In today's episode, Tyler recaps a strong start to the year for our markets, and what to expect as we head into the most bullish timeframe of the year. He also breaks down the latest moves in the VRA Portfolio fueled by tech names like Nvidia and Tesla. Also, we will cover the government shutdown and what it means for your portfolio. Tune into today's podcast to learn more.

Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Wednesday afternoon everyone. Tyler Herriage here with you for today’s VRA Investing Podcast. Hope you all had a fantastic day out there today. A great start to the best quarter of the year for our markets. You know, we really finished and made it out of that last 10 days in Q3, which is a seasonally weak period of the year really without any scratches. And it was another good quarter for the markets. We’ll recap what we’ve seen so far this year for the market as Kip covered Yesterday the VRA Q3 return.

So stay tuned. We’ll get to that here here in just a minute as well. And what we can expect from this seasonally bullish time frame here, not only for stocks, but for some of our other asset classes as well. But first and foremost, thank you to Wayne Allen Root. I’ll be on his show War Zone tonight, this fantastic show at 6pm Eastern time. I believe I’ll be on around 6, 6:30 Central. So what is that about 7:30 Eastern time there where we’ll dive into a variety of topics. Some I’ll touch briefly on here today and really discussing why this generational bull market is just getting underway.

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It’s funny to say that when we’re at or near all time highs, but the last time I was on W show was in August. We were at all time highs then too. So if you’ve been a buyer after watching that episode of Wayne’s show, you’d be very happy with your purchases on that day. What an incredible run it’s been and one that we do expect to see continue here. So it’ll be a little bit quicker of a podcast today, but certainly action packed here as we did get the government shutdown at midnight last night. We’ll explore a little bit more of what that means. But for our markets, as Kip covered yesterday as well, we also saw gold getting above $3,900 an ounce for the first time ever today. Now getting very close to our $4,000 year end price target.

You know, going into this year, virtually no one was saying that gold could be at $4,000 an ounce. Now we’re just $100 away from that level now. And you know, quickly, let’s go ahead and kick it off with this here because Kip hinted at it on the podcast yesterday. It’s out on social now and we wrote about it to our members this morning. But what, you know, an incredible 1/3 it’s been for our markets. I Think that if you’ve gone back to the March and April time frame of tariff mania, you know, you. And if you told just, just about any Wall street analyst out there that the Nasdaq would have double digit gains on the year before the end of Q3. Now maybe they said by the end of the year they might be saying okay, that’s possible.

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But by the end of Q3, I mean we were already through Q1 at that point, right? Especially in April when the lows took place. If you had told Wall street analysts that, they probably would have laughed you out of the room on that one. But hey, that was our call then and that is where we are now. The Nasdaq up over 17% so far on the year. Adding to those gains today, nearly 18 now and leading the way, the S P up a solid 14 as well. But now through the end of Q3, the VRA portfolio is up 41.8% on the year this year with some really big gains. Of course. We love tech.

We’ve talked about tech in the semis here at Linked. You want to see. I’ve got a great chart for you here in a minute as well. You know, you want to see tech leading the market and semis leading tech. Well, we own Nvidia here at the V which had another great day today, hit an all time high. So these numbers actually have were from the close yesterday. Nvidia up 75 and a half percent since our buy wreck on it earlier this year. We’ve got Tesla, which if you hear the gains on the year may not sound quite as impressive because it had an incredible Q4 run last year.

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But this is a stock we’ve been long in the vra portfolio since 174 a share. We’re now at what’s the final price here? Let me go ahead and get an exact quote for you at 400, closing today at 459. And that actually is a, a 52 week high there on its way to its all time high at the very end of last year in December at $488 a share. Big news coming out for Tesla tomorrow as they’re announcing their Q3 deliveries. The estimate here is for 456,000 cars, a jump of 18% from the last quarter. If you hear any analysts out there talking about how EV credits being done away with will affect Tesla, you know that they’re not a very serious analyst because Tesla is the only electric vehicle maker that does not need these subsidies in order to be profitable. And that’s been the case. That’s the little bonus that they had along the way.

