In this episode, Kip discusses the day's market performance, highlighting the quiet start and midday downturn, and provides a unique perspective on the current bull market, addressing topics ranging from inflation and housing to the Fed meeting next week. Join us for an in-depth look at the day's market movements, insights on sectors, the latest in commodities, and a focus on bitcoin and ETFs.

Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Friday afternoon, everyone. Kip Herriage here with the Daily VRA investing podcast. Hope your day was a good one today. Hope your week is fantastic as well. And you have big weekend plans. It’s supposed to rain here, the cats and dogs all weekend here in Sugarland, Texas, so we may have to find something good to stream or maybe a good book to read. How about that? Look, let’s get to it.

Markets were quiet today until about midday. Things started snowballing a little downhill. I will tell you that we see this as a pause and a pause only. And look, every great bull market has to pause. Trees don’t grow the sky overnight. You’ve heard us say that many times before. But this is a new bull market. We think it’s a generational bull market.

Matter of fact, I think the evidence is pointing very clearly to this now. People are starting to come around to it. But I still see these. A lot of people still like to listen to perma bears. Not as you like to, necessarily, but people do tend to look, they sound smart, don’t they? The bears always sound smart because they can take data and they can throw figures and numbers at you and make you sound like the worst things of the Great Depression. How many times have we seen that kind of reporting, that kind of whether it’s online, social media, the way they present it seems so compelling. But they always leave out a few important points, like, the economy is in really good shape. Earnings are growing.

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Debt levels for corporate America are 50 year lows. Debt levels for consumers are at 15 year. Well, excuse me, debt levels for consumers have been reduced by 25% in the last 15 years. Home prices all time high. Net consumer net worth all time high. One third of Americans own their home outright with no mortgage on it. So the perma bears always seem to forget all those basic things. And what I can tell you that we know rock solid certainty is that in the bureau investing system, we have the housing.

Housing is a core tenet of our investing system because everything follows housing. Everything in the economy always, not sometimes always follows housing. And housing stocks just hit another all time high. Home prices all time high. Net equity to homes all time high. So, yeah, look, we know from the CPI and the PPI data this week, which that’s what upset the markets, kind of sent the markets going lower. Look, I don’t think anyone said inflation was just going to go away, because has it ever. Tyler made this pretty clear on his podcast yesterday.

Look, we just had money supply grow by 40% in two years during the pandemic. Right. So yeah, we’re going to have ongoing battles with inflation, but still it is disinflation now because we don’t have 9% inflation anymore. We have 3%, or just barely 3%. Matter of fact, in the latest data this week, CPI, PPI, CPI, if you remove shelter, and I know we all have to live somewhere, but if you remove shelter from the equation, inflation is running at 1.7%. And I think it’s important to remember that one of the reasons home sales are at such low levels is people don’t want to move. You got a locked in mortgage of two and a half, three, three and a half 4%. Why do you want to go buy another home and have to get a six and a half 7% mortgage? Right.

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So it’s a process. Rates are coming down, obviously. That’s very clear. The ten year was over 5%, it’s now 4.3. Again, it’s all a process. But I think the best way to look at this is everything’s moving in the direction that we want it to move in. The trend is in our favor. And so we don’t get disappointed or upset or frustrated even by a few of these reports, even one or two of these reports.

Number one, I really don’t trust the government data. I trust what I can see with my own two eyes, which is I can see the stock market, I can see price action. I can see the things that I know are impacting our clients around the country. And again, talking to companies, their biggest problem is not earnings. The biggest problem is not trying to raise debt because they barely have any debt. The biggest problem is finding qualified employees. So again, these are all because the economy is so high and unemployment, of course, is so low. So these are all great problems to have.

