In today's episode, Kip breaks down the VRA's positive outlook on the future of this market, and why this pullback in tech and rotation to value is healthy for this bull market. He also covers the latest in energy stocks and precious metals, including the miners. Tune into today's podcast to learn more.

Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Monday afternoon, everyone. Kip Herriage here with the Daily VRA investing podcast. Hope you had a good day today. Hope your weekend was fantastic as well. Let’s get right to it. Lot to talk about. We have a bifurcated market, which essentially means some things are going down, some things are going up.

But really what it is, it’s important to understand this theme because it’s the theme that’s been in place since this bull market launched. Rotational themes continue to power this market higher. Last Friday, we put out a piece, said, hey, you know, we have 1000% gains in so exclusive from the bear market lows that that single update marked the peak. Hopefully there was a relationship there that marked the peak. From there, Nvidia and the semis have gone straight down. Nvidia. I believe as of, as of just about 30 minutes for the close, that Nvidia is already down 16, 17% from the highs, folks. That’s in.

That’s in. What is this, two days of trading? But what’s interesting over the same time frame is that the stock market keeps going up. Dow Jones today up 260 points off the highs, but not by a lot. I think I saw the high. We’re up about 343 50. No, we up almost 400 points today. So up 260 to close. That’s up seven tenths of 1%.

[00:01:17]:
Guess we have hundreds actually down three tenths of 1%. Rough 2000 starting to show some, exhibiting some real strength here. Of course, it’s been walling around in a trading range much of the last, really two years. But 2000 a day was up four tenths to 1%. And finally, again, Nasdaq along with the semis. Nasdaq today down just over 1%. Down 1.1%. The semis on market leader down another three and a half percent today.

So this rotational action has got a lot of people confused. The bears must hate this because, you know, the bears have been saying once the Nvidia can’t keep going up, the semis can’t keep going up there at these ridiculous values evaluations. They’re not, by the way, they’re only getting started based on all of our work. Again, we go back in a couple of years. I’m making these forecasts now that so far have been spot on. But everybody said when the semis do finally correct, the market’s going to tank with it. Just the opposite has happened. Matter of fact, just ran these numbers before the close.

I think this is pretty instructive and very interesting. The over the last two days, as Nvidia’s drops more than 60%, the semi stop, the percent of the SPF 100 above the 50 day moving average has jumped from 43.6% to 61.66%. That’s a big jump in two days. That tells you as the semis go down, as the leaders go down, the rest of the market is improving. The rest of the market is moving higher. Again, that’s textbook bull market rotational action. And it’s anything other than bearish. This is extraordinarily bullish bull market action, because what it means, of course, is once this pause, this shakeout is over in the semis, guess what’s going to happen.

[00:03:12]:
Here comes semis, here comes Nasdaq, here goes the rest of the market. Now. We’re back to all time highs and charging higher again. That’s how we see it. That’s how we’ve been calling it. We think been right on this call. We think it’s going to continue. Value stocks got too cheap.

We believe they were going to rally. That’s happened now. Energy stocks are getting red hot. The miners and the crushless metals have begun to rally again. The Dow Jones transports have been incredibly weak. They were up another eight tenths of a percent today. So again, value stocks are rallying now as tech and growth takes a breather. And I’m going to say one more time, this is textbook rotational action.

If it continues, it gets anything, anything but bearish. Matter of fact, it’s extraordinarily bullish. Just to repeat that point one more time, let’s see what else today covered a few things in our letter this morning. We were joined over the weekend by Tom Lee at Fundstrap, who now says the SBF 100 is going to hit 15,000 by the end of this decade. Folks, that’s 170% move higher from here. Our target on the Dow Jones has been over 100,000. By the time this bull market ends, we think well over, frankly. And Nasdaq, 40,000.

[00:04:25]:
Tom Lee’s target is actually higher than ours, percentage wise. So it’s great to have Tom join the party. We’re seeing a lot more people starting to say, yeah, you know what? This is the roaring 2020s. It’s just because it is. It’s just because it is. And I was going to read something this morning that I. That I wrote because I think it’s this important. Again, this is, much of this is from the big bribe, the book that Tyler, I wrote a couple of years ago.

