In today's episode, Tyler covers an action-packed start to the week, which saw our major indexes finish at their highs of the day. Tyler breaks down what the VRA will be watching for in this week's stock market action as we move one day closer to the April 2nd tariff deadline. We'll also dive into the latest market sentiment the impressive run in gold, and the future of Bitcoin. 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. Hope the start to your week was great as well.

And wow, what a start to the week it was for our markets this week and what is certain to be a very eventful week, a very pivotal week potentially for the market. Now that those kinds of words might have been tossed out a lot, but that might be an understatement for what we’re going to see this week. And we’ll get into it all on today’s podcast today.

But to kick it off here, it was a pretty good start. I’ll call it a good start to the week. This week and what has been, you know, you can’t sugarcoat it. A rough month for our markets and a rough quarter for our markets as well. You know, one of the worst on Both fronts since 2022 Months and Quarters for our markets. So it was good today to see our markets finish on a high note. And now we might not have finished positive across the board here. We did get the Dow and the S and P to finish positive.

[00:01:22]:
And even the Nasdaq finished well off the lows at its highs of the day today. Now, before I get into today’s market action, I’ll go ahead and highlight this here, here at the vra. If you’re a regular listener or a VRA member, you know that we have a very important rule that we never sell on a Monday. And wow, did that help out today because if you had sold in the first 30 minutes of trading today, you would have sold at the lows of the day to day. Again, we rallied to finish at the highs across the board. Again, even though the Nasdaq and the semis didn’t lead, they still finish at their highs of the day. And the key point being here is that the retests of the lows tend to be scarier than the initial move lower. And today we did retest those lows and we got below the lows we’ve been watching for here, the March 11th low.

[00:02:19]:
So that’s not what we want to see from our markets. But on the bright side, we finished well above those lows across the board today, so we’re able to fill that gap. You know, we saw the Dow from trough to peak rallied 1,000 points off of its lows of the day. It finished slightly off of those levels, still up 850 points on the day. That is a Huge swing on the day. So I get it. You know, again, we’re seeing the sim, the semis lead lower. We’ve seen housing lead lower and break down as well.

You know, those are two key ones that we’ll get into here on the podcast today that we’re watching very closely. If we were to continue to see a breakdown in the semis and the home builders, that would be a major red flag for us going forward. But today, you know, we got, again, the semis closed above those lows and finished at their highs of the day. And the home builders actually managed to finish up almost 9/10 of our, excuse me, just over 8/10 of 1% on the day to day.

So again, we’ll get into this more on today’s podcast. But I gotta stop there for a second before I get too much further because Kip and I both set this up last week on our Thursday and Friday podcast that what we could potentially see this week leading into, you know, Liberation day on Wednesday, April 2nd. And we’ll get to that here more in a second as well. But we set this up saying that we would see some front running of that action and that we could likely get a lower Monday open, especially after Friday’s action.

[00:03:51]:
And so we made it, you know, reiterated there are never sell on a Monday and that if we got a lower open on Monday and finish strong, that’d be a very bullish sign for us. So now we need to see some carry through tomorrow as well. It’d be very good to see here. And so all eyes now are on the April 2 deadline, as they have been for weeks. Right. But now we have a little bit. We’re getting closer to that. So Wednesday, Trump announced today that he will be giving a press conference from the Rose Garden.

And so really, what we’re seeing right now, what we’ve experienced over the last few weeks has been in, in our view, really peak uncertainty. And there’s nothing that the market hates more than uncertainty. It’s not tariffs, it’s not inflation, it’s not the Atlanta Fed, right, the corrupt Atlanta Fed likely revising their GDP forecast. Lower uncertainty is what the market hates the most. So we look at this Wednesday announcement as the, as a potential sell the rumor, potential buy the news event. Now, that’s typically the opposite. It’s a buy the rumor, sell the news kind of event, right? This, the, that kind of adage goes back to early stock market trading where someone would give you a tip, so you buy that rumor. And then when the tip starts to pay off that stock rises, you sell the news.

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We think this is the inverse here, where the rumor is you sell the rumor. As we’ve seen this, this sell off in the market, the rumor is that tariffs are going to cause chaos, chaos throughout the market, throughout the global economy. It’s going to upend the current financial structure of the world. That’s the fear right now. Right. And you see it all day today, all week, last week and the week before that in the financial mainstream media. It’s all anyone’s talking about, as I talked about last week as well. At some point we have to hit tariff fear, fatigue, and I think that’s starting to set in.

