In today’s episode, Kip breaks down a powerful day in the markets, spotlighting explosive gains in semiconductors, small caps, and even mining stocks as gold and silver hit fresh all time highs. With Q3 bank earnings impressing across the board, Kip shares his bullish outlook for the fourth quarter and beyond, predicting a “melt-up” market in 2026 driven by technological innovation, robust corporate earnings, and what he calls “the Trump economic miracle.” Tune into today's podcast to learn more.

Foreign 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. Another strong day in the markets today, led by the semis, up two and a half percent today. Big move higher in the semis. Of course, that’s what you want to see. Nasdaq today up 7/10 of a percent.

So we saw again this textbook semis led Nasdaq. NASDAQ leads the raw market. I Also add today rust 2000. It looks to us like it’s on one of those runs. You know, we. It’s a Beautiful looking chart. Rust 2000 small caps stay up 1%. Beautiful looking chart.

[00:00:37]:
Got a long Runway in front of it before it’s going to get overbought. And look, this is the fourth quarter. This is not only the best quarter of the year for the market, it’s the best quarter of the year for small caps as well, especially in the year end. And we think the move is going to start a little early this year. Again we’re on record as saying the fourth quarter is going to be great and next year 2026 will be even better. We’re getting a snapshot of that now, aren’t we with the bank earnings. You know, our forecast now for some time had been for fourth quarter earnings of 13 to 16%. And we think that’s actually going to be on the low side.

Yeah, we think it’s going to be on the low. Excuse me, third quarter, excuse me, third quarter earnings. We think it’s going to be on the low side now because of what’s happening with these big banks. If you’ve seen the earnings reports, they’re just mind boggling. The amount of money that the JP Morgan’s of the world, the cities, the Wells Fargo’s today Morgan Stanley reported same thing, a blowout numbers also from bank of America. And it’s interesting because we saw a bit of a pop in xlf, the bank etf and they were quiet today. But I followed this group long enough to know, I think how it trades. I would expect bank stocks and financial stocks in about three or four days.

You’re going to see these things start to go near parabolic. That’s my feel for this. And look, we don’t own this group. I find this group very boring and I have no interest really in owning bank stocks. I think there are a lot more exciting ways to invest with much higher returns. And I think that a lot of these banks, you know, frankly they Almost don’t have a reason to be around anymore, at least in the format that they’re in now because this is the whole world’s changing and AI is only going to speed that process up. When’s the last time you went into a bank? All right. I mean, I think probably we all have a reason to go in every now and then, but I think I was, I was in my bank went to Las Vegas last month so I had to go get some cash.

[00:02:37]:
That’s the last time I’ve been in my bank branch. I’ve been there once in three months basically. Okay. And I think I’m kind of the average person, so I know some people. You know, we actually have a good friend of ours is a manager of this branch. We go way, way back with them. I like going in, saying hi to Kevin. I don’t have a reason to go there anymore.

And so again, the bottom line is we don’t own this group. But I think the group looks very healthy now. And the key for this point I’m making is that when your banking system is strong. And again, let me just remind you these, the charlatans and the scam artists out there that are saying, oh, the banks have, what is their, what is their, they have $300 billion in, in, in loan losses or in unrecognized loans. I, I forget exactly how they phrase it. They’re never going to have to pay that because by the time those loans mature they’ll be, they’ll be, they’ll mature in full. And so it’s, they’re just literally, they make things up to scare people and. But the bottom line is that the bank banking system is as strong as it’s been in my lifetime right now.

And that’s a very good sign for the globe, for the US economy. And by the way, the same thing’s happening globally, right? So again, we’ll take it for what it is. But it does, they do. Mark, this is beginning of Q3 earnings. It’s a very good sign. And at this point, again, I’ll be surprised if we don’t beat our estimate of 13 to 15% earnings growth for the third quarter. And then fourth quarter will be better and then next year look out, we’re going to have a melt up market next year. 2026 is going to be one of those years.

[00:04:22]:
As we said before, I think SBF 100 up 30%, NASDAQ up 40 to 50 is kind of what we’re looking for. It’s going to be very special. Year, it’s. If you haven’t noticed, and I love, I’ve said this before, I love watching Trump speak now, and that’s not always been the case with me, but I now recognize this man for what he is, which is an absolute American icon and legend. He’s a once in a hundred year leader. And it doesn’t mean you have to, like, love everything about him. Don’t get me wrong, okay? But for this time, to have this man as president, in my opinion, this is my opinion. If you can’t overlook his flaws, and he’s human, so there are flaws.