We have unstoppable change in the way, and the markets simply aren’t factoring this in yet. The public professionals continue to be very dismissive, very, very doubtful that we’re going to have an innovation revolution or an AI revolution, if you will. We think it goes much broader in scope than just AI, because we’ve got, from AI, we’ve got, obviously, what’s happening in EV’s battery research, battery storage, robotaxis, genetic research, space exploration, robotics, quantum mechanics and computing. One of our favorites, financial engineering, and a lot more. And again, another one of our big, bright mega trends was the red pilling of both the US and the world. Actually, in the book, I think we focused on the US. This happened all over the world. People have woken up to what we don’t want.

We don’t want communism, we don’t want oppressive government running our lives, we don’t want climate change insanity being forced down our throats, transgenderism. All of this insanity, really, as we’ve always seen it here. We talked about this often in the past, been a while since we’ve talked about it, but this is really. This is an attempt by communism to take over, and they do it. One of the final attempts by communists to take over a democracy, a republic, in our case, if we can keep it, is that they demoralize you. Left is right, right is left. Up is down, down is up. Demoralization is one of the final stages for communists taking over a society, a Democrat, or a republic, in our case.

[00:06:27]:
And, you know, look around at the insanity. When you can’t make sense of something, it is demoralizing. So I think we, again, we’ve woken up to this. We think it’s extraordinarily bullish. Of course, if the election turns out the way we hope it will, not just with Trump, but taking back the Senate, holding the House, maybe some really good things can happen. We think will, and I think the market is going to continue to discount this as we move forward into November. Can you believe it’s just over less than five months away now, and we’re going to have this election? What a wild time it’s going to be. But this is a level of innovation that we’ve been focused on here that could surpass the combination of the printing press, steam engine, electricity, computers, the Internet, the automobile.

Kip Herriage [00:07:15]:
All of this taking place inside of a ten to 20 year window where these other inventions took over 100 years to happen. So, again, our view, there’s a 0% chance that today’s lowly market levels have been factored into this innovation revolution. Because corporate earnings growth is going to soar. GDP growth is going to soar. Prosperity for consumers, not just in the US but globally, is already soaring. We see this in all the data, even though we have a sigh of negativity that’s in place because all the media keeps telling us how bad things are. How bad things are, how bad. I can’t imagine why people think things are really bad.

Things are not bad. Matter of fact, things have rarely, if ever, been better. The financial data backs itself both for individuals and for american companies. I’m a big believer in what you think about your bring about, and I refuse to buy this sigh of negativity. I think it’s something we should all fight back on. Because if you’re focused on all the great things happening in our life, and again, if we didn’t watch tv, if you weren’t on social media, what would we really have to complain about? Look, I know that we have two americas. It’s a subject we’ve covered often here. But the fact of the matter is the negativity out there, it is by design.

[00:08:34]:
It is a psychological operation and it should be resisted because we have so many great things happening. Certainly a future that looks incredibly exciting to tap into. So that’s what we’re focused on here. We’ve been, as you know, we’ve been extraordinarily bullish now for almost two years, and that’s been the right call. We think we’re just getting started and we like this pullback in tech stocks in the semis. And yes, we are looking to add to our positions. As always, we’ll let you know. I have some of these charts in focus in the morning as to what we’re looking at.

By the way, I’ll just say this now, bitcoin has been in freefall today, down 7.4% right now. Last trade is as I speak, excuse me, last trade is 59,400. Actually dip below 59,000 today. So it’s just, just hovering about $1,000 above the recent lows. If you would have been a type trading range of 58,000 a change and 73,000 and change. And now we’re back to that lower end. I just ran our VRA investing system screens before this podcast. I’m going to have this out to our folks in the morning and check this out on the VR investing system.

We are nearing a perfect setup for an entry point here. And again, we’re big believers in dollar cost averaging. So if you’ve been looking for an opportunity to get aggressively, even more aggressive on bitcoin, in case you’re not already, Betty, take a look at this. Bitcoin is now nearing its 200 day moving average. So it’s falling off a cliff here. Right. Nearing the 200 day moving average where there will be support, I think without question they’ll be support. Also, RSI is just now hitting heavily oversold.

