In today’s episode, Kip dives deep into a volatile August market, unpacking this week’s wild swings and what they mean for your portfolio. Despite choppy trading, Kip doubles down on his bullish outlook, arguing that we’re still in the very early innings of this bull market. He breaks down why current dips are buying opportunities, shares his strong predictions for year end and 2026, and takes a closer look at the “ocean of liquidity” fueling these moves. Tune into today's podcast to learn more.

Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Wednesday afternoon, everyone. Kip Herriage here with the daily VRA investing podcast. Hope you had a good day today. Got a lot to go through today. This is pretty good stuff here. I think we got something, I think we got something really nailed down here with what’s happened with this market. Again, August is a quiet month.

You get any kind of selling or buying of size at all and you’re going to have a move in that direction that’s going to be amplified than what you normally have. And of course, you know, we’ve been talking about here the last couple of days, what was, was Jay Powell’s address that he’s going to be giving on Friday at Jackson Hole. Was that leaked? Because that’s what it looked like to me yesterday. I was really trying to formulate that conversation yesterday on this podcast with you. I wrote up a little bit better this morning in a letter and kind of explained our views and where we are with the markets. And by the way, we are so super bullish. That hasn’t changed one iota. As Tyler just said in our pre podcast meeting, this is early innings.

[00:00:58]:
This is very early innings. And it is, that’s been our theme now for three years. Not going to change it now. So ultimately this is a buying opportunity because the market’s going to be higher by year end. The market’s going to be a lot higher by the end of the first quarter of 2026. I say that confidently because we’re very confident about that. And so, you know, there’s, there’s, there’s portfolio management and discipline. That makes sense.

You know, having too many positions being exposed on margin or you know, having just like you feel like you’ve got too much out there at a time of a market being extreme overbought, when you’re coming into some negative seasonality. That’s what September represents. It’s a time to pull back a little bit, right? As a time to really put the pedal to the metal. This is not the time to put the pedal to the metal on a short term basis because I don’t know about you. Actually, I think I do. I don’t like losing money ever. I don’t like days where the, my account goes negative. I don’t think you do either.

But this comes with the territory. I’ve done this 40, 41 years now. I understand that. Still hate it just as much as I did when I was 22 coming out of college doing this and I had very little money to work with it mattered even more then really, you know, lose thousand dollars today. You know, that was like losing a hundred thousand dollars back, back when you’re 22 and yet everything you had in the market that are paying your rent and for food. But look, we got a lot to talk about here. Nvidia closed green today. Momentum stocks made a major comeback with a big, big comeback today.

[00:02:31]:
Internals today were really good. They were yesterday too. The eternals were good yesterday, they’re good today. This is not the kind of action you see in the market when you’re about to have a big decline. It’s just not. And so look, I just, I, I just don’t see it. I, I think that we’ve got this liquidity, a notion of liquidity. Look, I’m going to come back to that, okay? It’s one of our common themes.

I want to start with something a little different today. This is, we’re just now getting all the facts on this. But I just got to say what Trump is doing to drain the swamp, and I know there are a lot of people that go with, there’ve been no arrest. I get all that, okay? But you can see the wheels turning and maybe there won’t be. Maybe, maybe all of us that believe, hey, we finally going to make some headroom, headway. We’re finally going to get rid of some of these criminals in the swamp. Maybe that’s never going to happen. I think it is.

And I think we’re seeing the wheels of justice begin to grind in that direction. And one of these things we’re seeing take place just in a very isolated way is with the Federal Reserve. We now have the second person in the last month that is Lisa Cook. Doctor. Dr. Lisa Cook, who by the way, on her Twitter account, guess what? She’s two people. She’s, she and her. So that explains what she did with this mortgage fraud.

[00:03:47]:
But Lisa Cook is about to have to be to resign from the Federal Reserve. She’s a voting Federal Reserve governor and she’s about to go bye bye. Because what Trump is doing now is, is tearing down the Federal Reserve from within. If Jay Powell is going to be so obstinate, so such an elitist that he’s going to continue to destroy the second America with these ridiculously high rates that don’t affect the first America. Right? Do not. High interest rates don’t affect the first America at all. The second America is being destroyed by them. Why are these questions asked? Why, why seriously, at these, at these monthly Fed pressers, why isn’t everybody asking we know why because it’s a rig game.