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They’re not the kind of problems that you have when you’re entering a recession. And so that’s why we say this is a generational bull market. Reminds me most of 95 to 2000, and that’s how we’re going to keep playing it here until things change. And of course, the innovation revolution, what’s happening with so many parts of the planet are being packed by unbelievable revolutionary changes taking place. Technology, artificial intelligence, space exploration, each of those has like ten subparts. And so it’s just a booming economy and it’s a very exciting time to be alive and a very exciting time to be an investor, that’s for sure. So we’re going to continue to treat this softness as a buying opportunity. By the way, the markets were only barely lower today.

The last couple of days were a little ugly. But I will tell you what wasn’t ugly today. Again, the internals, outstanding internals today. I’ll cover that. April is not far away, is it? Now we get two weeks away. And why does that matter? Well, because we’re going to have Q one, earnings are coming out. I wonder how they’re going to do. I can tell you that the analysts, just like they’ve been consistently, are on the wrong side of this.

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Their numbers are too low. And so q one, earnings should be really good, especially from tech and tech semis, and tech, of course, lead everything, and then fund flows again in two weeks. These massive fund flows that are driving the market. You probably saw this. This is being widely reported again this week. This is happening pretty much every week now. Money market fund assets are at another all time high, over $6.3 trillion sitting in money market accounts. Where do you think that money is going to go as the stock market continues to melt up? Okay, so again, I got to tell you folks, I don’t understand the bears.

I do not understand it. And I know a lot of these people, they seem to be so certain in their negativity and they can’t believe. How dare you be bullish? How can you be positive? Don’t you see the things we see underneath the surface? I’m like, no, really don’t. All I see is a really good economy that’s only getting better. And look, I’m good with an economy that grows at two or 3% as far as GDP because I don’t trust that data either. I think the economy is growing at a much more rapid clip than that because so much of what traditionally has been reported is not being picked up anymore because we have a gig economy. So many people that have found other ways to make money, and it’s not yet showing up in the data because it’s the government and they don’t know how to play catch up. It takes them years to catch up and to figure out what’s really happening.

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So again, I like to trust what I see with my own two eyes and what I see. I see people doing really well. I see people doing really well. And to be very animal spirits returning, folks, you have to be able to sense it like I can, right? You have to sense it. Animal spirits are back. People are doing. That’s just the way it is. If things were awful, I would report that they’re not.

Things are good. And as far as the market is concerned. This is a very special time again to be an investor. Want to continue to be long and strong. This is the time to stay locked in and keep buying these dips because I think shorter and shorter lived. Next week we have the Fed meeting again. There’s a lot of trepidation about that. When JPAL speaks, you never know what’s going to come out of his mouth.

But I can tell you what they’re not going to do. They’re not going to say, we’re got to raise rates. That’s over with. That game is over with. Okay. The economy is slowing somewhat. We are starting to see some things that show parts of the economy in the two Americas in the second America that are struggling again. Who doesn’t hate that? I hate it.

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I come from the second was, I was raised in that Second America. I understand that, but this ain’t that. And the First America is doing really well, much better than even the First America was doing when I was growing up, that’s for sure. And that’s what drives the market. So I think we come out of next week with the Market continuing to move higher. And there’s one more thing. In addition to fund flows, which are going to be monster fund flows coming into a second quarter for funds flowing into the stock market, for retirement plans, pensions, 401 ks, share repurchase programs, now we got mergers and acquisition activity picking up. The IPO market is trying to come back.

I just saw today that FTC is investigating Reddit, which, of course, is trying to go public here. It’s probably the first new well known name of a company that’s going to go public. I don’t know anything AboUt Reddit, frankly. It’s some kind of a message board, as I understand it. I’ve been on it a few times during the meme stock Melt. KNoW Reddit was the PLace to be, but the SEC is now investigating them over AI data, licensing practices, and some kind of a fraud they may have committed. But again, I don’t even think you consider Reddit as a Red hot IPO. I wouldn’t never put it in that bucket.

