In today's episode, Tyler dives into the action-packed week for our markets. From inflation data to all-time highs to a commodity market melt-up, we will cover it all. Plus, we will take a look forward, including upcoming major earnings reports like Nvidia, and some interesting trends as we approach the election season. Tune into today's podcast to learn more!

Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Friday afternoon, everyone. Tyler Herriage here with you for today’s VRA investing podcast. Hope you all had a great day out there today and a great end to your week this week. And what a week it was here across the board for our markets, for some of our favorite stocks, for our favorite sectors, and of course, on the economic data front as well. An action packed week. And with a week with a lot of news like this, we continue to get Q one earnings in. It’s good to see our markets higher across the board on the week this week.

And of course, the Dow Jones hitting $40,000 for the first time yesterday, along with the Nasdaq and the S and P 500 hitting all time highs this week as well. But not only that, not only did we hit record highs this week, all of our major indexes finished up over 1% on the week this week. And it only gets better from there after that. The Nasdaq was up over 2% on the week this week. Semis up over 3% on the week. And one of our favorites here, the VRA bitcoin, up nearly 9% on the week last I saw here, up 8.8% for the week this week. And looking back on the week that it was, I had Monday’s podcast here as well. So if you tuned in with us here on Monday, we’ll give you a quick little recap of one of my main topics.

[00:01:39]:
And of course, on Monday, I was looking forward, right? We had PPI on Tuesday, CPI on Wednesday. And I said at the time that if by the end of this week we’re looking back on the week and no one’s talking about inflation data, then it’s going to be a good week for our markets. And that is exactly what we got. Not saying that I called it there. I was saying that that’s what I was looking for from this week. That was the hope that looking back, much like a few weeks ago, we had the FOMC meeting and Kip and I talked about looking back on this week. If we’re talking about earnings instead of the FOMC meeting, then it should be a pretty good week for our markets and exactly what we got. So this week we saw PPI and CPI coming in line with expectations and lower again here, kind of reversing a lot of the fears that people had about this uptick we’ve seen in inflation from the previous, before this month, three reports, right.

But now after this report, it’s starting to look again here, like inflation is going to be in our rearview mirror. This has been a theme for us for a long time. Since we topped out at over 9% on inflation, we knew it was never going to be a straight line back to 2% or even to disinflationary environment. Right. It was just never going to go straight, straight down. Just like with stocks, they never go straight up either. So now we’re back into a stream here where we’re seeing or hoping to see more of lower highs and lower lows from inflation. As Kip talked about yesterday as well, we’re seeing it in yields and as a forward looking mechanism that the market is, including the bond market.

That tells us here that inflation will continue to trend in the right direction. The ten year was up a little bit on the day today to a 4.4, but still making from the recent highs, really short term here, lower lows, which is exactly what you want to see. So at the end of the day, good week for our markets. Is inflation still an issue? Yes. Anything above, really 0%, in our view, is an issue. Mohammed Al Aryan, who has done a ton of economic reporting, you know, probably similar to Nick Timbrose, who’s the Fed reporter at the Wall Street Journal, they’re really mouthpieces for governments, for institutions like the Federal Reserve. And I was actually kind of surprised to see what Mohammed al Aryan said about inflation, because we say it here all the time. And what we said, you know, the Fed’s goal is 2%.

[00:04:25]:
It should be 0%. It was 0% until recent history. And Alerian basically mimicked that, saying that the 2% is an arbitrary level. And he’s correct. Right. They chose this number because they thought it was acceptable for no other reason than that. I’m sure there were some equations that went into it, but they just decided, well, yeah, 2% is acceptable. Every 50 years, you lose 100% of the value of your dollar.

That’s acceptable to us. Doesn’t matter if it’s acceptable to the citizens of the country. I guess they decided. The planners made that decision, really in the Ron Paul boat on this one, in the Fed, bring inflation back down to 0%. But good news here. At the end of the day, inflation is trending again in the right direction. And we can talk about stock markets and stocks and sectors hitting all time highs and the reasons we like them, as opposed to fixating on the Federal Reserve and inflation all of the time. And so remember, just like with yields, like I said, kind of going back to this point, when we’re getting our markets hitting all time highs on a week with inflation data, a big inflation report at that.

We read that as the market telling us the market is looking 6812 months out. This is the market telling us that inflation 6812 months out will be at least an acceptable low level. You know, one other topic that we’re starting to work on here a little bit as well is that we’re now just six months away from the election. You know, we’ve seen it in the 2016 presidential cycle and 2020. This is when very weird things can happen, you know, so I’m going to try and predict what those weird things might be. But you have to wonder, Trump has been polling pretty well, pulling big crowds. You’re starting to see late night shows turning on Biden, right? You’re starting to see liberal networks actually calling out his mistakes. So you have to wonder a little bit, are these all time highs a little bit anticipatory of a potential Trump re election next year? It’s certainly possible, maybe a little too early to tell, but that’s a story that we’re beginning to work on here as well.