So Tesla’s in a phenomenal spot as we see it here. Full self driving, rolling out to Tesla owners at version 14 any day now. Y. I’ll let Kip update you on that one when he gets that update that comes across. But from the March lows of this year is the impressive number. The stock is up over 120% from that level now. Just an incredible run. And again, if you had told analysts these are the numbers that we’d be at, especially in the throws of Tarif Mania, you know, again, you would have been laughed out of the room.

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But that’s exactly where we are today. So we expect likely a beat tomorrow from Tesla, and then we’ll head into an incredible Q4. So it has been a great start to the year for the VA again, 41.8% returns in the VRA portfolio so far on the year. But I got to say, we aren’t done yet. We plan on keeping this momentum going into this incredibly bullish time frame of the year, the best quarter of the year for our markets. And this might be a time where a whole lot of money managers may call it a year at this point, protect those gains, you know, and just try to get out with another market beat here, which will now make, excuse me. You know, 20 out of 23 years that we’ve beaten the market, essentially 19 out of 22 years. Excuse me.

Um, sorry about that. Um, but that’s not our approach here at the V. We’re adding new VRA members here constantly. Thank you for being here with us. I know we’ve got a lot of new listeners here as well, and we don’t intend to lose sight of what our mission is here at the vra, what our goal has been, what Kip set his goal as when he founded the VRA in 2003. And I, when I joined him here roughly eight years ago now, the same goal that he instilled, instilled in me, and that is that we’re here to serve the VRA community, serve retail investors day in and day out here. So we want to help you crush Mr. Market.

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And we’re not stopping here at all. We’re looking for an incredible Q4. So come and join us if you’re not in this market yet. As I said earlier, you know, in August, people were saying, oh, we’re at all time highs. You know, maybe it’s just too late for me to get into this market. In hindsight, you know, Just a few months ago now, not even two full months ago, and we’ve gone parabolic from there. Yes, there’ll be pullbacks along the way, there always are. But there’ll be incredible buying opportunities.

And you know, we talk about this here often on the podcast. I’ve got a quick chart to share here as well. That just is no better money making machine than the stock market. And here’s the proof. You know, a dollar invested in the stock market when, when it began to today, 33,000.

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People love to talk about the 6040 portfolio, you know, and how the 64, 6040 portfolio is dead. Really? Well, it’s been dead. I got to say that here, you know, a lot of people might have thought it was dead after we went off the gold standard around this time. Look, the divergence here started much, much earlier. Now there are periods in here, you know, lost decade, right? But the ultimate result of every pullback, they’ve been followed by all time highs. That’s why we’re big believers in monthly dollar cost averaging. Even if you had a monthly dollar cost average over that whole period there, think about where you went afterwards, right? We’re always looking forward here in the stock market. So again, in this money printing environment that we’re in, we really have no choice.

Cash is trash. You cannot store dollars under your mattress anymore. This is not, you know, your, your grandfather’s economy, your father, or you know, in some cases for our younger listeners, maybe your great grandfather, right? This is not that time period anymore. You must own inflationary assets, which means owning stocks. It means owning the newest kid on the block, bitcoin. It also means owning precious metals and the miners, which are stocks, but you know, gold, silver, physical gold and silver, and then of course real estate as well. We have to own it in this environment until something changes, which does not seem likely at all. We live in a world where we functionally practice modern monetary theory, theory which is essentially, you know, the government prints more money to pay its bills.

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And here’s the prime example of that. It might shock a lot of you to know. Well, we talk about this one here a lot. M2 money supply hitting an all time high during COVID we added roughly, I mean over 30% in that one year to our money supply. That’s where inflation comes from. You know, a whole lot of economists, I’ll use quotations on that for economists, you know, especially those at the Fed, will blame wage growth or economic growth for inflation. Those are not inflationary aspects, only money printing. Inflation is a Money printing issue.

