In today's episode, Tyler dives into another record-breaking session for the market despite a mixed finish on the day. He also takes a closer look at the strong American consumer landscape, record-breaking Black Friday sales, and why we're still confident in the "Roaring 2020s." With an eye toward deregulation and cutting bureaucratic red tape, we'll explore why we believe the best of this bull market is yet to come. Tune into today's podcast to learn more.

Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Tuesday afternoon, everyone. Tyler Herriage here with you for today’s VRA Investing podcast. Hope you all had a great day out there today. We got another round of all time highs here once again from our market today. But perhaps one of the biggest stories today not even taking place in the market, and I’m half kidding about this one here, but I just saw this before I went on, so I had to bring it up that as part of the Department of Government Efficiency doge, which Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are heading up, you know, this new program that everyone has been really excited about of, you know, cutting the waste out of our government, which is a crucial task that must take place over the next couple of years. I know there’s a lot of excitement about there about it. One of the new items that they’re reportedly considering ending here is Daylight Savings Time.

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You know, we talk about this and joke about it every year. I know a lot of you do as well every year when it happens, you’re like, what are we still doing having Daylight Savings Time? Maybe it made sense years ago, but it just doesn’t make any sense anymore and makes a whole lot of people unhappy about twice a year. Right. So had to lead with that there. I think they’d be hilarious if they’re the ones who finally get rid of Daylight Savings Time. But, you know, that’s pretty low on the totem pole of things that we want them to take care of. As our government debt just increased by another trillion dollars since the month of August. You know, there’s always different metrics of looking at government debt.

I saw that one in particular earlier today. But there’s just so much wasteful spending. And again, the Daylight savings one, pretty low on the totem pole. There’s a lot of low hanging fruit here that we just need to get rid of in our government. I think that’s probably one of the things I’m personally most excited about for a Trump presidency. You know, we can get rid of some of these government agencies that have, you know, these bureaucrats who wield so much power, all from unelected positions. That alone is going to be a massive boon for the US Economy. It’s on the same page with deregulation getting some of these agencies out of the way.

If you heard any of Mark Andreessen’s podcast on Joe Rogan recently, you know, he covered a lot of this that a lot of these congressmen and women head up these agencies that are accountable to no one and can hold up businesses, really at the whim of a congressman or woman. He cited a bunch of examples. There is very interesting. And that’s something that, you know, from the headline media point of view, you just don’t see a whole lot. We know it’s happening out there, but no one focuses on them. They go for, you know, the big stories out there of what laws are being put into place or being removed for that matter. And really, at the end of the day, we need to remove a whole, whole lot of this. And we think that that leads to more prosperity for America as a whole.

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Let Americans keep more money in their pockets. You know, one of the things that I like to think about when it comes to taxation, when they’re raising your taxes, what is the government telling you? They’re saying, oh, we can spend your money better than you can, so we deserve it. Right? It’s absolutely backwards, the system that we have there. So I’ll step off of that for a moment here because we continue to look for the roaring 2000 and twenties to continue. And with that being said, we think a whole new wave of prosperity is about to be unleashed on America. We talk about this here so much on the podcast. Again, the roaring 2000s, the innovation revolution, and all of the megatrends that we laid out in our book, the Big Bribe. And each time we come to the end of a year, you know, we’re looking back on some of our calls over the the of the end of last year going into 2024, and really the market has exceeded even some of our expectations.

And there’s really been no one out there more bullish than we are. And to have the market continue to exceed those expectations with Biden Harris administration in office, you know, really makes you think about what can be unleashed under Trump 2.0 and the Trump economic miracle 2.0. So we’re in exciting times here, folks. Now is the time to be locked in to this market, looking for opportunities. There’s going to be opportunities along the way. It won’t just be all time high after all time high, although we’ve seen it since the November election. And that’s not to say there haven’t been great buying opportunities already, but if you’re not fully invested in this market, we’re always looking for opportunities here and we’re going to continue to take advantage of them as well. So stay tuned, buckle up.

It’s going to be a fun run. But again, let’s go back here for a second two signs of the roaring 2020, because we just had one coming in this week as we’re starting to get back the Black Friday numbers, record breaking numbers. You know, Amazon reporting a record Black Friday, Black Friday throughout the world, hitting a new record, roughly 75 billion in shopping done globally just in one day. And that is up 5% year over year there as well. And again for the last two years since the October 2022 lows, we’ve been talking about how strong American companies are, how strong the American consumer is. Right. And I know that there’s so many reasons out there to be bearish on the US Consumer because inflation has crushed so many people and that hurts, right, to pay way more for products used to buy. We understand that, absolutely.