[00:06:47]:
All right. That said, let’s take a look at our market action on the day to day. A bit of a flat day to end the week here, but not bad at all. We had the Dow Jones finishing at the highs of the day, s and p, still higher on the day as well. And now the Dow Jones didn’t close back above 40k on the week. But that’s all right. This still makes a number of weeks, excuse me, in a row here of gains. So starting off, the S and P led the way today, up just over one 10th of 1% to 5303.

And that makes four straight weeks of gains here for the S and P just below those all time highs from yesterday. After that, the Dow, like I said, essentially flat, finishing up just four points on the day to 39,873. But that is five straight weeks of gains for the Dow Jones here as well. Next up, the Nasdaq wrapping up four straight weeks of gains, finishing down 0.07%. So not much at all to 16,685. As I talked about here earlier, Nasdaq still finishing up over 2% on the week, this week. And the semis, I will point out, you want to see the semis leading. We didn’t get that today, but we got it on the week.

The semis up 3.11% on the week, just below their all time highs here as well. And finally, the, the small caps also wrapping up four straight weeks of gains here, finishing higher on the week, a nice 1.87% down on the day, just 0.03% at 2095. Now, before I look at our internals here, I will point out one last time for the week. Something we’ve been talking about all week here is that we are starting to hit extreme overbought levels on our shorter term vra momentum oscillators. Now, in the case of small caps S and P and Nasdaq, we still have some room to run on the longer term momentum oscillators. But I will point out the Dow is right at those levels now. Still a little bit of room to run. And of course, a market that gets overbought and stays overbought is very bullish.

[00:09:06]:
You can’t always predict when that’s going to happen, though. So that’s why we’ve talked about here. If you’re having more of a trading mindset, this is when you start to look to take profits on positions. We’ll continue to update to that theme leading up to Nvidia’s earnings next Wednesday. This is above and beyond the most watched earnings report for Q one earnings. This will be the company Nvidia kicked it off last year with incredible earnings reports. Last May led to a tremendous rally for not only Nvidia, but for chip stocks, for tech stocks. So we’ll see if we get, you know, we’ll be watching the action closely leading up to that event to see if it’s a little bit of a buy the rumor, sell the news event or if Nvidia is just going to blow it away again and continue to go off to the races here, but a little bit more outside of just our major indexes, we’re seeing strong action in some of the big tech names here as well.

Apple, which has been really unloved. You know, it’s had a pretty big sell off on the year going into April. But in April, not even a month ago, Apple bottomed is, I believe, April 19, if I’m correct here, and is up over 15% since that time frame, going from $163 a share all the way up to 191. Yes, we are at overbought levels there. Really extreme, getting too extreme on Apple, but good to see the mega caps participating here. Google also hitting an all time high here today as well. So stay tuned. These are getting to overbought levels and about the time where you start to see the rotational aspect, I’ll talk about this a little bit more in our sectors and one sector that we like a lot here for this rotational kind of theme because we just had a bit of a technical correction.

[00:11:03]:
I mean, Apple is the prime leader of that correction, falling over 16% from its all time high to the lows in April. That’s almost, you know, these are arbitrary numbers. We don’t really buy into the 10% of correction. 20% is a bear market. Right. But if you do go by those levels, that’s almost bear market territory there for Apple that it’s pulled back from and was able to show some resilience in the face of getting to those levels here. We think that’s very bullish. So the correction has already taken place.

Now we’re not really looking for another 10% correction. Major indexes fell between seven and 9%. Right. I think the semis fell eleven. So no, we’re not looking for a big sell off more, so just some sideways kind of flat action to work off the extreme overbought levels we’re at. And as we’ve seen often from this new bull market, the dips have been short and sweet. So we’ll see if that continues. In our view, it absolutely will.

We still remain with eleven out of twelve vrA screens, bullish. And that is a record for us here as well. Lastly here for our markets, one last good factor. We’re seeing global indexes rallying as well. China’s large cap ETF hit a 52 week high today, seeing it in some of the other major sectors. For China as well, the Hang Seng has been on a nice rally. Some of the other indexes in China, like the Shanghai, still have a little bit of work to do, but good to see tech stocks in China specifically doing well here. And then, like I said earlier this week, just two sessions ago, we got the euro stocks 50, hitting 52 week highs here as well.

[00:12:48]:
We want to continue to see that a global bull market with global indexes participating here as well. And India is another one right in the range of 52 week highs. So if you’re just watching us stocks, it doesn’t really give you the whole story. That’s why we like these global ETF’s in particular, to really give us a view of what’s happening in other stock markets as well. Alright, next up here, turning the page, looking at our internals on the day today. At midday today, we had positive NYSE and Nasdaq volume and 52 week highs and lows. We stayed there for 52 week highs and lows. We got a little bit of weakening in the volume, but the NYSE was able to hold up on the day to day, actually finishing higher with more advancing stocks than declining stocks.