And now the were just about 48 hours away from getting that clarity that the market’s looking for. We think this is a great setup here again for a sell the rumor, buy the news kind of event here. And I think it’s important at a time like this to really put this into perspective. So I think Kevin Hasset, which, who is Trump’s director of the, of the National Economic Council, summed it up pretty well. So I’m a paraphrase here. I am going to read this because it’s pretty in depth, but I also think it provides a little clarity here as to, or a little perspective, excuse me, for the market. So this is what he had to say, which is, you know, pretty easily understood, but very hard to explain. It’s hard to put into the right words.

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And many dimes, financial mainstream media outlets intentionally obscure these things. Right. They make it harder to comprehend than it needs to be. It’s the same with the Federal Reserve and their Fed speak. If you don’t understand the lingo, you don’t stand a chance of understanding what they’re saying. They could say it much simpler for you. Right. But then that would, that would upend their entire profession.

Right? They’ve got a gatekeep this. Right. They intentionally create words to make people forget or not understand and make it seem more complicated than it really is. So here is what Kevin Hassett had to say, which is that imports are only about 15 of GDP. The other 85% is domestic. So in other words, Trump’s tariffs. Right. Which are only going to be, I mean, not only, but they’re going to be 25, but it’s 25 on that 15 of GDP.

[00:07:33]:
So, yes, 15% is no inconsequential amount. Right. But then you have to look at Trump’s victories on the other side here. Tax cuts, which after Liberation Day, we would like to see Trump start to get in control of his messaging. I’ll touch on this here a little bit more in a second. But if he can, you know, get past the tariff stage and begin to focus on economic prosperity, tax cuts, you know, saving dollars for the US Taxpayer, right? Eliminating some of the tax loopholes that are out there, no tax on tips, all of these things that will boost our GDP in the medium to long term. He can start to focus on then and get those victories. Right? But so what he went on to say is, so Trump’s tax cuts, deregulation, lower energy and a secure border all impact that 85, that low large majority of GDP.

So whatever impact we have on that other 15 or so of imports likely will be negligible. I’m paraphrasing here, or E. What he said was easily soaked up by the demand increase from, again, deregulation, tax cuts, lower energy prices, all these things. And so the demand increase and what Trump and his administration seem to be banking on here, and Kevin has to confirm that, is that that demand increase will be met by increasing domestic supply. Right? That’s brought to you by deregulation, permitting changes. You know, look at what’s happening in California where Gavin Newsom was just on Bill Maher, right? And even the left is eating the left now, because Bill Maher, one of the things that he led with against Gavin Newsom was, I’ve been trying to get this, my roof redone for years, right, in this permitting and regulation. And regulation has. I’ve gotten estimates and approvals and permitting from all the right people, and they still have to do more inspections now.

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It’s been years, and my roof isn’t done. You know, what are these people going to do in the Palisades, right, when they’re rebuilding their homes? You’re already hearing horror stories about that, right? They don’t want anybody rebuilding with natural gas to their homes anymore. So they’ve got to be all electric. And the only people getting home approvals right now are the electric homes, right? No gas homes. You know, those are the kind of rumors being floated around. I guess I haven’t followed that story perfectly closely, to be totally honest with you, but that’s the kind of regulation that Trump’s administration wants to get rid of, right? Getting back to drill, baby, drill. Let builders build. Let the American entrepreneur get to work and get the government out of our way.

We think those policies are massive victories for the American consumer, for the American entrepreneur, for the. And will more than make up for whatever impact these tariffs do have. That’s been our view from the beginning. It’s very similar to what we saw in Trump’s first term, where we had this huge overreaction to China tariffs. And then when they actually were enacted, the stock market rose because it was way better than anyone feared. Right. We’ve talked about this here before as well. Not only did the Biden admin not do away with any of Trump’s tariffs, they actually increased them.

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Right. That’s how little impact it has, really, on our economy. Now, these will be bigger, so we’ll see the impact here. But again, the. What the market doesn’t like is the uncertainty. So Trump’s announcement will at least help alleviate that uncertainty for the market. And here’s a possible curveball that would send the market soaring on Wednesday. What if.

And again, this is a what if. Not saying this is the most likely outcome, but I haven’t heard it really in the financial mainstream media. So I like the contrarian take here. Right. What if Trump’s Liberation Day, instead of, you know, tariffs being enacted on that day, what if he has some trade deals to announce that day as well? You can imagine what that would do to the market. Right. The tariff impact is. It’s not going to be.

Not only is it not going to be as big, but some of it’s already been resolved. We’ll see. You know, we’ll see, I guess. But point being, we don’t even need all of that. We just need some more clarity. Uh, and then, as Kip has covered from time to time here, back to the messaging issue, it’s far beyond time that Trump get back in control of the messaging here. So, you know, hopefully after this April 2 deadline, this will be the transition for the Trump team to focus on economic prosperity and domestic issues, not the global tariff problems. And now that we have exited this brutal month and brutal quarter, we can get it behind us.

