Welcome to the VRA Investing Podcast with your host Kip Herriage. In today’s episode, Kip breaks down a historic week for the markets, as the Dow Jones hits an all-time high above 47,000 and key indices push into record territory. He recaps insights from the recent members-only Zoom call, shares why the VRA Investing System just flashed a strong bullish signal, and explains why this generational bull market is just getting started.

Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Friday afternoon everyone. Kip Herriage here with the daily VR investing podcast. Hope you had a good day today. Hope your weekend is fantastic as well. What a day, what a day, what a day. Been a long week here. We had our members only Zoom meeting last night which was great.

Thank you all for showing up for that. Tyler did a great podcast yesterday. So what I’m saying here, we’re going to talk out this week. Absolutely. If you’ve been with us anytime at all, you know our position on the market, you know what our primary themes have been. Probably not a reason to have to repeat those today. So I’ll keep this a little brief for you today, let you get about your weekend. But we did have a lot of important things happen today.

For example, all time highs across the board, dow Jones passing 47,000 for the first time. Now if that sounds like a big number to you, get ready for a lot more of them. Okay, Remember our target for now more than three years from the writing the book, the big bribe has been a Dow Jones 100,000. And honestly, I mean, we only have to double from here to get there. When we first started saying that the Dow Jones is like 23,000. So we’ve already more than doubled from there. And but again, get ready for a lot more of this because this is that bull market. It’s a generational bull market.

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So again, all time highs, Dow Jones S P500, NASDAQ also the biggie, the most important index or the most important sector, the semis finished up today better than 2% also at an all time high. That is textbook, folks. When the semis are leading Nasdaq following, then they lead the market. That is textbook bull market action. By the way, the VR investing system, as we wrote this morning in our letter and covered last night on our member Zoom, we it’s been now upgraded to 10 of 12 screens. Bullish. We have 12, 12 screens, eight fundamental, four technical. And now sitting at 10 out of 12 screens.

Bullish. And folks, that is called back up the truck territory. This gives us a high degree of confidence that this market wants to go higher. What’s important about that is the shakeout that we had, right? We had extreme overbought levels earlier this month. We needed a pause that refreshed. We told you that’s what we believe we were going through and now that’s taken away all the extreme overbought readings. Now we have a solid Runway in front of us before we start hitting overbought levels that would concern us. And that’s, that’s, by the way, in all of our VRA momentum oscillators.

It’s an important point and it tells you, again, we’ve got a good Runway in front of us to, to experience. Also this morning we got the cpi. I’ll talk about that in a minute. Earnings, of course, have already kicked off for Q3. Next week is going to be the Lollapalooza. We got the big ones next week. I’ll talk about that as well. All right, let’s get into the CPI data this morning because, again, you know, how do I say this with maximum sarcasm? 47 leading economists came out with a message that Trump’s tariffs were going to cause widespread inflation and rapidly rising rates.

Now, this was back in March and April. I, I can hear everyone laughing out there because exactly the opposite is taking place. CPI came in this morning beating estimates. September came in. The CPI came in at 3% versus estimates at 3.1%. And core CPI for the month of December came in at just 2/10 of a percent increase versus the estimates of 3, 10 of a percent. What this does, it absolutely cements the Fed’s rate cut next week. Again, the Fed meets next Tuesday and Wednesday and we’ll be cutting rates next week.

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It should convince Powell to cut rates by a full half percent. Frankly, more. Frankly, more. But they won’t. He’s a political Fed chair. There’s no way he’s cut by more than a quarter of a point. And that’s just the way it’s going to be. May cannot come soon enough.

That’s when Powell will no longer be chairman of the Fed. And to all those that are saying, you know, his term doesn’t run out for another year, he might even stay on the Federal Reserve. No, let me, let me put that, let me put that rumor to rest. Now, Jay Powell, when he leaves that chairmanship, will not stay on the Federal Reserve Board, which means there’ll be another person coming on to replace him for that point of view. So very soon, very, very soon, the Federal Reserve is going to look quite a bit different than it does now. And frankly, Trump has taken over the Fed from within. And again, this is a, it is miraculous the number of issues that this guy can tackle at the same time and handle them with such a plum. I’ve, I’ve never seen the like, we, we have never seen anything like Donald Trump.

Doesn’t mean you got to love everything he stands for. I know, I know a lot of you don’t. Okay, but on the big points, the things that matter the most, safety of our country, the economy, obviously the stock market, we care a lot about that. We, because you know, we’re talking about funding our retirement, putting our kids through college, that kind of thing. Again, security of the country from every point of view. I mean, I’m sorry but the rest is a little insignificant. The jabs aren’t right. Is handling of.

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They’re still on the market. Okay, look, I do have my issues. You know this. But again, from our point of view, from the economy and investing point of view and core security issues for the country. Yeah, this guy is absolutely amazing. And I don’t think that’s an. I think that’s probably an understatement. I think, I think it is, I really do.

But again, CPI just proving once again that the mainstream economist, the best way to lose money is to listen to them. The best way to lose money is to take the advice of the majority of market strategists on Wall street because they will in almost every case lead you wrong. This. I was taught this by my first mentor, Ted Parsons when I was a rookie stockbroker. I thought he was crazy. I thought, how does he know better than the Wall Street Journal? How does Ted know better than all these leading economists and market strategist at Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch? How does Ted know better than that? Of course I learned in pretty short order that Ted was a very wise man and he taught me some important lessons being a contrarian one of them. And that’s what we’re talking about here. All right, again, next week’s a big week and that’s why the markets dropped today.