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But here’s a few of the facts that we’ve been laying out that show just how strong the American consumer really is. And if we unleash animal spirits again and continue to increase wages, continue to increase opportunity in this economy, then the last four years can be reversed very quickly, I think under a second Trump term. And so again, I mean, I completely understand the flip side of the coin, that yeah, you know, American consumers are in strong, are in a strong standing. But again, inflation has been so high, the regulations have been so brutal, the red tape that everyone has to go through, not just business owners, but individuals paying higher taxes, all of those things hurt right now. I understand that. But here are the facts. Overall net equity in homes is at an all time high. 40% of Americans, which is a record, own their home outright without a mortgage.

Consumer net worth is at an all time high. Credit scores at an all time high, which mean people have the ability to lever up here as well, which again may not be a great thing for people to go into debt to do things, but it means it helps prevent the possibility of a recession. You know, if somebody loses their job, but they have ability to get leverage out there, yes, that’s not a great option. But it also means, you know, you’re not going to lose your car, you’re not going to lose your home, ideally. Right. Of course that isn’t the case for everybody out there, but that’s what generally credit scores at all time highs would tell us in a similar from consumers and companies here, that consumers have cut their debt to disposable income by a significant amount as well, which helps again defend against recessionary impulses from this economy. When people have the ability to spend a little bit more money out there now, they don’t, you don’t never want to Be dipping into your savings, right. If you lose your job or for whatever reason.

But those are the facts that people have the ability to do those things right now. And the same thing with corporations. Corporate debt to market cap sits at 50 year lows, which tells us again, these companies could fend off hard times if need be. And in the best case scenario they can spin that to improve their current businesses. Right. Research and development from. Well, one of my favorites here is actually the oil and gas field. And I mean this from a corporate debt to market cap type of scenario.

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These companies have learned from the oil bust of about 2014 when oil went from $120 a barrel and just imploded. A lot of people in the space who I knew lost their jobs at the time. But these energy companies learn their lesson. Cut out the useless spending in there or in our in really good financial shape. So what does that mean for oil and gas companies? It means they can continue to go explore new wells. They’re not just focused on getting what they can out of the ground or that they have. No, they’re bringing on new projects. And we think that continues under a second Trump administration as well.

So overall, the ability to lever up here is unprecedented. And it makes us even more bullish because ideally, you know, we don’t see a recession coming here. And so that money can be put to good use here and create more money in the future as well. Explore new projects, go do more research and development, bring on new people and continue to scale up their businesses. That’s what we’re seeing here and why we think we’re still in the early innings here of the innovation revolution. Remember, I know we talk about it here often, but from 1995 to 2000, the NASDAQ rallied 575%. Yes, it’s been a really good last two years, but it pales in comparison to that time period. Right.

So we look, we think the best of this bull market is in front of us. And if you’re not in it now, you haven’t missed the party yet. You know, I’ll get to some points on that as well. But I also talk about this here often, that we are now entering year three of this bull market. We’re two years and two months less than that into this bull market. And I’ve actually been on the low side of the average link that I’ve said here for bull markets. Now, for more recent bull markets, it was accurate, but if you zoom out a little bit, you’ll see bull markets have lasted a long time, I’ve said five to six years, but if you go back to 1929, this is from Raymond James, and you look at the S P, the average bull market lasts 8.9 years. Again, we haven’t even gotten to year three yet.

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So yes folks, we are still in the early innings here. I know I said it earlier, but now is the time to be locked in. And what’s so incredible about that is that yes, we just hit all time highs today in the Nasdaq and still sentiment is nowhere near the excessive optimism or irrational exuberance levels that you would expect to see at all time highs. Which means investors aren’t buying the move higher, which we see as an opportunity, not a weakness here. You know, bull markets don’t die in a whimper, they typically die with a bang. So this is not the time when we expect to see it. So right now this was, I thought, really interesting. I figured a lot of people might have missed this one.

But as you know, we follow the AAII Investor Sentiment survey closely because this is a lot of professionals who participate in this survey. And last week during Thanksgiving, this one kind of flew under the radar. The AII Investor Sentiment survey came in with more bearish investors than bullish investors for, for the first time since April of this year, despite the fact that we were right in range of all time highs. The Fear and Greed index, yes, it remains in greed mode here, but it’s only at a 62. That’s barely above neutral here. You know, for both of these indicators, if you’re looking at AII until you have, you know, you’re looking at 50, 60% bulls for weeks or months on end before the blow off top typically happens. Same thing with the Fear and Greed index until we get to extreme greed mode for weeks or months on end. That’s when you start to look for the signs of a top.

We just aren’t seeing that clearly. Nowhere near excessive optimism at this point right now. We wrote to our members this morning as well. The percentage of stocks that are above their 50 or 200 day moving average are, are at very healthy levels here. This is not the blow off top scenario that you would look for, right? You would expect to see these stocks, you know, significant portion of them above their 50 or 200 day moving average. We just aren’t there yet. So looking forward here this week, unfortunately we do have Jay Powell speaking tomorrow. You just ahead of the Fed’s blackout period.