[00:10:21]:
It’s almost at extreme oversold levels. Same thing with MACD. Stochastics now have hit extreme oversold levels and money flows are nearing that. So we haven’t yet reached our most oversold designation, which is extreme oversold on steroids. But when we get, if we get there and we’re tagging the 200 and moving average, folks, that is a back up the truck buy signal. That’s what we’ll call it. That’s, that’s what we’ll call it. That’s what we’re doing.

And we might have some other ideas on how to tackle this. But for sure, adding to your position in bitcoin, or our favorite bitcoin ETF, which is Kathy Woods Ark ETF, which is ArkB. That’s the one that we’re using. So, you know, again, we’ve been, bitcoin’s been very good to us for a very long time. We’ve been very fortunate to trade it one time. We bought it at 2000, sold at 58,000 back in 2021 when it went long again last June at 28,800. So, yeah, we still have, you know, gains of 100% plus right now. But we always want to add to positions at key moments.

And with this latest news, I’ve shared my theories as to why bitcoin is going down. I think it’s completely tied to futures trading, where 80% of all volume is taking place. I believe that you’ve got large investors, major investors working through firms like BlackRock that are asking them to short bitcoin so they can deliver against their position to the ultimate buyers. Because if the buyers, let’s say it’s a sovereign wealth fund, let’s say it’s a, it’s a country, right, like El Salvador is, of course, already buying bitcoin. Let’s say another country wants to initiate a billion dollar position in bitcoin. But if they announce that and start buying, it’s going to run the market up. And of course, they’ll wind up paying more for it than they would otherwise. But if this country or the sovereign wealth fund, major corporation corporations, etcetera, I believe it’s a combination of all the above.

[00:12:18]:
If instead they use the futures market to short it knowing that they have upside risk. Right. If the shorts, if bitcoin continues to run, then they have to pay for those losses. But they’re willing to take that chance because they believe that they can short it, then short deliver against that position with their long purchase. That’s a wash sale at that point. And then the blackrock or the firm has done their job and now the buyers have their position, then they announce it, then they’re good with it running up. Right. So I think that’s been happening.

Number one, that’s why it’s been so confusing to folks. Now these bitcoin ETF’s have been approved. Why hasn’t there been a bigger move? Well, of course a lot of it was anticipated. Number one, so there was a front running that took place. Number two, when everyone’s extraordinarily bullish on something, what do we see happen? It often doesn’t go up in price and I think that’s what we had as well. Weight, excessive bullishness in bitcoin. That doesn’t change anything about the medium to long term, but in the short term it does have its impact. So now that we’re reaching very near to extreme oversold and steroids, again, that’s our most oversold designation.

[00:13:29]:
This is when you really snap up bargains. I think there’s an opportunity approaching here to get even longer bitcoin. That is what we’ll be doing here. I’ve said before, I’ll say it again, there are only a few investments that I buy on at least a monthly basis and sleep like a baby knowing that I’m buying them. And those are gold. I don’t buy silver every month, buy gold every chance I get, at least every month. Bitcoin obviously is in that group as well now. And also Tesla.

There’s a couple others I can admit. But I want to make sure we focus on the big three. Those are the ones that I use every opportunity to buy, certainly on a monthly dollar cost averaging each month. And again, I just, I believe that these prices represent a gift. Not where it is today, not where it might be tomorrow or even a week or a month or a quarter from now, but where these investments are going to be over the medium to long term because that’s how, that’s the style of investing that we do here. That’s the style of investing that works for me anyway. And that’s what we teach our folks here. So Mount Gox is a bankrupt.

This is one of the reasons it’s going down. In addition to what I believe is a use of the futures markets to deliver long positions to major buyers. In addition, Mount Gox, this broke this morning, is coming out of bankruptcy, and they’ve got 9 billion in bitcoin that they must distribute to all their investors. And the thinking there, of course, is once that’s distributed, there’ll be a lot of selling taking place. So I really believe what’s going to happen here. As I wrote this morning, this, instead of a buy the rumor, sell the news event, this is just the opposite. This has been a sell the rumor, and it will be a buy the news event. I think we’re going to see a bottom, and I do believe we’re going to see a bottom in bitcoin in the near term, at least as a trading opportunity.

