In today's episode, Tyler breaks down this morning's latest look at inflation data and the stock market's reaction. He also covers the latest in job's data and it's potential impact on the November election. Despite some sideways action today, there's no alarm on our end, as new highs often lead to more new highs. Tune into today's podcast to learn more.

Dont look back because the market is closed. Good Thursday afternoon, everyone. Tyler Herriage here with you for Todays VRA investing podcast. Hope you all had a great day out there today following yesterdays BlaSt Off move higher that saw both the Dow Jones and the S and P 500 hitting all time highs. We got a little bit of sideways action here today, but no concerns for us here just yet. As we talk about here, often, new highs beget new highs. And so just one day after all time highs, a little bit of sideways action doesn’t concern us here. But the reaction this morning was in relation to the economic data that we got back before the open today, which will be the last CPI print that we get believe before the election here.

So Kip and I both thought, you know, we might get a really good number, even if it is another manipulated statistic here from government sources. Right, which we talk about this here often, whether it’s jobs data, inflation data, really anything that comes from most of these government source data. You know, at, at best they’re manipulated and at worst, they are actually fraudulent numbers here. So we would not have been surprised at all. In fact, I would say it’s a little bit more surprising that we didn’t get the beats on expectations here as the Fed’s dual mandate today took a dual hit here as well, with both jobs data and inflation data coming in worse than expected. So again, we would not have been surprised to see a beat on data here and a big rally today. That’s really what we were looking for, although we don’t see this as a potential derailment from a melt up kind of move higher going into the November election. We talk about this here often.

[00:02:07]:
You know, the Federal Reserve leavings heavily to the dim party. We also have the plunge protection team out there that is, that are part of the powers that be. So again, they’ll do anything they can to help their candidate going into November. You know, there’s still a lot of concerns out there for an October surprise. And October is known as the crash month as well. But as we’re heading in now less than 30 days away from the election, I’d say I’d be surprised if we didn’t have continue to head higher from here, but we’ll see what happens. So back to the economic data here. Inflation headline inflation growth did ease today to 2.4% from 2.5, but missed the estimates of 2.3%.

Core CPI also turning up as well, coming in at 3.3% versus estimates 3.2% on the day on the job side of the data, we did see a bit of a spike in initial jobless claims that has the market a little bit nervous here in our view. You know, it was tough to tell too much from any one data point. We’ve talked about this here often over the last couple of years with inflation data that we do expect inflation to continue heading lower, but it’s never going to be in a straight line downward. So no big concerns from the data today. Market reflected that as well. On the initial news, markets sold off a little bit, but we finish just fractionally lower on the day to day and much closer to the highs of the day than we did to the lows of the day. So not a bad reaction here from the market. What was interesting was yields continuing to climb here, which you might expect on weak jobs data and or especially the higher than expected inflation data.

[00:04:11]:
We briefly today got above a 4.1% on the ten year. We did finish below that level at a 4.09 on the day today. And we’re also continuing to see the US dollar heading higher here as well. You know, these charts are very similar of the US dollar and yields here. I’ve seen, you know, from the peak earlier this year in about the April timeframe, where we got the highs of the year on yields, the highs of the year for the dollar. It’s been a nice move lower since then, exactly what we were looking for. But we were at extreme oversold levels on both, you know, going into this big move higher that we’ve seen. But now we are now at extreme overbought readings here on both yields and the dollar.

So we do expect the long term downtrend that we’ve talked so much about for both the US dollar and yields. We expect that to continue. We look at this as a pop, you know, a bit of reversion to the mean here, if you will, on the way to making new lows here. So that being said, one last point here on yields that was also interesting today was from the CME’s Fedwatch tool with last week, the odds were for either a 50 basis point cut or a 25 basis point cut, and we went from a 32% probability of another 50 basis point cut all the way down to zero in just the last week. Now, 25 basis point cut is still the majority view here. But what is interesting is that the odds of no rate cut, the Fed, taking a pause, has seen an increase now roughly a 15% probability here. And I’ll go ahead and put my conspiracy theory hat on just like I just talked about how, you know, the powers that be want to goose this market going into November to make Kamala look as good as possible. Now that we’re starting to see a shift, especially in the betting markets where Trump has now taken a lead, which many people believe that’s much, a much better reflection of actual sentiment than the polls.

[00:06:37]:
You know, I don’t know about you, but we asked this question quite a bit here on the podcast. You know, who have you been polled in one of these political pollings? Right? And we know almost nobody who has said yes. So who are they polling in these things? Right? But putting my conspiracy theory hat on, the fact that there’s a chance now of a Fed pause in November might be another tell that the market is actually expecting Trump to win in November, because we all know the Fed leans heavily towards the Dim party. So if Kamala wins, the Fed would have no problem continuing to goose this market after the election. You have to have to cut rates. They do so as much as they needed to to pump the market higher, make people forget about all of the issues from the last four years, a potential second rigged election here. It’s why we wrote the book the big bribe. When we have stock market, our major indexes and major stocks and sectors hitting all time highs, that means people’s 401 ks are also at all time highs.