If you can’t. He’s an old New Yorker, okay? If you worked and lived in New York, you know what that means, right? They have their own way about them and they ain’t gonna change it. Just not gonna happen. But if you have a heart, if you can’t look past his flaws to recognize the greatness that this man’s accomplishing in this country right now, I’ll just be honest with you. I think you need to take a fresh look. Just, just take a. Take a deep breath and think about what matters most. Because, folks, if Trump had not won, we were going the way of Canada and the UK and there’s just no doubt about it, we were going to have free speech attack like it is now in the UK and in Canada, and the Second Amendment was going to be attacked as well, and I think we all know this, and they were going to go balls to the wall, hardcore to take our first and Second Amendment rights if Trump had not won.

That’s just how close we were to losing this country. And as you know, if America’s lost, the world’s lost, and there wouldn’t have been hope again. We’d have to have a global uprising, a global revolution to reverse that trend. So that’s how big Trump winning was. Okay? And the key takeaway here, because our job, again, is to help you make money again. We, we just tell you what we’re doing with our money, okay? We’re a financial publishing company. We’re not a brokerage firm. We don’t manage your money for you.

[00:06:33]:
We don’t have the conflicts of interest. We tell you at the VRA what we’re doing. We’re a family office. We take what we’re doing with our money, how we’re positioned. That’s what, that’s what the VR portfolio is, all right? And so our job is to help you make money, and we try to help you do that by making money for ourselves, right? So it’s a win, win for all of us here. But the key is that Trump, if you have, if you’ve been paying attention here, and I know you have, smart group here, this man is determined to have this economy running red, red, red. Everything he’s doing is designed to get this economy supercharged, and that’s what he’s going to succeed at. We see that in the bank earnings, don’t we? Even has almost.

Alan Greenspan. That would have been a. That would have been, that would have been a compliment. Even the worst fetcher of our time, Jay Powell, admitted at yesterday’s speech he gave that the economy is on firmer trajectory than we expected. You think? You think? Yeah, I’d say going to 5% GDP growth, which is where we’re headed, would be firmer. I think that’s an accurate statement. Jay Powell, the most political Fed chair of our times, he’s just got to go. But, you know, again, the magic and the beauty of Trump is he’s found a way to work around Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve.

It is how he manages. Trump manages everything that he’s doing. It’s like Elon Musk here. We have. How lucky are we seriously, to live in this time of these two men, the best entrepreneur of all time and the best president of our time, to be able to live through this time and to watch these gentlemen work their magic, to be able to participate in that. Tesla is a public company after all. Right. Trump is doing his absolute best to turbocharge the US economy, which means the stock market is going to soar, too.

[00:08:44]:
And so the takeaway for us is, you know, we are locked in. This is that bull market. It’s a generational bull market. I do feel like everything I’ve done in my career has brought me to this point. If you’re brand new here, then you’ve heard me say this before. If you’re brand new, you haven’t heard it. But if you’ve been here before, you have.com was an absolute blur. You know, it took a couple of years for us to figure out what was even going on, and only it lasted five years.

It was a blur. But I remember, I remember the lessons from it. And as we’ve covered here with you often, this is going to last a lot longer than five years. This.com is going to be a fad, an investing fad compared to the decade plus, maybe two, of complete technological innovation and marvels that are just beyond our grasp today. And you can almost touch them. You can see Them coming. You know, I’m gonna write this up for tomorrow, but Tesla laid out today their, their game plan for rolling out Robo Taxi. Because it’s, it’s coming, you know it’s coming.

If you, if you’ve driven, if you have a Tesla and you’ve or test driven a full self driving Tesla, then you know what I’m talking about. We went this past weekend down to family reunion down in Port Aransas, about a three hour drive for us. Not bad. And my wife and my mother in law rode with us and the car drove us all the way there and all the way back. Not a single intervention. Not one time did I have to take the wheel. I’m talking about from my driveway all the way there. Pit stops, everything.