Again we this is now Dr. Lisa Cook. She her is about to resign because she committed mortgage fraud here. And again we’re just not getting this story today. But I got to say not just hats off to, to Trump for really pressing this issue but for Bill Pulte, you know who’s FHA or what is that, what is that called? Director of Federal Housing. I don’t think I’ve ever used that word before those words before. He’s director of Federal Housing Administration and Bill Pulte is just a bulldog. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.

Well what they found is that this Fed governor, Dr. Lisa Cook, she her bought two homes within two weeks of each other, one in Michigan and one in Georgia. She declared both of them as her primary residence. Now why would someone do this? As Tyler just very astutely said, well that means you got a primary residence in two homes. That means you can homestead. And that’s exactly right because if you declare a home as your primary residence, the mortgage rules all of a sudden don’t apply to you on owning a second home. Now all of a sudden your insurance is going to be a lot less. Now all of a sudden pretty much every expense, tax wise etc.

[00:05:59]:
That you’re going to have with the second home as both are now being homesteaded no longer applies to you. You can get the write offs on both along with the homestead, protection, insurance, taxes, everything. And that’s what she did. This is mortgage fraud. She is a Federal Reserve governor. If a Federal Reserve governor doesn’t understand the law on this, and obviously she did, this is fraud and that’s a criminal. This is a felony. This is a, a felony offense, then you know she’s going to be arrested.

Now whether or not she’ll just step down, that’s what she’s going to do. I expect that within 24 hours she will have sent in her resignation. We just had another girl in the Federal Reserve, what was it, four weeks ago, same thing, just up and quit. Didn’t, didn’t, didn’t vote at the Fed meeting and just turned in a resignation. Same kind of thing. I don’t even know if we’ve gotten all the details but there was some, there’s really something fishy there with her too. So again I just applaud Team Trump and Bill Pulte for take his. That’s the thing.

Jay Powell. If you’re not going to cut rates then we’re going to force change, we’re going to start going after all of your buddies. By the way, where’s the oversight at the Federal. Why? Why? How are they hiring people with these criminal backgrounds? Is there no basic level of due diligence that they’ve done into these people? But I mean, how stupid you have to be to declare primary residence on two homes bought within two weeks of each other? That’s fraud. That’s, that’s absolute fraud. So again, Trump is now tearing down the Federal Reserve from outside and now it’s from within because now he’s getting enough dissenting votes on his side, there’ll be somebody else who he’ll be able to appoint. Now again, they’ve got to go through that process. But this should bring even more pressure to bear on, on Jay Powell.

[00:07:55]:
And you know, my hope is that if we find out that he in fact did, or someone in the Fed did leak his address for this Friday, 2, 2, Friday morning, 9am Eastern, is what he gives his address at Jackson Hole. Because we are what we already knew is that the Bureau of Labor statistic bls, that data has been leaked forever and it happens in every administration. But it’s gotten worse over the years. Over the last, I’d say over the last, well, probably four or five years, it’s gotten a lot worse. That’s why so few people trust the data from the bls. It’s not trustworthy. And it’s very common that you see the markets move in that direction two to three days early, which is exactly what happened yesterday morning when all of a sudden we had a tech wreck when all the momentum stocks, not just tech, again, if your momentum stock, you’ve been red hot, you’ve just been slaughtered. Right? Because it’s like somebody came in with a market sell order for all of these stocks and said if it’s momentum, sell it or short it.

That’s the way the market acted yesterday. I only see that happen when there’s somebody thinks they know something. And that’s what I believe. I think that it’s, it’s likely that Jay Powell’s address on Friday is going to be hawkish. And in other words, he’s not going to commit to anything about a September rate cut, Even though the CB Fed watch right now has it, what, 80, 81% odds of a, of a rate cut in September. So if Jay Powell’s address on Friday is hawkish, I think we’re going to know that this, his speech was leaked. And again, it shouldn’t be a surprise, but it should certainly be investigated again, Jay Powell, what kind of an organization you run over there? And I just got to say this too about, about the Fed. You know, until recently when again until Trump’s introduced tariffs and until the first time Jay Powell started to say, well, well, tariffs, they’re going to be, they may be inflationary, they’re going to be inflationary down the road.

