In today's episode, Kip breaks down a theatrical day on Wall Street. Despite the headline-grabbing clash between President Trump and Elon Musk, the stock market as a whole was surprisingly resilient. Kip shares his take on why the market's reaction wasn't as severe as you might expect, highlighting the underlying fundamental strength for this market. Tune into today's podcast to learn more.

Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Thursday afternoon, everyone. Kip Herriage here with the daily VRA investing podcast. Hope you had a good day today. This was not boring. It had very little to do with the markets today. But what happened today between President Trump and Elon Musk was embarrassing, frankly. Wasn’t it embarrassing? Childlike, I think, is another description comes to mind.

You know, Maybe there’s some 4 or 5D chess thing playing out here that we can’t see at this point, but, you know, look, Tesla was down 50 bucks today. That’s 15% on this, okay? And that, and that may not be over with because now this, this few, this feud may even get into other contracts that, that every one of Elon Musk companies are involved with. Apparently he’s already made decision to cancel his ship that goes to the International Space Station, meaning that there will be no transportation for American astronauts UN. Pay Russia $80 million per trip if in fact Musk cancels that, that, that, that, that spaceship that’s being, that’s being built now, so, and being used now, as a matter of fact. So, you know, look, threats about Trump, you know, the, the Jeffrey Epstein files haven’t been released because Trump was, is in it. You know, to put something out there and not, and not put evidence of that is so irresponsible. I don’t know. Again, I have no clue what’s going on with Elon Musk today in this, but clearly there’s a lot happening behind the scenes that we don’t know about.

[00:01:37]:
The, the love affair between these two guys is now over with. Most likely this will all cool off. Most likely. We’ve seen the, you know, the, the nadir of this today. I don’t know. I don’t know either one wants to get any nastier than this. But frankly, as Tylenol just talked about before I did the podcast today is, it’s really interesting and how amazing that the markets didn’t get hit worse because we’re talking about again, a feud between likely, arguably the two most powerful men on the planet having a falling out again, Tesla getting smoked. And that’s in the SP 500, of course, and it’s a leading FIFO, first in, first out stock.

It’s been leading from the April 7 lows. You know, today being hit 15%. But to have Nasdaq only down 8/10 of 1%, I think you gotta see that’s a victory for the market. And again, we were higher across the board essentially before all this started happening. The Other consideration is about the big beautiful bill, which of course is what got this whole thing going to begin with, at least on the surface. I think we see now there’s something else that’s going on behind the scenes this entire time. But between these two guys, again, likely just a power trip between two megalomaniacs. But the issue now is going to be the big beautiful bill.

[00:03:02]:
You know, if you’re following Elon Musk on Twitter, you know, good luck because he’s got like, must have a hundred posts out in the last just few hours, most about this fight with Trump. But he’s saying kill the bill. Musk wants the bill to be killed. And I don’t know that. I don’t know that the markets would even care about that because the tax increase that would go into all Americans, right, that’s going to be the finalization of this is in this bill to finalize Trump’s tax cuts from his first term. Those aren’t up for renewal for that to be canceled out until December of this year, as I understand it. So they have plenty of time to fix that. That wouldn’t be the problem.

I don’t know that there’s really anything else that we have to worry about from the economy or the market’s point of view besides just this, you know, this back and forth insanity that we’re having to watch here. But I don’t know, I don’t, my point is I don’t know what could really drive the markets lower, except it’s just sentiment, right? It just keeps getting uglier and ugly and who knows what could come out next. But the markets have come a long way in a short period of time. We just left May, which was the best May in 35 years. And, you know, NASDAQ up 9%. S P 500, up 6%. So pretty, pretty exceptional move so far. And, you know, a little bit of a shakeout here, a little bit of pause I don’t think would surprise many people.

[00:04:33]:
But we’re not overbought. We’re not, we haven’t reached extreme or bought levels. Our indicators tell us that this market could run for quite a long ways before we’d have to worry about reaching those kind of extreme, above levels. But again, we’re not oversold either. So we’re kind of, kind of overbought, but, but not to extreme. So, so, you know, let’s hope this thing gets resolved and you guys realize that, you know, this is not, this is, this is going to help no one. And they’ve got to find at some point find a way to put their egos aside and, and deal with things like, like road men instead of children. It is embarrassing, isn’t it? And that’s on both of them, by the way.

So it’s a knock on both, not just Trump and not just Musk. But again we did turn lower today. Now Dow Jones Fin over 100 points. Nasdaq down 162 that led the way lower down 8, 10 1% all day long today the semis were higher again. Again that’s our leading group. They did flip at the end finishing down right at, in the after hours trading now right at 1%. But again not, not, not much happened here today. Frankly no real damage done at all.

