In today's episode, Kip breaks down the wild ride in today's market action following the last Fed meeting and economic data that came out today. He also covers the latest in Tech earnings, and more importantly, the market's reaction to those earnings. Tune in for our full analysis and insights on navigating these volatile markets.

Don’t look back. The market is closed. Good. Thursday afternoon, everyone. Kip Herriage here with the daily VRA investing podcast. Hope you had a good day today. Crazy day in the markets today. Yesterday we got the Fed fomc received a statement that we’ve got Jay Powell’s presser.

All went well. We had a good day in the market. And then the question started coming. Has the Fed waited too long? Has the Fed waited too long to cut rates? Of course, this has been our position now for two quarters that the Fed should have already started cutting rates. Now we’re getting concerns about the economy going into recession. Today we got weak ISM manufacturing data. We also had more jobless claims than expected. And now we get the big jobs report.

[00:00:42]:
Tomorrow comes out before the market opens. So it’s odd because everyone had wanted to see signs of a slowing economy which would hasten Fed rate cuts. And now we’re going into Mars report. And I can tell you people are not hoping for a weak number. The ten year yields already broken below 4%, down 3.2% on a return basis today. Now down to a 3.97% with this weak data we’ve seen, again, it’s not the economy falling off a cliff, but it is a slowing economy. So we’ll see what the jobs data does today. But it did impact the markets today also to the close.

We got earnings releases today. Amazon down 8% on disappointing news. Apple did beat, but their stock is down 10%, mostly just in unison with the market today. So let’s talk about the markets first. Dow Jones today finishing. What is this about? Close to 300 points off the lows. We actually had a pretty decent smart money hour today. Final hour trading, Dow Jones finished down, though, 494.

That’s down 1.2%. Russ, 2000, our loser on the day, done a big three point. Excuse me, is that number. Yeah, I think 3% apologies. And SB 500 down 1.4% on the day. Finally, Nasdaq down 2.3% a day, down a big 405 points. Essentially. Nasdaq gave back all the gains today that it had yesterday.

[00:02:09]:
Saw the same thing with the tech stocks semi yesterday, for example. We’re long soxl the three time leverage semi ETF yesterday was up 22%, today down 22%. Wild volatility here, and we are seeing that in the vix as well. The vix today volatility index up 13.6% to 18.59. We’ll run our charts tonight. We’ll see how that works out in the watch of the VR investing system. This looks like an overreaction today. We have to see how these earnings are factored into tomorrow morning’s jobs report to see what we’re looking at.

But it has been a very strong quarter. Earnings were growing by 910 percent. That’s better than expected. And again, we have a very vibrant, very strong economy. I think this was an overreaction today. That should be sorted out tomorrow. We’ll see how the markets open tomorrow morning. Semis today.

Again, I covered that a minute ago. Semis were down today. SmH and semi ETF down 7.7% today. Again, just the inverse of what happened yesterday. And our internals today, we had much better than actually you would have thought. Today we had, for example, advanced decline came in. Quick refresh here. NYC negative bite was just two to one negative.

[00:03:29]:
On a day like this, you would expect it’s more like three to maybe even four to one negative. So better internals than expected. Nasdaq, obvious decline was more negative coming in right at three to one negative on our volume today. NYSE had 76% down volume day. That’s pretty negative day. Nasdaq, Washington better, 67% down volume day. And finally, our bright spot. We did have 313 stocks hitting two week high to 225, hitting a new 52 week low in our sector.

Watch today, again, better than you might have expected. We had five sectors finished higher, six finished lower. But it was the losers that really got your attention. Again, tech and semi is leading the way lower, not what you want to see. Tech down 3.3%. Energy stocks, again, a commodity sell off here today in base metals, commodities. Energy down 2.5% to the upside. Utilities on the big move lower in rates, which, again, move lower rates is very helpful.

This is exactly what the markets needed to see. But again, we believe the Fed’s made another mistake here. This would be Jay Powell’s fifth policy error since taking the job in 2018. They, they react. They don’t act. They react. And now the Fed likely is going to be forced into cutting rates by a half percent in September instead of the quarter percent. And again, this brings about fresh recession concerns.

[00:04:59]:
But again, utility stocks up as the largest borrowers of money in the country. They love lower rates up 1.8%. Real estate had a good day, also benefiting from lower rates. Real estate sector up 1.5%. And everything else fell in between those lines. Really, the selling pressure, mostly focused in the tech area, is what got hit the hardest. It’s interesting because tech stocks, semis, tech stocks, are actually very interest rate sensitive. So with bonds bond yields falling as much as they did today.

You would think that would be a positive for tech stocks. But again, in a slowing economy with rates falling, that is a negative for tech stocks. And that’s what we saw today. But again, this looked very much to me like it was a reactionary move that didn’t make a lot of sense because the economy is still strong. We think this is going to wash itself out pretty quick here in our sector watch. Sector watch. In our commodity watch today we had a strong day in gold. Again.

Gold broke over $2,500 announced overnight, right at an all time high. The high today was 2506. Right now trading 24 90 of $18 an ounce of the day. Silver as an industrial metal had some weakness today was down 1%. That’s $0.30 an ounce at 28. 63. Copper also weak as an industrial metal, down 2.6% today at $4.06. Of course, doctor, copper has been weak for some time.

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Crude oil, again, another indicator of domestic and international global growth. Excuse me. Oil today down 1.2%. That’s right, at $1 a barrel at 76.92. And finally, the day bitcoin. Bitcoin has been weak because we found out that the government’s going to sell that. Likely going to sell the $2 billion worth of bitcoin they have from the Silk Road online drugstore that was closed. Ross Obrig still in prison for that.

And that’s put a lid on bitcoin. Even after Trump endorsed it, as the bitcoin president said he would set up a strategic bitcoin reserve. It was all very positive. And then here came the Harris and Biden administration making this move. Bitcoin is recovering, though, right now. Last is 64,774. That’s actually up a quarter of a percent over the last 24 hours and up 3.3% over the last week. All right, folks, we’ll see what the job status tomorrow.

We’re looking for probably a weak number which would confirm the economy is slowing. Now we have to see if it falls in the sweet spot and find out how much of an overreaction today was in the markets. That is what we believe happened here. We think this is an overreaction and that the uptrend will resume soon. All right, folks, always appreciate you listening. Hope you had a great day. Even better night. We’ll see you back here again tomorrow after the close.