When did they go from being data dependent to narrative dependent? Because the data shows clearly that there is no inflation in the system. There’s no, you can, they can say it’s slightly ticked up. Again. Do you trust the BLS for, for, for their economic data reporting? I don’t. I know very few people that do. But even, even if it is trustworthy, there’s been no marked increase at all in inflation. So they are no longer data dependent. Now they have to defend and repeat a narrative.

[00:10:24]:
What does that sound like to you? It sounds very much like a Democrat to me. They’re very good at defending their narratives as ridiculous as they can often be. Okay, so that’s covered again. Hopefully. I think within 24 hours she’s got to be gone. This is mortgage versus clear fraud and there’s no getting, there’s no getting around. Just stupid too, by the way, she had no, she could get caught. But to be a federal, only 12 Federal Reserve governors and to find someone that just this, this, this, this, this openly commits mortgage fraud that knows, clearly knows better.

Right? Clearly knows better. I don’t know. She’s doctor And I’m assuming it’s probably, it’s got to be in some kind of business or economics. So clearly she should know this law. All right. Well again we had a good comeback today with good internals today. At one point this morning after following yesterday’s mini meltdown, NASDAQ today was down almost 400 points. This morning I was on a, a long zoom meeting and I’m sitting here watching and going Nasdaq down 250.

Nasdaq down 300. Nasdaq down 350. Nasdaq down 3. I think I saw 388 so close to 400 points. I may have even missed a little more. But NASDAQ finished down just 142 points. Only only finished down 7/10 of a percent. Dow Jones actually finished higher on the day, rose 2000.

[00:11:41]:
Again these are all big comebacks. Rose 2000 down 3/10 and the SB 500 down 2/10 of 1%. The semis today, as Tyler told me at one point today, the semis Were down from their all time highs of last week. 7% from the all time highs last week. And today they were down at one point, I know well over 2%. They, they only finished down a half percent. Nvidia, the king of the semis, the most important company on the planet. Today the low is 168, closed at 175.

That is green on the day. So these are, these are important, you know, identifiers, right? These are, these are important signals to look, to look at here. We also had by the way, I think something that no one’s talking about. Still gold today. Gold finished up today, what, $33 an ounce. GDX the gold miner TF finished up 3.2% on the day putting it, what is this? 40 cents away from a 50 from an all time high for, for GTX. So and, and which is also by the way 52 week high. So gold’s looking great.

The miners looking really good. Bitcoin making a reversal here. Last trade in Bitcoin now 114,369. And again, you know, we like relative strength charts and relative strength signals. And if you’ve been following bitcoin and the markets long enough, what have you noticed? It’s pretty common that bitcoin leads, Bitcoin leads in both directions higher and lower. What do we see? Last week bitcoin hit an intraday all time high at 124,300 and then boom, within 8, 18 hours it had given up, what was it, 7, 8% back down to like 117,000. I mean that was a fast and furious reversal and that was the first time that we, we said to, to you here, keep an eye on this because bitcoin tends to leave in both directions. Well, as bitcoin now bottomed and it’s now bitcoin leading higher, I think it’s too, it’s too soon to say that again.

[00:13:38]:
We’ve got to get Jay Powell’s address out of the way. Who knows what this clown is going to say. You just don’t know. He loves to talk down the markets. I think, I think he feels it makes him look like, like a more of a professional Fed chair if the markets fall big under his watch. So he’s not too dovish. I think that really is what this guy is, a simpleton. And I think that really is a simpleton that’s easily controlled by his masters at the, at the Federal Reserve, of course, all the banking cartel.

I think he feels like he’s done his job. If he can take the market. So don’t be surprised if we get a bad hawkish address from Powell on Friday. Again, I’m half expecting that here, but as I wrote this morning, it ain’t going to matter. Here’s how I know it’s not going to matter. This bull market from its infancy, right, has is not cared about interest rates. This market has not been going higher on the hopes of rate cuts. This market’s going higher because it’s a structurally strong bull market.

The same reasons we talk about all the time, but for our new people. I got it. I got to repeat just a couple of them because they are stunning. They are stunning figures. M2 money supply, 22 trillion all time high. That’s M2 money supply is cash and cash equivalents right in the bank account. Record high. Of that 22 trillion in money market, seven and a half trillion, excuse me, of that 22 trillion in M2 money supply, 7.5 trillion.