When you have money in the bank, it makes it much harder to complain. Now, we’ve talked about this here often as well. There are definitely two americas right now, which I think there’s only one option in this election to begin to solve that problem, and it is Trump. If Kamala wins, we’re looking at a greater and greater divide between the haves and the have nots in this country. But the people with loudest voices tend to be the people who do have money. And so you see what we’re going here is that when people’s retirement accounts are at all time highs, they’re less likely to complain. But if Trump wins, I wouldn’t be surprised if they might even try to engineer a recession. You know, let the Fed stay put, maybe even get back to a rate hike cycle, right, do whatever they can to take him down, economically speaking.

[00:08:38]:
But I’ve said that would be very hard to do with the Trump economic miracle back in office. Right? Lower taxes, deregulation, lower energy prices, which is a major key in reducing inflation costs. So that might not even come to pass if they tried. You know, we’ll see. Our money still remains on Trump to win in November. But there’s always the outlying possibility of another rigged election here. Regardless, it has been an interesting shift here, a large shift to see in the Fed expectations for November. So we’ll continue to report on that here.

Luckily, we’re getting closer and closer to the Fed blackout period, where we don’t have to hear from any more of these Fed speakers until the November meeting. But back to our markets here. Even the mediocre data from this morning really wasn’t enough to derail this market. Yes, we didn’t finish higher on the day. The Nasdaq tried to go higher earlier in the session, but really we just finished fractionally lower across the board here. And again, we finished much closer to the highs of the day than to the lows of the day today. So let’s take a look at our major indexes here. The Nasdaq led the way today, down just 0.05% to 18,282.

[00:10:05]:
After that, the Dow Jones down 0.14% to 42,454. Next up, the S and P 500, down just over two tenths of 1% to 5780. And lastly here, the Russell 2000, down just over half a percent to 21 88. But I’ll say this here again, we do remain long and strong this market here aggressively long. This market we’ve now pulled out of our heavily overbought conditions. We are starting to get there again on our short term VRA momentum oscillators, but no concerns for us here. But that is why we have pause our purchases of our monthly dollar cost averaging program. But I want to be clear that we have not issued a sell signal here.

We remain at ten out of twelve screens bullish on the VRA investing system, again, aggressively long this market, and we continue to see the smart money move here being to buy the dip. So we’ll let you know when anything changes. And again, not a sell signal here, but we don’t always get back to extreme oversold levels in a new bull market like this, which we just on the cusp of wrapping up year two. Remember, bull markets last on average four to six years. With our last bull market lasting ten years, we expect another move like that here. Nothing has changed. And so we don’t want to sell our positions and miss out, potentially miss out on the next leg higher of this bull market. Next up, looking at our internals on the day, this was kind of the low spot of the day.

[00:11:47]:
You know, at midday today, the internals were trying to improve. Both the NYSE and the Nasdaq actually had positive volume earlier in the session. We didn’t say there, though, but again, no real red flags here. We did have more declining stocks than advancing stocks on both the NYSE and the Nasdaq. You know, no big two to one beats or anything here, though you’re pretty close to even on the NYC, a little worse on the Nasdaq. 52 week highs and lows did have our one bright spot here coming in. Positive for the NYSE, just a slight negative on the Nasdaq. And lastly here, volume, just barely negative on the NYSE, a little worse on the Nasdaq.

But again, no big beats here or anything. No two to one or three to one kind of beats. So again, no red flags here from the internals today either. Looking at our sectors on the day today, we finished with just three out of our eleven s and p 500 sectors higher on the day to day. We were led by energy here, followed by materials and then tech. Actually, the tech sector did manage to finish higher on the day today. Our laggards were real estate having yields on the rise makes a lot of sense that real estate, which has just been on a hell of a run, whether you’re looking at home builders, the real estate sector, which is Xlre, we don’t follow that one quite as closely because it’s mostly made up of reits. But to see yields on the rise, not a shocker to see real estate lagging on the day after that, communication services and consumer staples.

[00:13:26]:
Finally here for today, our VRA commodity watch. We’ve got some green on the screen here. Gold now up eight tenths of 1% to 2647. Silver up a big 2.3% to $31.37 an ounce. Copper now up 1.1% to $4.44 a pound. And oil back on the rise today here explains some of the move in energy here, with crude being up 3.25% now to $75.62 a barrel. Finally here for today. Bitcoin did get hit today.

Now back below $60,000 of bitcoin, still managing to hang on above 59,000, just barely, but down 4.3% at $59,075 of bitcoin. Folks, that is all that we have time for here today. Please be sure to subscribe to receive our VrA podcast every day after the close. We will be gone tomorrow tomorrow, but we’ll be back on Monday for the close. So please again, be sure to subscribe. 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 on Monday for the close.