[00:05:42]:
But again we got this high drama to deal with. But again this market’s very strong. There’s a lot of money on the sidelines. Every time we’ve seen a dip, what’s happened, there have been people there buying because institutions are on the wrong side. Now they’re coming back in but they’re still on the wrong side of this market. They haven’t fully reloaded and you know, again we know what, what the, what the retail investors are going to do. Retail is buying the dip, baby. That’s all, it’s all they’re doing.

It’s been the right move and they’ve got a lot more with seven or seven trillion dollars, you know, money market accounts. There’s a lot of money left there to still come in from the retail side as well. So hopefully this, this sideshow that we’re having to deal with now won’t do any, any more damage and they can get this big beautiful bill back on track and get this resolved and get, you know, because there are great things in this bill as well. Again, the question here is really about this bill versus actually trying to get rid of debt, right, and stop spending this bill. The way that it’s structured, they work within very limited parameter parameters because they’re not going to get, they’re not going to get 60 votes. Republicans aren’t going to get 60 votes here. It’s not going to be, they’re not going to have the ability to stop Democrats from doing a filibuster. So we’re not going to get there.

[00:07:02]:
So this has to happen in reconciliation and that’s the format now. So it seems like Musk is saying one thing when we’re really talking about something else. But of course, if the bill’s killed and we start over again, then Musk is Right, let’s start from scratch. But again, good luck getting a veto proof bill passed because that’s just going to be, it’s not going to happen. And then you are talking about something that could be damaging both to the markets and the economy. So we have a lot to think about, don’t we? All right, let’s take a look under the hood today. Again, not the turtles were fine. Matter of fact they were.

You, you would not have known this was a bad day at all. Not that it was a bad day typically, but here we go. Internals were slightly negative. Advanced decline both NYC a matter of fact NYSE came in exactly the same. 1377 stocks up, 1370 stocks down. So it’s flat. A tie, a rare tie. You don’t see it often.

[00:08:03]:
For NYC. Nasdaq negative by about 600 issues. Again not a problem there. Volume was a little more so 62% down volume. NASDAQ 51% down volume. For NYSE again no problem here whatsoever. We actually had 231 stocks hit a new 52 week high to just 71 hitting a new 52 week low. We get a sector watch not, not the same.

10 of 11 sectors finished lower the day. The only real damage consumer discretionary because that group’s been red hot today was down two and a half percent. Otherwise not much happening. But again, 10 of 11 sectors were lower on the day. And a commodity watch, gold had a really sharp gains this morning. And then here came the insanity, you know, but still, as Tyler pointed out, gold may have been down 20 bucks announced at 610 of a percent but silver was up 3.3%. So as we’ve talked about a lot for a long time, silver’s been lagging for such a long time. It’s good to see it play some catch up.

[00:09:00]:
And if you follow GDX, the gold miner ETF and GDXJ again, Tyler pointed this out. The junior gold miner ETF was up today better than 2% even though GDX was down a quarter percent. And again gold was down 6 10%. So that outperformance by GDXJ has been happening and now continues to happen. Of course there are a couple of silver miners in that gold miner junior ETF too. So I think that accounted for this. But it doesn’t matter because Ron, just talking about today, the junior miners have been outperforming now for some time. That is a buy signal for the group just as it’s a buy signal when the miners outperform gold.

Right. This is this group has been, this has been, this has been the playbook all year long in 2025 and it’s worked. GDX the gold miner ETF up 60% for the year. Far and away the the top performing sector or subsector in the markets this year. And again we think that this move is only just getting started. And so yeah by the way our year in target for gold remains $4,000 an ounce. And in the next year, you know probably 5,000. This is that bull market for this group.

[00:10:10]:
And again with the DC insanity you can see how people go, you know what? I don’t, I don’t have enough gold. By the way bitcoin today, you know going the other way now down almost 4%. Bitcoin has last trade a hundred thousand. Just over 100,000. Again this is a risk off 5. I don’t, I can, I don’t know why would happen in D.C. would account for this. Maybe there’s another part of the story we don’t quite know yet.

Again a lot of things could happen that we just. When these guys, when megalomaniacs get in a fight like this, you know it. Who knows what’s going to come out. Who knows, right? Okay, what else today in our commodity watch today goal is down 23. Only 6 of a percent. Silver today up 3.3% at 35 79. That’s a 13 year high in silver by the way. Way copper today charging head again 5 10.

[00:11:00]:
Excuse me. Up a half percent at 492 a pound. Crude oil today up 40 cents a barrel. Last trade 63 24. And again Bitcoin here down now. Last trade here exactly 101,000. Just back over 101,000. 101,031.

That is a down. Excuse me. Down 3.8% in the last 24 hours. All right folks, that’s it for today. Never dull moment, right?

Hope you had a great day. Even better night. We’ll see you back here again tomorrow after the close.