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But the IPO market is coming back, but it’s just starting to come back. Wake me up when we have over 100 companies going public every year whose stock prices are doubling on day one. Wake me up when that’s happening, because that’s what happened in 95 to 2000, and we are nowhere near that. So this is early stage fun that’s happening now, and this is time really to learn about yourself. Frankly, the kind of investor that you want to be, what your risk reward parameters are, what kind of stocks do you want to invest in, what kind of ETFs suit you best, that kind of thing. And then make sure that, again, you’re ready to keep adding to those positions because that’s what you want to do. It’s much better. I think it’s a smarter money move to average up than average down.

That’s what I’ve always been taught, what I try to practice. Now, we use monthly dollar cost averaging with our growth stocks. We call our VRa ten baggers. It doesn’t matter what the price is. If we still like the company every month, we’re going to put that same amount of money into the company, because that way we don’t have to worry about trying to time the market, time stocks or earnings or news releases, any of that nonsense. Right. Just a very regimented process of monthly dollar cost averaging. But other than that, you want to average up on other ETFs, et cetera, the better move there is to average up instead of averaging down.

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And so I think some people feel if I buy it, I didn’t pay this much for it the last time, I felt like I’m paying too much. No, that’s not how this works. Probably the best investors cut their losses early and then they press when they got a winner, they press it, they go heavy into it, and as it goes up, you buy more, you buy more. And so that’s really, I think the mindset that’s going to work best for this market, certainly it has for us. It’s certainly been the play for us with semis, with tech. The things that have been housing, the things that have been working, should keep working, certainly in this economy and this environment. Sorry about the markets now. Okay, Dow Jones today, we kind of finished at the lows.

It wasn’t a terrible smart money hour, but typically not will. It’s a Friday, so it’s a Friday again. Fed meeting next week. A little bit of nervousness there. Fed’s not going to hike rates anymore. That game’s over. So really the concerns now are what is the to, are they only going to cut rates three times or two times this year, as Tyler thinks? Two or three or three or four as think, you know, or is it going to be one or two or they’re not going to cut at all? Well, if they don’t at all, what does that tell you? If they don’t cut at all, that tells you that the economy is doing really. Tyler’s said this a bunch.

He’s exactly right about this. I believe you don’t want a Federal Reserve cutting rate six times a year. Five times a year. That’s a sign of we screwed up to begin with and now things are looking really crappy. So we got to cut rates quickly. We don’t want that. That’s the thing that concerns investors. Now, if you tell me the Fed is the end of this year, end of 2024, if I will look back on this and we see the Fed only cut rates two or three times, I think you’re going to look at a stock market that loves it again because it means they didn’t screw up policy too terribly to begin with, and that we are having a soft landing.

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And of course, that’s only a reason for the markets to keep going up. I’m very optimistic about where we are and where we’re headed, as you can probably tell. And that’s been our approach from the October 22 bear market lows. This is going to continue to be our approach. Dow Jones again down 190. That’s a half percent. S 500 down six tenths to 1%. Illusion on the day was Nasdaq down nine tenths to 1%.

Not what you want to see. Tech and the semis have been a little soft, but the internals, in a minute, I’ll tell you, internals, they were not soft. They’re rock solid today. That’s very bullish. Our winners today, small caps, who really have been trying to lead here, they’re so undervalued, every other index is at all time highs. Small caps are still 15% below all time highs. We think the market’s given us a gift here. We’re aggressively long this group, and buying at every chance we get.

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Rush 2000 today was up 14% to 1%. Semiconductors, which of course we follow closely. We’re down 710% to 1% today. So again, tech and semis were lower. I think that’s really just the market taking a breather. That’s all it is. Rubber band got stretched too tight one way, and now it’s going to come back a little bit. And that’s going to be our little internal correction we’ve had.

Right. It’s going to rotate the little corrections taking place. It’s textbook. It really is. It is textbook bull market action. And that’s extraordinarily good for the long term. That’s what you want to see. You don’t want a red hot market because then you get a lot of volatility when it peaks and you get the top callers, you come to crash callers.

And I’d rather see a market that’s more steady, Eddie, and then rotational in nature. Energy stocks today, for example, as Tyler just told me, 52 Ekai energy stocks, a lot of people gave up on these, right? And we didn’t. We’ve been buying energy stocks. They’re not moving. Bank stocks have been acting very well. Get housing stocks at an all time high. So again, the action underneath the surface have been very good. All right, let’s look at the.

