Tune into today's podcast as Tyler breaks down what to expect from an exciting week ahead for the stock market. With a whopping 34% of S&P 500 companies reporting earnings, including tech giants like AMD, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple, Despite a relatively flat day in the markets, the VRA remains optimistic about the future for stocks and the market as a whole. Tune into today's podcast to learn more.

Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Monday afternoon, everyone. Tyler Herriage here with you for today’s VRA investing podcast. Hope you all had a great weekend out there and a great start to your week this week as well in what is sure to be an exciting and eventful week here this week, lots of moving parts going on. So let’s just jump right into it. First off, here it is a big earnings week this week. Last week we had 31% of the S & P 500 reporting earnings. This week it’s even bigger.

We’ve got 34% of companies reporting this week. And here we’ll just talk about a few of the big ones here. Really kicking off tomorrow. Ahead of the open, got some big names, but after the close is when the fun really begins. We’ve got AMD, Microsoft, Starbucks, Pinterest and more. And then Wednesday, some more big ones as well. Ahead of the open we’ve got Boeing, Mastercard, and after the close, back to the tech giants. We’ve got meta Qualcomm arm also reporting.

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And then last but not least, on Thursday, we’ll get Amazon, Apple and Intel as well. Apple was out with some interesting news today coming out, their video about what their AI solutions will look like in the next generation of iPhones, that it will be rolled out to existing iPhone platforms as well later this fall with the new operating system I believe is called Sequoia. Some pretty cool stuff. Looks like it’s going to be mixed in in there. They’re utilizing chat GPT for a lot of it. A lot of people were speculating that Apple’s also working on an AI type of system. This is when you would have expected to hear about it, though, so it’ll be interesting. Let’s see what Apple has up their sleeve here.

But so far for Q two, earnings reports have been solid. So far. If you watch a lot of financial mainstream media, you might not have thought this. They really focused on the reaction to earnings. I just saw a piece earlier today though, as well, that the initial reaction to earnings has not been good. But within about five days, companies have gotten back their losses and then some as well. So after a little bit of digestion from the market so far, earnings have been met with buyers and for good reason. Like I said, earnings for Q two so far have been solidified.

78% of companies have actually reported better than expected, above estimate earnings per share, and not only above estimates for this year, but above the five year growth average as well. Revenue growth also coming in strong here, coming in at 5% which is below what kind of the five year average for that would be, but well above estimates. And that’s what’s important here. On earnings growth of 9.8%. Estimates were for 8.9%. So we do expect these kinds of beats to continue not only this week for Q two earnings, but for future earnings as well. If you’re a new listener here, I’ll quickly jump into why two words really describe it all. Innovation revolution.

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We’ve talked about it a lot here. Kip and I have been talking about it here on the podcast going back to 2020 during COVID that was one of our major themes here. And we echoed what Cathie Wood had said at the time, that disruption, disruption style events like Covid clearly was, leads to innovation. And we think that even though we’re past the COVID era now, the innovation revolution is here to stay with us. So stay tuned. We’ll be reporting on those earnings here this week. And then later in the week, we’ll also get some, some of the latest economic data as well, as we wrap up the month of July later this week. And so, as we always get the first Friday of every month, the jobs report coming out.

A lot of eyes will be watching this, especially, especially as this week we have the latest FOMC meeting starting as well. So that begins tomorrow. It’ll wrap on Wednesday with Jay Powell speaking. Naturally, I’ll have the podcast that day as well. Seem to always land on my podcast day for a fed meeting. But at the end of the day, you know, it is pretty fun to not only watch these events, but kind of read between the lines of what they’re really saying here. So a lot of people will be watching this closely because there really isn’t much expected from Jay Powell and the Fed outside of what they’ve already said in their last few minute meetings where, oh, we’ll remain data dependent. And then if Jay Powell goes off script, then things can get a little bit messy.