So it may shock you to find this one out though. The federal government’s budget, which we just had the government shut down. So actually, let me dive into this really quick. This, this is very bullish for the market. At midnight last night, the government shut down. You know, hey, keep it shut down. Because we had a 35 day shutdown in Trump’s first term. During that time frame, the S and P rallied 10.3% from there over the next 12 months, the S and P rallied, excuse me, from the end of that shutdown, returned almost 24% on the year following that.

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Right. So going back a little further, In 2013, we had a government shutdown only 16 days. The S&P returned 3.1%. And we’re off to a good start on this government shutdown as well. But we have to shut down the government. We’ve got to rein in this outrageous spending. As we’ve seen the Democrats all, all they want to do is spend money and not on Americans.

They want to spend it on free health care for everyone. You know, it’s, how is that even a talking point? When they get the question of, oh well, you’re trying to give free health care for illegal immigrants, they say, oh no, no, we want free health care for everyone. Okay, so your, your, your non answer is everything that we need to hear. You’re trying to give free health care to illegal immigrants. We get it, we get the game. We’re tired of it.

 

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The federal government’s budget from 2019 to today has, has increased 54% in six years. It was four and a half, just below four and a half trillion in fiscal year 2019. We’re at 6.8 trillion projected in 2025. Have as anyone. Is there anyone out there who could say that their way of life has improved in any measurable way from this increase? Absolutely not. No, they get bigger salaries, they get, you know, more funding to their pet projects and more money for non Americans. At the end of the day, that’s not what we want anymore. Again, we’re done with that.

I think most Americans would agree, far more agree on this. You know, the silent majority.

Far more people agree on this than then the few voices that we get to hear from in the mainstream media. You know, for anyone politician out there saying that we have a taxation problem, we can’t pay our bills because we aren’t taxing enough, it’s just a flat out lie. We don’t have a taxation problem in this country. We have a major spending problem in this country. And we see people, you know, like that joy Re clip that’s been going around basically saying that, you know, Project 2025 is fascism and you know, not even written by Trump by the way. But what they want is a return to the pre 1900s way of life where you have less business regulation, no taxes. Taxes didn’t begin until right around the time of the the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. We need to go back to that.

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Absolutely. U. S. Citizens should not be taxed by their own government anymore. There are other ways. Let’s pay for it with tariffs.

Reign in the spending and let Americans get back to work. All right. I said I would keep this podcast quick today. I am running a little short on time here. So quickly. We did get the ADP jobs number today coming in weaker than expected. I won’t spend a whole lot of time on that here. The only thing we really took away from it that’s important because we do see GDP going to 5%.

Right. The Atlanta Fed still projecting 3.8% GDP growth here as well. I believe that’s for Q3. So we’re going to grow our way out of this problem. That’s what Americans do.

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We’ll work our way out of this problem. But what it means for the market yields. The Fed is way behind the curve. And here’s more examples of that today on the Fed Watch tool. I mean the Fed Watch Tool has been lagging the VRA really. We’ve been calling for rate cuts for a long time, but the odds of rate cuts into 2026 increase significantly today on the CME Fed watch tool, the 10 year down 1% on the day to day still above a 4. You know, we just expect it to continue heading lower from here. So let’s take a look at our market action here on the day.

Exactly the kind of action you want to see. Our market soldered off mixed to negative on the day. We got a dip after the Open as well after the lows of the day. We’re in about an hour and a half into trading. It was off to the races and we finished at or near the highs of the day. Just about across the board here. Nasdaq leading up 410 of 1% to 22,755. And again, just what you want to see, the semis leading the way up a massive 2.2% I think is where we finish on the day today.