[00:15:03]:
Sitting in money markets. Also an all time high. Home equity sitting at, guess what, an all time high A of $34 trillion. So yeah, the markets certainly do want to see rates come down. The markets do believe it’s going to happen, but that’s not why they’ve been going up. This market has not been dependent on lower rates and because of the structural strength of this economy. And of course the ocean of liquidity that exists out there. That’s been our theme for some time.

I think it’s the most important theme along with the fact that we have an innovation revolution and the Trump Economic Miracle 2.0. It really is. Tyler had a great interview last night with, with Wayne, Wayne Route and he made this point. I thought so. Well, you know, when you have the combination that we have of the Trump Economic Miracle 2.0, right. The carryover viewer from 2016, you know, low taxes, tariffs and deregulation. And it’s just all he’s done is amp it up in the second term. When you have that plus the innovation revolution and the roaring 2020s, it’s a pretty good combination, you know, and actually that’s not the third roaring 2020.

That’s the one that I use. I’ve got it right here. Oh, ocean liquidity, innovation revolution, Trump economic miracle, kind of the same thing. Roaring 2020, ocean liquidity, they represent each other pretty well. And that’s really what’s driving this market higher. And that’s why these dips are going to continue to be very shallow. You know, the April dip was not shallow. The April dip was a Bear market, it was brutal.

[00:16:32]:
25 30, 35% loss. Average stock lost more than 40% in four weeks. Right. It was brutal. On Trump’s tariff approach that ended. He paused the tariffs. He saw, he saw he made a mistake and he rectified it. And then, look, we’re off to the races.

I was running the numbers this morning for my letter. I was like, I’d forgotten this. I don’t know how. But from the April 7th bear market lows, the S&P 500, until this, this little shakeout started, had gained 34%. Four month gain, 34%. Nasdaq 100, up 50, excuse me, 45% again in four months. Pretty stunning moves. And again, so I think it’s really, if we’re being honest about this, we never want to see the markets go against us.

I know, I don’t. But I think we also have to recognize that profit taking does happen and trees don’t grow to the sky. So this is a normal thing. Well, the answer we need on the back end is is this just going to be a shakeout? Is this going to be an overbought pause or is this going to be something else? And that’s what we’re always looking for. That’s why we created, that’s why I created the VR investing system, you know, with my mentors, beginning close to 40 years ago. And that’s why we refined it, continued to refine it and why we depend on it so much today. So we can see if, see through the noise and see, is this, is this a market oriented event, Is this a technical event? Or are we talking about something deeper, something more fundamentally that could be wrong, a cracks in the market or in the economy? Folks are not there, they’re just not there. Doesn’t mean they can’t show up all of a sudden, but they’re not there.

[00:18:05]:
Again, the fury system is 70% fundamental, 30% technical. So we see it if it’s in the economy, we see if it’s in employment, we see if it’s in inflation, we see if anything fundamentally. And then for the technical side, what we see in the charts, you know, these repeating patterns tend to hold up pretty well and we’re just not seeing it anywhere. So that tells us that this is when this ends. And again, September is not a, not a great month, but I don’t think this is good. I’ve written this up and I think I may have given the wrong impression. I said, if this is like the, the 2020 September, because that was brutal, right? That, that was brutal. This ain’t going to be that though.

It’s not going to be that because this is a very, very much different bull market. Number one, it just started in April. I mean, we’re four months into a new bull market, okay? So I think any kind of shakeout we get is going to be very short lived. And I think that’s what we saw today. Today could have been. Yesterday was hard. The close here could have been pretty, pretty brutal today. And it just wasn’t.

Instead, what happened? Retail investors buy the dip. Even now, major Wall street firms are saying, you know what? Buy the dip. That’s been the repeating pattern that’s held up. Saw it today from two different major firms. I want to say, I don’t want to guess, but they’re, they’re two recognizable names that both said it today. I think Goldman was one of them, Morgan Stanley the other. Both said, this is, this is by the dip opportunity. And since I’m on that topic, let’s go to Rich Ross.