[00:15:25]:
Whether or not that holds remains to be seen. But again, the long term view. We know what the macro story is on bitcoin. The limited number of coins, 21 million. Of course, the fact that we still have about 70% of all us investment firms, financial advisors, hedge funds, etcetera, still cannot buy bitcoin, that it’s yet to be approved by their internal compliance departments. It’s a process, right? Some firms it takes three months. For some firms it takes nine months to a year. That’s all just happening.

And the same thing is taking place globally. So there’s a massive number of buyers that will be coming into bitcoin, and you just know it’s going to be there over the next month, quarter year, five year period, ten year period. That’s the way we look at it. This is a gift. So these prices are a gift. Just so you know what our view is and how we feel about it. What else today? Yeah, good to see. Tom Lee at Fundstrat.

Join us as being, again, not just the roaring 2020s, but this is a generational bull market. That’s been our theme for some time. We think this move is going to continue. Again, the rotation taking place is simply extraordinary. It’s very bullish. And again, we’re also positioned, of course, in energy stocks, precious metals and miners. We don’t own any transports, but this rotation has been healthy. And again, we are now looking for our next opportunity to add to our tech positions and to, of course, obviously bitcoin, but the semiconductors, that’s what we’re looking at.

[00:17:08]:
I’ll just give you a quick heads up. Again, just ran this chart before this podcast, SMH, which is the semiconductor ETF, right. If you look at a chart, you’ll see what I see. We track the eight and 21 EMA, the eight and 21 day exponential moving averages, and then we track the 50 day, 100 day and 200 day moving average. These are the most important moving averages based on our work. And as of today. And this happened again very quick. Right.

This is what in a total of really two trading days, frankly, from the Thursday high and then Friday into today. So two and a half trading days, if you will. Semiconductors. Now, smh, again, the semi ETF almost tagged is 21 EMa. As a trader, this is the first level we look at and you’ll see it on the charts. It’s tracked at 21 EMA for some time now. Anything below it has represented a buying opportunity. Now, estimates did hit, it’s a 100 day moving average back in mid April.

And from there it’s been a juggernaut, it’s been parabolic, it’s been near straight up. So I do, do I think we’ll get back to the 100 day moving average? Smh, no, I do not. Is it possible we slash through the 21 EMA and head toward the 50 day? It’s possible, but I don’t expect it. Here’s a couple reasons. Number one, we’ve got, this is a big week. This is front running week. And this is again why the Dow Jones has been rallying that we’ve got in value stocks. And rallying we’re going to have a ton of money coming in the market here beginning next Monday.

[00:18:50]:
That’s the beginning, not just a new month, but it’s the beginning of a new quarter. It’s very common. I think the smart money is front running this. Now, we’ve been writing this reporting about it for a couple days. As we pointed out, the semis were extreme overbought and we paused our purchases there. But we were buying value stocks, aforementioned stocks we just talked about. And I believe this move is going to continue. But now, as the semis and tech stocks have gotten cheaper, this front running again of massive fund flows coming in for the new month and new quarter are going to start piling into tech as well.

In addition, it’s only now, we’re only three weeks away now from Q two earnings. And folks, Q two earnings have just been going parabolic. If you look at an earnings chart, you see what I’m talking about. In just the last couple of years, earnings are up 17% after this quarter. The estimates are from FactSet that Q two earnings will grow by 9%. That’s the best level in a couple of years. We think that number is going to be very low. Instead of 9%, we expect something like 13% to 14% earnings growth for the second quarter.

[00:19:58]:
But understand, as I talked about earlier, with the innovation revolution, this is the beginning of the ramp. Higher in corporate earnings. This is the beginning of the ramp. Higher in gross domestic product. This is the beginning of the ramp. Higher in consumer prosperity and building. We covered this so often. I want to bore you with the details, but everything from consumer net worth to disposable income to the fact that consumers have reduced their debt by 25% over the last 15 years to disposable income.