Just barely, though. And the opposite for the Nasdaq, negative. More declining stocks than advancing. Just barely, though. 52 week highs, lows were the bright spot on the day with a combined roughly 333 stocks. Might be a little bit over that now that I’m looking at the refresh screen, you get about a refresh 30 minutes to an hour after the close, so a little bit over that. And roughly 92 stocks hitting 52 week lows. Lastly here, volume did come in positive for the NYSE, just, oh, it did decrease a little bit more on the Nasdaq.

Still better than two to one positive there. And one has to wonder, like Kip talked about yesterday, a large part of the volume on the Nasdaq, which was to the upside yesterday, but it was in penny stocks that are on the Nasdaq. So you’ve got to wonder how much of this declining volume is just from those, you know, lesser stocks. There’s a lot of Nasdaq stocks that just aren’t primetime players. And as Kip talks about here often as well, you never know what warrants and contracts are factored into these volume numbers as well. So on the Nasdaq, a little bit tougher to really get a clear picture of what that means for us here today. Next up, looking at our sectors on the day, as I mentioned earlier, this is where we’re looking for some additional opportunity right now. Tech is starting to get overbought.

[00:15:03]:
One sector that we’ve liked for a long time talked about here often, energy. And energy led the way here today, breaking out of a very short term trend line here as well. Seems similar of since the highs in April, a little bit of lower highs and lower lows. Again, short term here, more trading aspect than long term investing tops. But if you look at a chart and draw a trend line from the recent high and connect the higher lows, we got a breakout today. Energy was up 1.14%. That is a changing of a short term pattern. And again, good to see here as our major indexes are hitting overbought levels.

We’re nowhere near overbought levels for energy and some of the individual names as well. So that’s when we look again for the rotational aspect where it keeps our market in the range of all time highs while working off those overbought conditions. So seeing a little bit of a rotation here would be very healthy for our market after that, for our leadership on the day to day, we were followed by materials and then financials, which hit an all time high today. And now we have no love for the big banks here, but you do want to see them participate as the sign of a healthy bull market. After that, communication services also right in the range of a 52 week high here as well. And then our laggards on the day today, as you might expect with the Nasdaq lower tech, the tech sector was lower as well, along with consumer staples and real estate. Finally here for today, our VRA commodity watch. And this might be the most exciting part of the podcast today.

A lot of green on the screen here. Gold now up 1.43% to 20. 419, just 30 less than $30 away now from an all time high in gold. And if, you know, if you tune in here regularly, you know where I’m going with this next. You’d love to see gold heading higher. And you’d love to see the gold miners leading the way today. GDX, the gold mining ETF, did hit a 52 week high. Let me refresh my chart here.

[00:17:18]:
There we go. Yeah, 52 week high, up 3.37% on the day today, up four and a half percent on the week this week. And one number we’ve talked about here a lot with the miners is that they’re still 15% to 20% below their recent highs. That’s the number we’ve been quoting a lot. But if you go back even further to 2011 was the last all time high in the miners. And folks, we are a big 61% away from those highs in 2021. Now, why would I be laughing at that? Because we see this as the key here. We are so early in this sector and we remain hyper bullish on it here.

Despite being up 44% in just roughly the last two and a half months, we continue to say this is the beginning of a big move higher. Same thing as with our major indexes. The party doesn’t start until you get to all time highs. And again, we’re 61% away from that level, 61% away from the party starting. Right. So we think the market is really giving us a gift here on the gold miners, right? This group has really just begun this move higher until you start to see big volume coming in, institutional level money coming in, which we have not gotten yet for this group. And the great thing about the miners right here is that these companies have been well capitalized, they’ve been well run. Some lean years here going back to 2011, and some new exciting projects that are, are being worked on as well.

So a long way. We’re still early in this one, so stay tuned here. We’ll continue to reporting on this group and the exciting action continues after that as we get into the other precious metals on the day. With silver hitting its highest level today in almost twelve years, this is its highest level. First time above $31 an ounce I believe since April of 2012. Today up 6.34% at $31.77 an ounce. That’s another one that we have recommended here for our VRA subscribers after that. Copper up big today as well, 4.19% just below.

[00:19:46]:
It’s just $0.04 below its 52 week high at $5.08 a pound there. Oil on the day for crude did briefly get above $80 a barrel here today. Now slightly below that still up 0.95% on the day to day to $79.98 a barrel. And one more bonus commodity today, uranium. Another VRA pick here, the uranium ETF up a big 3.5% on the day and also hitting another multi year high, its highest level since September of 2012 and on good volume I might add there as well. Finally here for today, wrapping up with crypto. As I mentioned earlier, bitcoin having a stellar week this week. Let me get a refresh on the numbers for the week here.

Up 8.84% on the week. And again adding to those gains today, up 2.45% now at 66,862. Did also get above $67,000 briefly earlier in the day today. This is another group we like a lot now that we are in the post having world, which gains over the next twelve months are just incredible following having periods. So we’re barely a month since that happened here. The next eleven we think are going to be a lot of fun, folks. That’s all we have time for here today. Please be sure to subscribe to receive our VRA podcast every day at the market close.

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