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And again, Nvidia, our V Byreck here hitting an all time high. But we saw multiple all time highs from this sector day. Some of the largest names in this sector as well. So it’s not just Nidia out there, you know that gets all the headlines. But a number of these stocks hit all time highs or 52E highs today at as well. And take a look at this comparison here. One that we show often of the S and P to. Excuse me, the semis to the S and P.

Sorry, excuse me. There we go. That is absolutely gone parabolic here. We got a little consolidation over the summer here and just wow, incredible movement here. Exactly what we want to see continue from here. This has been one of our favorite charts. Semis outperforming the market. And when you’re seeing that you must be long and strong when the semis are leading the rest of the market, just textbook bull market action.

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After that we had the S and P up just over 3/10 of 1% to 6711. After that, small caps which should perform here well as well. Now we have pro growth policies, yields should be moving lower. They’re the one, one of the biggest beneficiaries from lower yields. And when the Fed cuts rates over the next six months, small caps tend to outperform large caps by 5 to 7% as well. Lastly here for the day, the Dow Jones was our laggard still finished positive though just under 1/10 of 1% at 46,441. Next up looking at our internals on the day to day. Good day from our internals here.

Better than what we’ve seen recently as well. Nothing major here like 2 to 1 beats but coming in positive advanced decline on both the NYSE and the NASDAQ. 52 week highs lows impressive here as well. You know over three to one positive on the nasdaq. And then lastly here, volume so solidly positive across the board for both the NYC and the nasdaq. Exactly what we want to see continue from here. Next up quickly, our sectors on the day. If you just saw this, you might have thought well we might have had a little bit of weak market action on the day.

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But we had healthcare leading the way following Trump’s deals with the big pharma companies, excuse me, yesterday, and then utilities, you know this is one that, you know we don’t have a position here because these really don’t move a whole lot especially compared to other groups. But utilities breaking out hitting, I believe that’s an all time high. Definitely a 52E high. Let me just double check it. All time high from the utilities again the stock market is a forward looking mechanism. Utilities, they’re the biggest borrowers in the nation. So what does that tell you? Yields will head lower then for our laggards on the day today or sorry Tech and Consumer Discretionary did also finish higher. So four out of our 11 sectors.

Our laggards on the day really the the top two a bit defensive materials and financials then followed by communication services and industrials. Finally here for today, our VRA Commodity watch. Gold again hitting an all time high during the session today. Getting above 30 $33,900 an ounce. Now slightly below that level, but got to $3,922 on its way to 4,000 and beyond. You know our long term price target is $15,000 an ounce. So again not too late to get in on gold gdx. Again what you want to see from this group are the miners leading the precious metal.

GDX hit an all time high today as well, up over 1%. So 2 to 1 outperformance on gold today. Silver also hitting a 52 week high, still just below that all time high from roughly 14 years ago. Now silver excuse me at $47.42 an ounce, copper up almost 8/10 of 1% at $4.89 a pound and oil moving back to close to $60 a barrel at $61.78 cents a barrel in Bitcoin. Kip covered this one Yesterday as well. Q4 incredibly bullish for Bitcoin. Average gains of the last 10 years in Bitcoin in Q4 get ready 57 and a half percent. Just incredible.

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We saw it last year as well. And Bitcoin starting off strong on this quarter too, up 3% on the day at $117,514 a Bitcoin that is its highest level since August. Good to see here. We do expect it to continue. But folks, that’s all that we have time for here today. Please be sure to tune in tonight to Warzone. Thanks again Wayne for having me on tonight. Looking forward to it.

You can find it on the Gateway Pundit, be on Rumble, look up Warzone or or go to Wayne’s Twitter feed at Real Wayne Root to see it streamed live there as well. So looking forward to it. Hope you can join us there tonight. But as always thank you for being here with us. For the VRA podcast, you can sign up@vraletter.com click the podcast link at the top. You can find everything we have to offer there from our transcripts, comments timestamps. And if you’re not a member already, check, check out our 14 day free trial. So thanks again folks.

Until next time. We’ll see you back here tomorrow for the close.