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Right. Seasonality really plays in our favor here. So April 2nd, best month of the year. And that’s even more so the case when January is up more than 2%. January for the S&P was up 2.8%. When that happens, April is. The returns are even better. And this one is a great one here from the Stock Traders Almanac.

Fantastic company. You can get one of these online as well. I like to keep it on my desk here because it’s great to flip through. You know, it’s a tool like anything else. I wouldn’t make any major decisions on that alone, but it’s a great tool and just Kind of flip through to see where we’re at. Right. Sometimes I’ll look at it at the end of the month, sometimes on a specific day of the week. There’s all kinds of different stats in there.

So here’s a great one for right now that not only is April the second best month of the year historically, right. In a post presidential election year, it’s even better typically so with gains higher across the board. Nasdaq, S P, Dow, Russell 2000, Russell 1000 all have very good months historically. They’re even better in a post presidential election year. So thanks to Stock Traders Almanac for that one there. So seasonality lining up in our favor. Sentiment has been absolutely decimated. Right.

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We just learned from the bank of America survey that Americans are the short positions on the S P 500 are now the largest since February of 2016. Fear and greed Index firmly in extreme fear mode. Right. Again, this has been a long stretch in extreme fear with only a brief pop out of it into fear mode. The put call ratio is extremely elevated today as well. We talk here often if anything above a 07 is seemed is seen as bearish. Anything above a 1 is seen as excessive bearishness. We had a few readings above A one today and closed just below that important one level there.

Then we saw, you might have seen this today as well, Goldman Sachs lowering or sorry, raising their 12 month probability for a recession. Right. That has everyone freaking out. Ed Yardeni threw in the towel lowering his S P500 price targets. You’re seeing that across the board from analysts as well. But if we were to get a stock a true stock market crash from here, right. And a recession from here, it’d be very similar to what they’ve said before. Right.

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It would be the most anticipated recession and stock market crash maybe ever. Right. Typically recessions and stock market crashes happen when you have excessive bullishness, not excessive bearishness. So again, as contrarians that has this again, this would have to be the most called crash ever. And that’s just not when call like that’s not when crashes happen. So I know I’ve talked at length here. If you’re still still here with me, we’ll start to get in some of our market action. But I did want to lead it with this because I’m a fan of sci fi here as you might be able to see.

That’s just one bookshelf that I have here. But one of my all time favorites has to be the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Which if you read it before you know, the actual Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has two words printed on the front of it. Those two words I think apply pretty good right now. And they are here. I’ll show them to you. Don’t panic. And you know, again, if you would have sold at the.

[00:15:50]:
More. If you would have panic sold at the lows of this morning, you would have sold at the lows of the day, you know. So this is again what is on the COVID of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. And the phrase is meant to be humorous, right? That when you’re exploring the galaxy, don’t take anything too seriously. It’s crazy out there. It’s all going to see seem too insane. And I think that applies to the stock market as well. You can get so emotional and, and caught up in the day to day of the market.

Sometimes you gotta zoom out, right? And don’t panic. So I think that’s kind of a fun one. Again, big sci fi fan here, big fan of Douglas Adams. Read all of those Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books. So if you’ve read them as well, you know, shoot me an email. I’d love to talk about it. If you’ve got any other great sci fi recommendations, you know, obviously read the Dune series. I say obviously because any sci fi fan has likely read those.

You know, the Expanse series is fantastic. Isaac Asimov is one of my favorite writers of all time. The foundation series is amazing. So yeah, if you’ve got any other great recommendations for me, send them my way. I’d love to, love to start a conversation about that. Kip and I both big, big sci fi fans here. All right, so that being said, let’s take a look at our market action on the day today. As I mentioned, the morning Zopin looked rough, but we finish at the highs of the day.

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Dow Jones up 1% on the day. Again, a big 850 point swing from the lows. It was up as much as a thousand point swing at the highs of the day. And we saw the transports leading the way. They’ve been beaten up as well. We want to see those leading as well here. Very similar to what we’re seeing in the semis. And home builders, you know, they’re below their 200 day moving average.

You don’t want to see that. We need to get back above those levels here to give us a little more confidence in this market. Next up, the S P 500 actually reclaimed 5,600 into the close today, massive 120 point swing to the upside to finish at 5,611. Nasdaq down over 400 points of the low today, only finished down 23 points at 17,299. And lastly here the small caps down just over half a percent but also well off the lows near the highs of the day. Next up here, looking at our internals, you know, not great numbers here, but much like our major indexes finished closer to the highs of the day today. So we did have a positive advanced decline on the nyse better than 2 to 1 negative on the NASDAQ. So not bad.