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I’m going to talk about bitcoin, but I’ll do that a bit later. Look at the internals today. Again, this is kind of shocking because the market was going up for a long time with really bad internals, and now the internals have really begun to get more solid. Again, this is textbook action here. This is how market begins to broaden and how big, bold moves take place over a multi year period. We’re seeing that now. Internals today. Check this out again.

Nasdaq down, we’ll say 1%, right? Just round up a little bit. SBF hundred down almost seven tenths to 1%. These weren’t large losses by any means, but they’re not small either. Well, listen to these internals. Positive across the board. Positive. I think that people should pay more is what I think is people should pay more attention to this. That’s what I think.

I think it’s that important, and it makes a big part of what we do here. As you know, Nasdaq today, positive across the board, advanced decline for Nasdaq. Positive by 200 issues. Volume up, down volume 54%. Positive may not sound like a lot, but again, on the day where Nasdaq was down essentially 1%, that is extraordinarily a good reading. NYSE, same thing. Positive across the board. More than 300 stocks.

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300 more stocks advanced than the decline for NYSE. And on volume also up 53%. So 53, 54%. NYSE and Nasdaq on up volume versus down volume. Again, very good reading. New 52. Kai’s lows flat, but that is a solid win across the board for the internals today. And again, I think that’s very bullish.

Sector watch, not quite so good, but no big losses here. Just, we had seven sectors finished lower four finish. What’s going on here? By screen one, two. That’s right, seven lower, four higher left. The downside by technology down 1.3% and communication services down 1%. Not much else happening to the upside again, energy up a quarter percent. Utilities up a little. Bit.

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Otherwise, very quiet across the board. Everybody get ready for next week in the Fed. If you heard that bad weather has already started, I’m afraid I’m about to lose power here. That was a big thunderbolt. Let’s take a look at our commodity watch here. Gold today down $7 an ounce, 21 59. Again, rates because of the CPI, PPI data, rates still sneaking up a little bit. Again, the tenure is only 4.3%, but we love gold here.

Blood pressure mills, especially the miners who’ve been leading. Now the miners are leading, and you look at a chart and there’s just no doubt about it. And that’s a very bullish setup for the whole group. It’s a buy signal for the group when the miners lead just didn’t help. Today, gold today down $7 an ounce at 21 59. Announced just off all time highs. Silver up $0.33 an ounce at 25 39. It’s 1.3% when silver is leading and when the miners are leading.

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That’s a recipe for the makings of a really positive group as a whole. Copper today. Dr. Copper. It really is on fire. We reported like a month ago it was in Contango, and so that typically tells a record level of contango. Futures markets are telling you what was about to happen here. And today, copper up another 1.9% to 412 a pound.

Looking for a good copper stock if you got one. We had one turquoise hill and got bought out and so we haven’t found a replacement. I just can’t buy Rio Tinto, can’t recommend Rio Tinto. They do have new management, but I need to see the proof in the pudding. And again, it’s a massive second largest miner on the planet. We like to find something a little smaller. It’s got a little more upside potential because the big guys are pretty much already known in the mining space. We like the small ones that had these big, undiscovered mines.

And so we’ve got a couple of those recommendations, but anyway, they’re not copper related, is my point. Crude oil today down twenty six cents a barrel at 81 a barrel. Again, oil has been hot. OPEC is holding the ground. China is coming back. Again. The recipe for again, market broadening. Right.

[00:19:18]:
This is happening and China coming back. It’s all extraordinarily bullish for the US and global economy. Crude oil again, $81 a barrel. Now. It’s like it’s got legs here. It’s like it wants to go higher. I think I said this energy stock hit you, Kai, today so that’s very good to see. And finally, we’ll talk about bitcoin.