It wasn’t just the CPI data. We’ve broken out again all time highs across the board and the market’s now anticipating and discounting next week. Okay, in a very short term basis. Monday we get Alphabet’s earnings again, this is all, all about big tech next week. Tuesday Advanced Micro devices which is up 7% today. Intel was up 8% today. Wednesday intel reported great earnings again, semis up better than 2% today. Wednesday we get Microsoft and Meta and Thursday Amazon and Apple.

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I’ll tell you, obviously the obvious point is should, should any of these big tech companies disappoint and give any even somewhat negative guidance, the market’s in trouble. But did you see what’s happening here? Does it look like that’s what’s about to happen here? Can you see the writing on the wall? We are very early in the innovation revolution. Folks, very, very early in these data center build outs. Very, very early in this wonderment of an age we live in, of technological advancement, which is we’re going to see things happen in the next one to two decades that will make us think we’re in Star Trek, that will make us believe that the Jetsons have finally come to life. Right? If you’re anywhere close to my age and you were a kid, how much did you like watching the Jetsons, thinking about the future and knowing, you know what, at some point that’s probably going to happen. And now these things are happening and then some, right? So it is very, very exciting time to be alive. The other thing is happening here. And again, this is a big driver for this market.

The fear again, the perma bears, the fear mongers that are out there. People are still taken by the psyop of negativity. They are, they are locked into a mindset of the next crash is just around the corner. The next 2008 housing crash and financial crisis is just around the corner. At 37, almost $38 trillion in government debt, it’s going to destroy us altogether. I’ve been hearing these things for a long time. Matter of fact, as a rookie stockbroker, you know, I wanted to learn from the best and the, and the wisest in my firm. They were all singing the same song then.

Ted wasn’t, but all the other old gray hairs, right now I’m one of those guys. They were all talking about our debts going to kill us all, folks. That’s been a song and dance that I’ve heard every year. We all have. But again, we do recognize the reality that yeah, it wasn’t that long ago that we did have a financial crisis and a complete housing crash. And it’s still fresh in people’s mind. It just, it put a dent into the psyche of people and I think it’s going to take a lot more time probably for that to wear off, but that’s what we’re seeing here. And so when you see the markets now at all time highs with the fear and greed index at 2828, that’s three points away from extreme fear.

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This week’s AAI investor sentiment survey, which I’ve voted in since 1989, came in with more bears than then bulls. And we’re at all time highs. This is not the investor sentiment of a market at a top. This is the investor sentiment of a market very close to a bottom when we’re just days away from all time highs. But investor sentiments in the toilet as it is now. This is as far away from a sell signal as you can get. It’s a huge tell. All right, so again, looking forward to next week.

Of course. We’ll be with you every step of the way. Let’s take a look under the hood today and let you get about your way. Here we go. Good, good internals today by the way. We had NASDAQ today was a 2 to 1 positive advanced decline. So was NYSE. Both actually both a little better than that.

Up volume was 69, 62.9. NASDAQ 69.8%. NYSE again solid readings. And we had 459 stocks new 52 week high today. Just 74 hitting a new 52 week low. Sector watch today a little mixed today we had, what is this? Six sectors finished higher, five finished lower. Led the upside by exactly what you want to see. Tech stocks up 1.5%.

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Communication services essentially tech up 1.3%. To the downside, energy down 1% today. Energy stocks have actually had a pretty good run over the last week. And again, you know, when you get oil prices where they are now. Oil today closed at 61.45. Again it is at least back over 60. We’ve talked about oil a lot. The key point here is that and Tyler made this, this point on the podcast on the member Zoom last night.

When you have energy stocks leading the way higher as they’ve been doing all year, energy stocks have been leading oil higher. We love to do relative strength charts. They’re very important and they basically give you a kind of a crystal ball to what’s happening underneath the surface and what’s going to happen in the future. And you know, right now you got, you got energy stocks again leading all year long. That is a buy signal and it’s a big tech tell in our commodity watch today. Gold today finishing down 31 now to 4114 again we gold silver and the miners spent the entire month of September at extreme overbought levels as they went absolutely parabolic. Right now when you see those kind of parabolic moves, they’re fantastic when you’re a part of it. But you know on the back end there’s going to be some kind of correction.

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That’s what we’re having now. GDX the gold miner GF pull back exactly to its 50 day moving average. This is a technical correction, understand that? And this is healthy. It’s normal. And now we’ve got, we’re washing out the hot hands, right? The weak hands. They’re saying bye bye to this group is exactly what needs to happen to wash out the excesses and give us now a launch, really like a launch pad for our next move. Higher. And that is what’s happening here.

Silver today down 6. 10 of a percent at 48. 39. Copper today, quite quiet on a day flat, but still over five bucks a pound. Today $5.11 a pound. Again, crude oil 6143. And finally of the day, Bitcoin 110,778 puts it up just right at about $0.01 1% over the last 24 hours. All right, folks, told you I’d keep it brief.

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Today I actually accomplished for a change. Hope you have a great weekend and we’ll see you back here again Monday after the close.