The only thing that would really come up in this meeting that would be of importance is if Jay Powell were to say that they are definitively not considering a rate cut in September, other than that this should essentially be a non event from the Fed. But unfortunately, given Jay Powell’s track record, right, of derailing the market, really talking down the market, the odds here of him saying something that is troublesome is not zero. Unpredictability is not exactly a trait that you want from your Fed chairman, and the market doesn’t appreciate it either. Right now, the CME group, who has their Fed watch tool is currently the probabilities are 100% for at least a quarter percentage cut. There’s also a 10% chance here that the Fed will cut 50 basis points in September, 90% or 89.6% chance that they’ll cut by 25 basis points at the September meeting. And I will say the odds of a rate cut on Wednesday, that’s when they would announce it, are not zero either. Interestingly here. So again, really the only surprise that would come out of this meeting is if Jay Powell were to say something like, they need more data.

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They’re not going to cut in September, which the market is fully anticipating now. So really, it’s up to the Fed to make good on what their expectations were. They set these expectations for the market, not the other way around. So it’ll be interesting to see, like I said, we’ll be reporting on here Wednesday after the close. That being said, let’s check out today’s market action because it was an interesting day to start off the week for our markets. But I will say it certainly had the feel of a summer day today. I’m hesitant to say a slow day because it wasn’t that our markets did finish mixed to flat on the day. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from being a market watcher, it is never short.

A dull market, as we always, as a lot of market watchers talk about. With the market, it’s usually escalator up, elevator down. Right, or stairs up, elevator down. So when you’re getting these sideways actions kind of days, it really isn’t a bearish occurrence for the market, especially now that we’ve worked through our overbought readings. We were there in tech, we were there for the s and P. Now we are out of those readings. Now only small caps are at overbought levels, and after today’s action, are looking to quickly work them off. So as we see it, now is not the time to get complacent.

Now is not the time to buy into kind of the summer checkout attitude. Right now is the time to be locked and into this market. Kip talked about this on Friday as well, but to be looking for opportunities as we head in to the end of 2024. Now, I want to check out this piece. I will. I’ll see if I can find it here for you really quickly because I don’t want to misquote this. Here we go. All right.

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So right now we have an incumbent president in Biden who’s not running. Correct. So years that the incumbent didn’t run. The stock market has actually done very well, up four out of five times and nearly 17% on average. So as we head into this presidential election year, we do remain very optimistic on the market. And we think that the market has already started to price in a Trump presidency, which means so many good things for the market, the potential for tax breaks, the potential for deregulation, and so much more. And I’ll get to it later. What Trump had to say about cryptocurrencies at the bitcoin conference as well.

There’s many bullish factors looking up for this market here. So that said, let’s take a look at our market action on the day. You know, flat to mix on the day today, but we finished well off the lows of the day earlier in the session. You know, tried to get a little bit of a smart money hour, tried to rally a little bit into the close. Ultimately, couldn’t really cut it back to the highs of the day kind of day, but we did finish mix, so not bad. S and P up .08% to 5463. After that, the Nasdaq up 0.07% to 17,370. I will point out that, that the semis we would have liked to have seen them lead today did not get that they opened higher this morning, ultimately closed down seven tenths of 1%.

Again, no medium to long term concerns for us here. We will be using this dip as a buying opportunity, and we think most of this move lower that we’ve seen over the last few weeks has likely worked its way through the market as we are no longer at extreme overbought levels. Bears repeating. Never short, a dull market. Next up, the Dow Jones down just over one 10th of 1% on the day at 40,539. And then lastly, the small caps did lead the way lower today, but they’ve been on a tremendous run over the last few sessions. So no concerns here for us as we are still at overbought levels here. But like I said, today’s action will help to alleviate that.

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Russell, 2000 down over 1%, 1.09% to 22 35. Next up here, looking at our internals on the day today. We’ve seen good internals from our market recently. Not quite as much today, but not, not terrible out there. Not a bunch of red flags, not a bunch of two or three to one beats on the day. As a matter of fact, there weren’t any two to one beats even on the day. So not terrible. But we did have declining stocks beating out, advancing stocks closer on the NYSE, but just shy of two to one negative on the Nasdaq.

52 week highs. Lows were our bright spot on the day today. Coming in with 179 stocks hitting 52 week highs on the NYSE to just 14 stocks hitting 52 week lows. So not a tremendous number to the upside, but that is a very low number on the downside, one that we like to see. And then for the Nasdaq coming in just shy of two to one positive for 52 week highs to lows as well. Lastly here, volume came in a little worse on the NYSE than it did on the Nasdaq, but again, not a two to one beat of no big downside volume kind of a day, and then almost came in even for the Nasdaq on the day. So overall, we would have liked to have seen better internals on the day. Absolutely.