I’m forgetting something here. Bitcoin, kind of a choppy action bitcoin’s had. Now, it fell 8.4% overnight, hit an all time high yesterday. Yesterday morning, bitcoin hit an all time high, and then proceeded to fall out of bed by eight and a half percent. Right. This is what’s been happening from really the birth of these ETFs, the SEC approval and the launch of the bitcoin ETFs. We’ve had these big moves, higher to all time highs, and then we had the little mini panic, and I guess the ETF buying halts, they’re done for the day or whatever, and here comes some sellers taking profits. But it’s the little guy that’s selling and it’s the big guy that’s buying.

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That’s really what’s most important here. The holders, the Hodlers, they’re continuing to add a position. So they’re holding, because they’re holding for a million and 5 million and whatever of bitcoin. And unless something bizarre happens, that is where it’s headed. This is the best supply demand picture of not just my time or my career, not just the best supply demand set up of anyone living’s time. This may be the best supply demand picture story ever. I can’t think of a better one. Maybe you can.

It really is extraordinary because once the having takes place, which is now 30 days away, once the having takes place, and they go from mining 900 bitcoin a day to 450 bitcoin today, and then the big guys that haven’t even started buying yet, we have these nine ETFs that are approved by the SEC. But you have all these big firms like Vanguard, Goldman Sachs, all the NIK, there’s like ten of them. AG, Edwards, Charles Swab. They started the compliance, the investigative, the legal review of allowing their financial advisors and allowing people that invest in their funds to actually purchase one of these bitcoin ETFs, they’ve only started that process. Kathy Wood, who also believes bitcoin is going to a million plus and just got a great team on the story, but she said it takes three to six months for them to complete their compliance reviews. So I think it’s going to happen faster than that because I know they’re catching a lot of help from their clients. They can’t buy bitcoin. Their advisors, they can’t recommend it.

All these things, and even no one in the firm can buy it. I mean, there’s a complete blackout on bitcoin. But that was a mistake. And now they’ve realized that they made their bed, now they’re having to lie in it. So those approvals are going to, I believe, come faster. And the point being, with this having and the fresh money coming in, the hundreds of billions of dollars in purchasing that’s coming, okay. And these ETs have only purchased, what, $40 billion so far. So we’re just now scratching the surface of demand.

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And so these dips that we’ve had three of them now over the last, I don’t know, was it three weeks or so? Three, four weeks. We’ve had three shakeouts of anywhere from seven to 14%. Again, the last one, we just had eight and a half percent. And these have all been very short term lived. Short lived. And they’ve all been buying opportunities. That is exactly how we’re going to keep approaching it. So if you haven’t gotten a position or really the size position you want, you don’t have to rush to do it, but you do kind of have to rush when these dips happen, because they’re not lasting long.

Last trade, bitcoin, 67,900. It ran back up to 70,000 a day. And so it’s a little back and forth action here. But over the weekend, the pattern has been that come Monday morning, there’s a lot of pent up demand. It is coming down hard here. Now. I rarely can hear it through our roof, and it feels like it’s about to come on top of my head. Anyway, again, that’s our recommendation here.

[00:23:35]:
We like the Cathy Woods ETF, arc symbols, ArkB, and we also taken a position in our parabolic options program. Play on the options side, too. So we just launched parabolic options number 19. If you’re an options investor and you want to give it a shot, let us know. Reach out to us at. Go to vrainsider, combrinsider.com, or just email us and let us know and we’ll shoot you the information. It’ll be open till, I think we’re closing it out on Tuesday. It’s a four month program, parabolic options number 19, and come and join us.

And we like the miners here. We like bitcoin. We love small caps. And detect, I think a really good setup is about to take place in the queues. Qqq, the Nasdaq 100. I think either that or small caps will be our new position. We try to not put on more than three positions at a time. So there you have it.

All right. Folks. Hey, always appreciate you listening. Thanks for your feedback. Please keep it coming. You guys are the best. Have a great weekend. Stay dry.

Guess we’re going to try to. And we’ll see you back here again Monday after the close. Bye.