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I believe that’s about two weeks before there are, maybe it’s about a week before Their next meeting, their next meeting takes place December 18th. So this will be the last week hopefully that we have to hear from any Fed members, which is always nice to get into that Fed blackout period. But hard to believe. We are now approaching the final FOMC meeting of 2024. Again that’s on December 18th where it’s expected right now a 70% probability according to the CME’s fed watch tool that the Fed will cut by another 25 basis points here. Just about a week ago, you know a lot of people were thinking the Fed might stay put here. You know another sign of a very political Fed. You know, if Harrison won, they probably cut by 50 basis points, right.

But since Trump won, they’re thinking about not doing it at all. We’ve said for some time that the Fed has been overly restrictive. So this is more of an adjustment to normal than a big rate cutting cycle that we see coming here. But we do have some important economic data coming out between now and the next Fed meeting this week. We’ll get back jobs numbers from November. We have the jolts day today which is the job opening number coming in higher than expected. But then next week the crucial ones, inflation data where we’ll get both the Consumer Price Index CPI and the Producers Price Index ppi. So stay tuned.

We’ll be reporting on those as well and we’ll see what that does to the CME Group’s Fed probabilities for their December 18th meeting. You know again we, we see the Fed has having been overly restrictive here. So 25 basis point cut makes a lot of sense and we don’t expect a whole lot of reasons for them to differ from that here. All right, so that being said, let’s take a look at our market action on the day today. Some mixed action on the day today and under the hood of this market a little bit more mix action as well, which we’ll get to in a second. But the NASDAQ led the way today hitting an all time high here up 4/10 of 1% to 19 480. Always good to see all time highs as new highs do beget new highs. The semis on the other hand didn’t lead on the day.

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You know this is what we’ve been talking about a lot. We expect the semis to really start participating again here. They have been our one area that hasn’t been able to get back to all time highs in this. Excuse me, hasn’t been able to get back to all time highs in this post election rally here. The all time highs for the semis were in July. You know we see the semis getting back to all time highs here but they did manage to finish at their highs of the day today. Are just about right at their highs of the day and are trading higher in after hours as well. So good to see, we want to see the semis continue to participate here.

Next up the S & P 500 finished positive on the day just slightly by 0.05% to 6049 which if I’m not mistaken is an all time closing high just shy of an all time intraday high in the session today. The Dow Jones was down on the day down less than 2/10 of 1% at 44,705. And lastly here the Russell 2000 was our laggard on the day down 710 of 1% to 2,416. Next up our internals. This is why I mentioned earlier, you know we saw this yesterday as well, very similar internals. You’re not what you want to see here but no big concerns here for us. No red flags per se but something we are keeping an eye on today we had more declining stocks than advancing stocks on both the Nyse and the NASDAQ. No big two to one beats or anything though.

52 week highs to lows did manage to come in positive. So our bright spot from the internals on the day to day coming in over three to one positive combined NYSE and NASDAQ and volume. Interesting day here as well. Coming in almost flat, essentially flat on the day. Slightly negative for both the NYSE and the nasdaq. So again no red flags there from us but keeping something we are keeping an eye on here. Looking at our sectors on the day today we finished with three out of our 11s P500 sectors higher on the day today. And another round of all time highs from communication services here which is essentially a proxy for tech, specifically Meta and Google meta.

Hidden all time high today up a big three and a half percent. You know I say big three and a half. We’ve gotten used in the era of crypto to you know a big move is 5, 8, 10%. Right? But we got to remember this is a trillion and a half dollar company. So yes, a three and a half percent move is a big move there and helps communication services to hit an all time high. Our other two sectors that finished positive we had the tech sector finishing positive on the day just shy of an all time high and consumer discretionary not far from an all time high either. Our laggards on the day, utilities led the way lower. We had yields up fractionally today, still just at a 4.22%.

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So nothing to worry about there after that. Financials and industrials on the way lower today. Finally here for today. Get a quick refresh of my screens here for our VRA Commodity watch. Gold now up about 3. 10 of 1% to $2,667 an ounce. And just what you want to see from this group, the miners outpacing the metal. GDX Gold Miner ETF up a big 2.36% on the day today.

Silver also up just about. Oh sorry. Silver up a nice 2.1% on the day to $31.57 an ounce. Copper up 1.6% to 4.19 a pound. And oil trying to get back above $70 a barrel up 2. 2.75% on the day today it 69.97 a barrel. Let me just see here quickly. It did get back above $70 a barrel briefly today before falling below it here.

And finally for today, Bitcoin also was lower earlier in the session today now up 6. 10 of 1% at $96,052 a Bitcoin folks. That is all that we have time for here today. Please be sure to subscribe to receive our VRA podcasts every day at the market close. You can sign up at vraletter. 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.

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We’ll see you back here tomorrow for the close.