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But then 52 week highs lows. Now I will say on a day where you have a retest of those lows and again those retests can be scarier than the initial move lower. This is a cumulative number. So any stock that hit a 52e low at the open this morning or just throughout the day is on this list. So much like our major indexes, many of these stocks finished at their highs of the day. So this isn’t quite an accurate reflection of where we’re probably at. But we did see 977 stocks hitting 52E lows. That’s combined NYSE and NASDAQ to just 113 hitting 52E high.

So not what we want to see today. Certainly we want to see some improvement there tomorrow. But on the volume side, you know, positive volume on the NYSE and then better than you might have have expected, better than 2 to 1 negative at least on the Nasdaq. And then you know, this one might surprise you on the daytoday and that is our sectors where we finish with 9 out of our 11 sectors positive on the day to day. And you know, our major indexes might be lower on the year. They are. But as for our sectors, we’ve got, you know, between roughly seven sectors that are still higher on the year. That’s good to see.

[00:19:46]:
You know, that’s a bit of a counter trend to what we’re seeing in the market right now, which again we’ve talked about this pullback at length. But we see this as a counter trend sell off, right? A counter trend move in what is still a bull market. That remains our long term call here. So again, seven sectors that are actually higher year to date and nine finished or 10 out of 11 finish higher on the day led by consumer staples financials and utilities yields were lower down to a 4.24 today. Then we actually did manage to get Tech Positive as well before the close today. So the Nasdaq might have finished lower but the tech sector finished positive in the Qs finished even on the day. They were positive just before the close as well. So you know, not terrible action from the sectors are one sector to finish lower, consumer discretionary.

But we did see some good action in retail today. We don’t cover those sectors here quite as closely on the podcast. At least we watch them. But interesting action there. Absolutely. All right, one more point of interesting action here on the day and that is gold, which now has 18 or 19 closing highs in 2025. That’s incredible. And another all time high here today.

[00:21:05]:
Let me get a quick refresh here. I like doing this, this one on my phone. It’s a little cleaner to look at than on my desktop here. So forgive me if I’m looking down but gold last trade here, 3157. Wow. Another all time high for gold. While GDX has been on a great move here as well. So let’s go ahead and take a look at this chart here of GDX for a second because it’s been on an incredible run here.

You as you can see just two sessions ago or one session ago, really hit another 52 week high. I’ll point out we are at extreme overbought levels. Pulled back a little bit from them there. But what I really want to show you here is that when you zoom out, right. Kip and I have talked about this one a lot. You know, it’s, it’s tough to with the VR investing system when a stock is at extreme overbought levels. But this is a group we’ve remained bullish on for years and we think this is the kind of breakout we’re about to see. So here’s a 20 year view of the GDX chart.

[00:22:10]:
First off, as you can see here, we’re still 27 away from those highs in 2011. Secondly here, and possibly more importantly, the forward, the 12 month forward earnings ratio here is well below its 10 year average. It’s at a 14. The 10 year average is a 20. So this is a phenomenally well run group here. Well capitalized, you know, again, a 14 on the 12 month forward earnings. Well below average there. That’s what we think.

This still has so much room to the upside and you could definitely make the argument that it’s actually undervalued despite being at 52e highs. Now take a look at this. Here’s the low from the 2008 era. And so we’re looking at a similar period in our view here where GDX from those lows to the August September 2011 highs rallied 327%. So the party doesn’t even begin until you get to blue sky territory, right. Until you get to all time highs again so that no one who’s ever bought it has a loss. That’s when the party starts. That’s why we think this group still has so much more room to run.

[00:23:29]:
You know, B of A, their commodity analyst also just raised their price target for gold to 3,500. So yes, we remain incredibly bullish on this group here, both gold and the miners, although again, overbought levels is tough. We might wait for a little bit of a pullback to, you know, begin aggressively adding to positions and making some other trades around it. Next up, silver higher on the day as well at $34.76 an ounce. Copper still above $5 a pound at $55 a pound. Oil up today, which helped energy stocks out. Energy was up nicely a 1% on the day. We have oil at 71.48 a barrel.

We also just learned that natural gas just saw record usage for the winter months of 2024. We expect that to continue as well. All right, finally here for today. Last one. Let me just make sure I didn’t miss anything for you here with so much going on here. Right? Yeah. Again, it’s going to be an eventful week here. So finally, bitcoin up slightly on the day now to 82.

[00:24:44]:
659 did sell off over the weekend, but Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock today said that the US dollar is potentially at risk of losing its world reserve currency status to bitcoin. That’s an interesting one there. You know, blackrock, when they make big calls, you know, no love for blackrock certainly, but they don’t take very risky calls. They like to make high confidence predictions. So interesting there to see from Larry Fink. But 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@vra letter.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.