[00:19:32]:
If you’re with us here at the vra, then you know the name Rich Ross pretty well. Rich Ross is our go to technical analysis guys. A charter financial strategist. He’s a, he’s the quant at Evercore, if you will. Okay. I don’t actually know what his official title is, CFT or if they just call him the technical guy, but he’s a, he’s a good chartist and he, he understands how all of these sectors and markets, economically speaking as well as technically speaking, how they work together. He’s brilliant, brilliant guy and he’s been equally as bullish as we’ve been. We don’t always agree on everything.

But, but you know why, who would want that, right? But anyway, Rich Ross said he put out his weekly update and he’s still as bullish as ever. A great quote I thought he gave. He said this is a textbook head fake. It’s a buying opportunity that will resolve itself significantly higher in thin summer markets with the Bears leaning, in other words, the Bears leaning into it. Guess what they’re going to be doing covering those shorts. Because he expects this to be short lived and as do we. This is not going to be a brutal September. We’re still in August, by the way.

August again, very slow months. Everybody’s on vacation. All it takes is a little bit, a little bit of a selling pressure or buying pressure to move the markets in that direction. But a lot of people are talking about September being the worst month of the year. And again, people People remember that it was, it was a brutal 2020 September. Again, just don’t see that being the case here. Okay, what else today? All right, let’s take a look under the hood day. Getting the eternals today were just like yesterday were very, very good.

[00:21:17]:
Okay, F decline today. Quick refresh, just slightly negative for Nyse by like 100 issues on advanced decline. Nasdaq was negative by about 400 issues. Again these are narrow margins here. Advanced decline today was positive for Nyse by about $100 million worth of trading. Nasdaq was negative but it was 55 down volume. Again, these are not, this is not big moves. And we had about 30 more stocks hit.

Excuse me, 20 more stocks hitting a 52 week low then a 52 week high. If you remember our sector watch from yesterday, it’ll sound familiar. Yesterday we had seven sectors finish higher, four finished lower. It’s exactly the same today to the upside today with energy up 9/10 of a percent. Consumer staples up 8/10 to the downside. Consumer discretionary down 1.1%. Technology down 8/10 1%. Again these are not big moves in either direction here.

Kind of a non event, kind of a good, again, it’s a good comeback today. Commodity watch again. This is again folks, if you know us at all, you know that we are gold bugs through and through. My dad was a gold bug, I’m a gold bug. Tyler’s a gold bug and Sam’s the gold buck. By the way, it’s not another generation but it’s another, another son. And Sam’s going to be joining us here in the very near term. Looking forward to introducing him to everybody.

[00:22:31]:
In case you don’t already know, Sam, our youngest son, I think I know a lot of you do and it’s great to have all both my boys here with us. I can tell you I was looking very forward to get some exciting things planned. I’m going to start doing some new things for you, providing more value, more content. We’re going to start doing a monthly membership, a zoom where you can show up, ask your questions, you know, anything you want to talk about, it’ll be let’s go. And then we’ll do the same thing for, for non members. So we’ll have two monthly calls. You’re welcome to attend both of course and, and a number of other things that we think will add a lot of value to the, to your very membership and we’re looking forward to doing that again. But again we’re gold bucks, right? Gold right now is 33.92 again up 33 bucks an ounce today, right at 1%.

This is the beginning of the move. This is anywhere close to the end of the move. This is gold. Our target remains 4,000 by year end. Now that, that gives it four months, right? What is that right? September, October. Yep. Basically four months to get there for gold. And can it get there? Can we jump another 600 an ounce for gold? By why not? I mean again I’ve made the point for a long time.

If bitcoin can do it, it’s done. I know it’s a different investment all together. It’s digital. That is a game that is very different than a physical asset. But if bitcoin could do it, why can’t gold have these kinds of moves? I’m not saying it’s got to go to 114000 but why can’t gold go to 10, 15, 20,000 dollars? Because it should be able to. And the manipulators, this is the key. I believe the manipulators have taken their foot off the throat of gold. They’re no longer manipulating it and, and holding it down.

[00:24:12]:
And, and now there’s so many other ways that physical gold is being used right. To, to pressure people that own paper gold into covering their paper short bet which is really what that is. And so a lot of reasons of course demand is through the roof and the world knows that. The money printing machine of the world, fiat currencies is not going away. It’s only going to pick up speed. Same thing for, for sovereign debt, corporate debt, global debt. Only going to pick up speed because it has to. There’s no solution to it right now.