Home prices, all time high. Net equity in homes, all time high. One third of Americans own their home outright. It’s even stronger for american companies. Us companies now have the lowest debt to market cap ratio in 50 years. So again, the key point being these are the kind of financial balance sheet statistics and data that we see at the birth of economic expansions, not the end. Towards the end, you start to get, these ratios begin to really grow as people rely more and more on debt. And that’s where you have the leverage begins to work in their favor.

[00:21:08]:
But again, it tends to mark the end of expansionary periods. We haven’t even had that yet. So again, a lot of this has to do with the fact that we do have a SOPA negativity. Everybody is so negative, they can’t tell you why. Oh, they want to blame high prices. Look, we’re not, we’re not saying. That’s not all real. What we’re saying is we learned from the financial crisis and we realized Americans never wanted to be in the same shape they were in, where banks could take their homes.

Right? So we’ve reduced our credit card debt, again, as a percentage, disposable income. We’ve done the same thing with all of our debt. Again, it shows up clearly in home data. And in case you think it’s not the majority of the country, folks, it is 27. Almost 28% of Americans own at least one home. Again, the data is too compelling. But again, if you even talk about this, I found this out the hard way. You get called all kinds of names, right? And people don’t like you talking about good news.

This. Bizarre, isn’t it? So anyway, I guess it’s also part of the cycle we’re in. We have an election. Republicans have to try to paint the economy as bad as possible. I don’t think that’s the approach to use here personally, because I think on some level it resonates with people that they’re not hearing the truth there. But the bottom line is this. This is the beginning. We’re like in any one of this innovation revolution, this is going to last much longer than just 510 years.

[00:22:42]:
This is going to be a long term economic growth cycle. And I’ve said it before, I’ll say, I’ll wrap with this from 911 on 911. Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It was bullshit. Lie, obviously, both wars, Afghanistan and Iraq, pointless. We lost so many lives. So many lives were destroyed. So many suicides taking place in the military still every day.

Then we, after, after that fiasco, then we had the financial crisis where Wall street and the banks took over the us economy. Then we had Obamacare, that we had a rigged election. Then we had the plan demic again, we have been. And these poison death jabs, this country has been inundated with nothing but bad news. It’s not hard to see why people are so negative. We gotten used to bad things happening. That’s what it is. So my point is we’ve had, what is that, 23 years, the worst two decades american history just took place without question.

You can’t point to two worst decades in american history than the ones we just got out of. My point is, and again, I’m an optimist, so I’ll lead with that. The point is, though, I think we’re due. I think we’re due for a couple of great decades. And I think it’s time to embrace that possibility. And we do that by understanding the macro. This is not based on hope. This is understanding the macro and what’s happening from the ground floor up with this innovation that’s taking place throughout not just the us economy, but the global economy and the opportunities that represents.

[00:24:24]:
And I believe that’s what the markets are seeing. That’s why corporate earnings are growing, beginning to really skyrocket. And of course, GDP growth. We could be looking at GDP growth of three, four, 5% plus again for a decade plus. Kathy woods team believes it’s two decades plus. So we’ll keep paying attention to the markets. They’ll guide us as always. And hey, if the story changes, we’ll know it in the markets.

We’ll see it in our VRA besting system. And we’ll certainly let you know. We are not perma bulls, but we’re also not perma bears. We’re realist and we’re investors that evaluate the markets based on what they’re doing and what the signals that they’re sending to us. And those signals are just anything but bearish. They are the extraordinarily bullish signals that the markets are giving us have been and continue to. Okay, let’s take a look at the internals now. Again, the bears hate this, right, because the bears have been bitching and moaning, complaining now for the last month about how bad the internals have been and what a horrible omen it is for the markets.

Well, I just told you a minute ago the strength of the percentage of SB 500 above the 50 day. Right. It’s really starting to go parabolic now. The broad market is, which had been weak as the semis and tech led, and almost no one else. Nothing else was except the mega cap tech stocks and the semis. Right? Indidi, etcetera. Now, those value stocks have got beat up. That rotations happen to them, and we’re seeing it in the data.

[00:25:56]:
Here’s what I’m talking about. We seem to see now the fourth day in a row that the internals had been much, much better. And again today, again, Nasdaq down, not a small amount today. Nasdaq down 192 points, again down 1%. The semis down 3.6% today. Okay, these are not small losses. But listen to this data. Nasdaq again, home of the semis, home of tech stocks, right.

