bulls than bears. That was not the case.

Bulls fell by 5%. Now we’re back into an environment where we have more bears than bulls. As contrarians, we continue to like this setup a lot here. You know what this continues to show us? I mean, really what we’ve seen has been these dips have been incredibly short, right? And the bears just haven’t been able to get in control of this market. Today was a day where they could have.

[00:11:42]:
The Trump administration appears to be crumbling a little bit on their tariff ideas. Other major headlines out there as well. And even those dips the bears can’t get control of, that looks to be very bullish here. All right, so for our markets on the day, we were led by the S&P 500 up 410 of 1% after that neck and neck here Nasdaq. So you know, right at leadership there for the Nasdaq. And the semis which finished near near to their lows of the day, still Finish higher by 0.71% on the day. Exactly what you want to see. Semis leading tech after that small caps were up 0.34% and the Dow Jones 3/10 of 1% to 42,215.

And the Transports also led the Dow today, which is good to see here as well. Looking at our internals here on the day to day, this is what this was a tell from our market on the day earlier in the session when our major indexes did go lower earlier in the session.

[00:12:44]:
Our internals were positive across the board. That’s a very good sign for the rest of the day. And we did finish positive on the day today. So advancing stocks beating out declining stocks over 2 to 1 positive on the NYSE. NASDAQ not quite as strong but still positive here. 52 week highs lows positive on the NYSE, just barely negative on the NASDAQ. We talk about this here often though. One, that’s a lagging indicator.

Two, there’s plenty of not prime time players in the Nasdaq as well. Then for volume on the day, nicely positive on the NYSE and just about over 2 to 1 positive on the day as well for the NASDAQ. One other internal note here, the trinity it was the is the arms index, okay, hit a 52 we high today at a 2.37. Anything above a 2 can be seen as a buying opportunity.

[00:13:40]:
And this happens when the internals are good on a day where the market is lower. So the underlying strength under the hood of the market is stronger than what we’re seeing on the surface. It’s a good sign generally speaking, right. As again readings like this from the trend can be great buying opportunities. So we’re seeing the best trend that we’ve seen now in a full year. Again the signs that you want to see from this market. Looking at our sectors on the day, we finished with 10 out of our 11 sectors higher on the day led by real estate. You know, hey, we love to See that as well.

We always talk about the semis leading the market and leading tech. Well, our other leading indicator that we watch for often here, which hasn’t played a part in this rally in the same way that tech and the semis have, is the home builders. But housing, real estate leading the way today, home builders up 3/4 of 1%. So good day today. We want to see that action continue from the home builders there. After that we had healthcare and utilities higher on the day. Our one laggard on the day was communication services. Finally here for today.

[00:14:49]:
Let’s take a look at our VRA commodity watch here. Let me get a quick refresh on my screens. We’ve got gold was higher earlier in the session at $3,342 an ounce. Silver higher as well to 33.44 an ounce. Copper $4 and 67 cents a pound. Let me run that chart really quick. Dr. Copper, you know, nothing crazy here on this chart yet.

We want to see copper continuing to move higher, right? It’s a seen. Dr. Copper seen as a signal of global economic health because copper goes into just about everything tech related, right? Oil now down on the day holding on to above $60 a barrel at $60.93 a barrel. And finally here for today, bitcoin. The bitcoin conference is going on right now. I think Kip talked about this yesterday as well, that when these conferences are going on, they usually do mark short term tops. So we’ve seen bitcoin pull back from, you know, its highs of what, 111, almost 112 now back down to 106. You know, kind of par for the course in big bitcoin moves.

[00:16:07]:
We’re seeing similar action from stocks that are heavily involved with crypto here. You know, no major long term concerns for us, just maybe some short term action as again, events like this have marked, you know, really short term, really short term pullbacks in again in the short term around these events. So again, no concerns for us here.

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@ 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.