But not exactly a red flag kind of day either. Next up, looking at our sectors on the day today, if you just saw the sectors, you would have thought it was a pretty good day out there because we finished with seven out of our eleven s and P 500 sectors higher on the day. We were led by consumer discretionary, followed by communication services. I’ll point out here, the magnificent seven stocks really had a good day today, all of them finishing higher. No big, huge beats outside of Tesla, which was up nearly 5% on the day today, but good to see. Now it’s time for the generals. Now they’ve worked through those overbought readings. Time for them to earn their stripes here once again, as we’ve seen many a time from them over the last couple of years.

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Also point out that real estate finished higher on the day for the s and P 500. That ETF is xlre. We prefer to track the home builders though, here, as the real estate sector is mostly made up of reits. Thats not exactly where we want to be. But we had an all time closing high from the home builders and then HGX, an all time intraday high and an all time closing. Hi, today HGX is the housing ETF for how bearish everyone has gotten on the housing market. We continue to look at it as a bullish sign for this market. And then our laggards on the day to day energy led the way lower, followed there by tech, but just fractionally lower, as well as financials and industrials just again slightly lower on the day today.

Finally here for today, our VRA commodity watch gold now pretty much flat on the day. Still not far away here from its all time high, just about just below 60 points away from an all time high at $2,429 an ounce. The all time high, 2488. Next up, silver lower pretty much flat on the day, down .02% to $28.01 an ounce. Copper down three quarters of 1% at $4.09 a pound, and oil down over a percent and a half now to $75.93 a barrel. And finally, for today, bitcoin. As I mentioned earlier, ill touch here a little bit on the 2024 bitcoin conference, which just wrapped up in Nashville, headlined by none other than Donald J. Trump.

And he made several positive comments, not only about the future for cryptocurrencies, but he also pledged that on day one he would fire SEC chairman Gary Gensler. That could not have gotten a better response from the crypto community. Have you followed Gary Gensler and the demonization that he’s done not only for bitcoin, but cryptocurrency in general, they’re essentially fraudulent case against ripple and many others that they’ve just hamstrung in the courts. That is very exciting for the crypto community. And Trump said that he would replace Gary Gensler with someone more crypto friendly. That got a huge applause as well. And then he did talk about a national bitcoin reserve. So it’s not exactly a strategic reserve.

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It’s more of, think about it, more of, like the strategic petroleum reserve. Right? It’s not really used to back dollars. It’s more of a strategic stockpile. And now, while that sounds like semantics, it is a different aspect to it, because, again, it’s not planning to back the us dollar with bitcoin, but to have a strategic stockpile, which would be very bullish for the price of crypto, and a smart money policy here as well. Now, the Dems will probably try to villainize that. Remember that in 2020, when oil went all the way down to negative and was still trading 20, $30 a barrel, Trump proposed filling the strategic petroleum reserve to the brim. Right? He was asking like $1.3 billion for it. They laughed at him, saying it was a waste of money.

Now, we’ve spent 100, 200 times that on Ukraine. We could have been using that here at home. And these people on the left, they must love shooting themselves in the foot, because that’s exactly what they’ve done to our country time and time again. So not only is this a fantastic idea, but it is an idea that should be put forward no matter who is president at the end of this year, which it should be. President Trump I won’t get into the politics of it again, but I think it will pay to be vigilant in this election. And hopefully a lot of people have woken up in the last three and a half years to what happened in 2020 and will be on the lookout. RFK Junior, though, also spoke about and proposed an even bigger bitcoin reserve if elected. So really good to see.

You know, it’d be really interesting if RFK were to come forward and endorse Trump because they seem to agree on most issues. And if we can come together as a country and realize that we agree on just about 98% of all issues, there’s far more that unites us, then separates us. That would be an incredible bridge to be built from RFK voters into Trump voters. We think the shift could be there. It would be great to see to happen before the election, but we’ll see what happens. Overall, very bullish. Breaking news here for bitcoin did get back. Let’s see here.

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What was the high of the day? Just above 70,000. It is now lower on the day, but still a pretty good number here, down nine tenths of 1% now. But at 67,389 a bitcoin folks, 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.