Of growth stocks. Nasdaq advanced decline today was positive by almost 400 issues. Again, Nasdaq down 192 points today. Semis down almost three times the amount that Nasdaq was down. Yet advanced decline was positive today for Nasdaq. Volume was only negative by $10 million worth of trading for Nasdaq. So this is not a confirmation of the move lower in Nasdaq. This is anything but that.

It’s a non confirmation is what it is. And we only had 50 more stocks hitting a new 52 week low than 52 week high today. This was a solid, this is a plus day for Nasdaq. You got to put this in the bull column again. The internals are starting to point to much better days ahead. Advanced decline for NYSE now, again, the Dow was a big today. SB 500 was down, but the Dow Jones value stocks were up big. And we see that in the data here as well.

Two to one positive for advanced decline for NYSE. As far as volume. Volume today was positive, almost three to one for volume on NYSE. And we had about 70 more stocks hitting a new 52 week high, then 52 week low. We saw it in sector watches as well. Got a lot of screens open here. Excuse me 1 second. Let me go to a different screen here.

[00:27:39]:
We go. All right. Quick refresh, make sure I get it right. Yeah. Here we go. We had nine of eleven s and p 500 sectors higher today. Again, this is a trend change, a pattern change. What we had been seeing energy today again leading the way up 2.7%.

Utilities up one and a quarter percent. Rates will continue to move lower. Consumer staples of 1%. We had a whole slew of sectors up very nearly to 1%. To the downside again, technology down 2% again we’re not getting confirmation when the tech stocks and semis move lower. If they don’t take the markets down with them because the semis lead in both markets, that is a non confirmation of the move lower now it’s early. Hey, tomorrow could be a completely different song, different dance. If that’s the case, we’ll report it right now.

If you’re bearish, this is the worst, this is a bears worst nightmare. That’s what you’re seeing right here. It is non confirmation of the move lower. And I’m emphasizing this because of the importance of it and our commodity watch today again we’re getting a rally again, a rotation back into value. We see it here in commodities as well. Gold today of $16 an ounce, 23.47, just $100 or so away from all time highs. Silver today. So silver was flat today at 29.92 an ounce.

[00:29:07]:
Copper today down seven pennies at 442 a pound. Crude oil, even the crude oil today was. Oh no, I’m sorry, it was, it was up a dollar a barrel at 81.76. You may have seen, look there, there’s some fast, I’m going to write this up tomorrow morning. Some fascinating things happening in the, if you probably have read in the electricity market, the demand is coming from these data centers is unbelievable. And so the bull case there is for energy stocks, right? We’re talking specifically about companies that deal in natural gas, of course, because all utilities now are powered by natural gas or they also have solar and wind. We don’t focus in those areas because. Well it’s just we don’t have it to be, honestly not.

We don’t have an interest in it. We can’t back something we don’t believe in. Nuclear power and natural gas. These are the two areas we’re highly interested in. And these data centers are happening now all over the world. Folks. This is the future. We’re going to make a fortune

Energy stocks again. We like nuclear, we like nat gas, we like oil too. But as far as the electrication of the country, the build out is taking place. It’s a story that must be understood. It’s one of the reasons that Warren Buffett and all his billionaire buddies are loading the boat in energy stocks. A lot of this oil, by the way, too. So if you’re involved in, say, in a private oil and gas opportunity like we always lost, soldier oil and gas, that is at this point, natural gas, with the hopes of a lot of oil beneath it. Wow.

[00:30:42]:
You could not have a better timing situation than we have right now in the state of Wyoming with a rock solid Bureau of Land Management. So, again, it’s a great time to be involved in nuclear and nat gas oil as well. Let’s see our covered bitcoin. I’ll just give you a final quote here. Last trade now, 59,734. We are buyers on this dip. We’ll let you know the minute that it hits extreme oversold on steres. We are not far away.

There’s no rule that says we have to get there. We are buyers here. We are. I’ll leave with that. We are buyers on this dip. All right, folks, I always appreciate you listening. Hope you had a great day and even better night. We’ll see you back here again tomorrow after the close.