And ultimately gold goes up as fiat currencies get destroyed. That’s just going to continue. Dollar all of them continue to be the case over the next decade. So I, we think gold’s going to have pretty magical move and that it is only just getting started. The miners of course have yet to even start going really. You know they’re. They’re finally getting to towards all time highs from 2011. Right.

But they still have yet to break out. Volume is completely anemic. Again. GDX today was up better than 3%. What was the volume? Let me get a quick refresh buy of GDX Dave. Was 15 million shares. Now to put that in perspective back in the, in the biggest bull market that gold has had before now this is from 2003 to 2011 with the, the crash in between. Okay, go go look at your charts.

[00:25:29]:
Look at the volume, a slow day was 80 million shares in GDX Trading. Average volume was 100, 120 million. A lot of days, you know, multiple hundred million shares traded. 50, excuse me, 15 million shares traded today. It is just, it’s, it’s, it’s anemic. It’s pathetic. And what does it tell you though? It tells you that this bull market hasn’t started yet. The real money has, the serious money has not shown up yet.

When it does, we’ll know because GDX will begin trading on a daily basis. 60 to 80 million shares a day. 50 will be a slow day. That’s when this group will really be rocking and rolling, folks. I’m telling you, if I’m wrong, I’m wrong. But I, I tend to get these big calls, right? I’m telling you, this is a big call, right? We own this group. Aggressively physical gold, physical silver. We’re 80, 20 there.

Gold to silver. I feel good about that mix. I do think silver is due to have a big run. I, I might even be tempted to go 70, 30. But it’s hard to, you know, if you’re a physical guy. It’s not easy to make that, that kind of a switch. Silver, silver coins, it’s, it’s tough. It’s tough getting those out and taking where you want to take them to exchange it for more gold.

[00:26:35]:
But they’re obviously different ways to do this. But we are physical people here. But it doesn’t matter. 80, 20, 70, 30. Because the real money frankly is going to be made the miners. Because if gold does what I think it’s going to do, GDX is 58 today. GDX is going to 300. You make six times your money right now by buying GDX.

I’m talking about over a number of years. That’s the bull market that is directly ahead of us. When they get going, they’re going to. It’s going to be a smoke show. Going to make so much money. It’s going to be hotter than Sydney Sweeney. I’m telling you, it’d be complete smoke show. So the stay locked in with this group.

You, you know, we love the Junior miners. Talk about a group that hasn’t got gotten to go yet. Some of these stocks, I mean, we own Vista Gold, Snowline Gold, Vista Gold, I mean minimum today should be minimum in a minimum, minimum, minimum way should be $2 a share. It’s 116. Right. And we own Snowline Gold, of course, which is. We’re pretty much in love with this company going to visit them here in two weeks in the Yukon. We’re really looking forward to that, to that trip.

[00:27:41]:
You know and that’s a. It’s only a 600 stock but it’s, but it does have a market cap of a billion dollars. It’s a small, it’s the largest junior miner in Canada and the stock has gone up like 3, 400% in the last four years. So it’s you know stocks had an amazing run. We’ve done very well in it. But again this is still in its infancy because the gold is going to do what we think 8, 10, $12,000 an ounce. The miners are just going to make us a lot of money. So make sure and continue to use monthly dollar cost averaging in these miners.

Right. And when I’m right, when I’m right years from now and you’re counting your millions because you listen to us about gold, silver and, and the miners. Hey you know what? Next time you see us buy us a drink. I think that’s a fair deal and we’re going to hold you to it. Okay, what else today rest of commodity watch. Here we go. Copper today up a quarter of a percent at 443A pound. Crude oil today bouncing back up 1.7% today up a dollar nine a barrel at last trade 6286 finally of the day again Bitcoin 114.

Just over 114,000 right now. Bitcoin does tend to lead as did the semis and again the semis had a big recovery day today. We’ll see what happens to J Pal the the criminal Federal Reserve they already were. We already knew that there are criminal cabal bankers. Right. Is it any surprise that when you drill down the members the Fed governors are criminals themselves. The whole thing is coming unglued folks and it’s glorious to watch end the Fed. All right folks and the great Ron Paul for thanks for first and naming that.

[00:29:18]:
You’re right. Then even more right now. All right folks, have a great day. Hope you had a great day. Hope you have a great night and we’ll see back here again tomorrow after the close.