[00:10:35]:
And we’re not even yet. We haven’t even reached FSD version 14.2. We’re close, we’re 14, 14.1 now. But once we get to 14.2, as Musk has said, the car will feel alive, it will feel sentient. I think it already, I think it already is. Okay, I, I don’t, I don’t know what else it can do that it doesn’t already do. But there are some minor things that you know, especially when it comes to road taxi because that car has to do other things that, that you know, mine doesn’t have to do, right? Pick up passengers, you know, drop them off over and over again, that kind of thing. So it is far more complex.

But I’ll tell you this, I would not want to own either Uber or Lyft. And I think the employees at Waymo, which is of course the division of Google, that’s their autonomous driving vehicle. I think the employees at Waymo can see the writing on the wall. There’s going to be one winner here. It’s going to be Tesla. And we’re only talking about one division of Tesla. This alone is a company maker. You know, we haven’t talked about Optimus or Tesla Energy.

And of course the EVs, they’ve got all these new models coming out including, and I have to tell you, I’m going to have to own this car, the Roadster. I think I’m going to, I think I’m going to have to give myself a gift next year when the Roadster comes out. Because if what we’ve heard is right, this car is going to go 0 to 60 in one second. There, there is no car that does that on the road today. Not, not, not a production vehicle anyway. And so again, there’s Just so many things. And again, that doesn’t include the surprises that Musk isn’t going to have for us. And, and he always does.

[00:12:26]:
Right? So I think we’re alive at a magical time. There’s never been a better time to be an optimist. And I feel sorry for pessimists. I have a hard time being around them. You know, the ones that just want to complain and whine about how bad their life is. Like, man, you not know how lucky you are to live in this world, in this time. You want for nothing. You have more than you could ever do with, you know, certainly compared to you.

Think about our grandparents, right? Think about the, the greatest generation and what they had to live through, Great Depression, etc. Right? But this is that bull market, this generational bull market. And that’s why these dips are so short lived, you know, and that’s why they’re going to continue to be short lived. There’s just so much money. Again, that’s the key. We know the keys here, right? It’s the Trump economic miracle. It’s the innovation revolution and it’s the ocean of liquidity. And it’s not just a us story, it’s a global story.

And that’s what’s playing out here. That’s why these dips are so short lived and that’s why next year is going to be. And it’s not just, again, it’s not just 20, 26. I mean, we’re going to have a run of years that are going to be unbelievable and we’ll look back and go, okay, that was fun. And it will lead to a bubble, they always do. But the people calling it a bubble now and I, I, by the way, I thank them for it. You know, we want more bears, we want more people calling it a bubble because there’s so many people scared of people that are certain this, this clown, Andrew Ross Sorkin, the CNBC guy was on with the, the scam artist on 60 Minutes, Judy, what’s her name? And you know, the one that rigged the interview with Trump during the election. It just, again, these are complete scam artists, okay? But people listen to him.

[00:14:15]:
And I don’t know how they haven’t figured this out, but a lot of people haven’t figured it out. Andrew Osworkin on 60 Minutes Sunday night was saying, I can’t tell you when we’re gonna have a crash, but we’re gonna have a crash. Like this guy knows anything. Yeah, this will lead to a bubble, but this is nothing like com, the companies that are building now and announcing all these massive deals. These are 1, 2, 3, 4 trillion dollar companies. We didn’t have any of those in dotcom. We had a bunch of fledgling startups that 9 out of 10 didn’t survive the decade. That’s not the case now.

This is a deep, broad, healthy stock market. Corporate America has never been stronger again. We talk about this often about the consumer, how strong consumers have been, stronger. Corporate America again from the first, First America, the America that matters to the markets and the economy. That’s just the way it is. More liquidity than ever, less debt than ever. And this is what this is. Corporate earnings drive everything.

So it’s this combination that’s propelling this market higher. And so we just again can encourage everybody, come and join us. We know we have a lot of listeners here that aren’t with us yet. I don’t understand that. Oh yeah, I don’t even want to say this. There are companies that do what we do, that charge, you know, eight to $10,000 a year. We charge a couple thousand a year. We’re up 41% through the third quarter.

[00:15:58]:
It’s actually quite a bit more now that we’ve got here a couple weeks into Q4, beat the markets. This will be 19 to 22 years. Everything’s completely documented. You go, go look at our. We post every trade in our member site going back a full decade. We know no one else that does that. All gains, losses, everything right there. But at least try us out for two free weeks.

You know, you can go do that. We offer everything we have for two free weeks, everything, you know, and go check it out again. The reason I’m doing this is because I want to be able to talk about the stocks that we own in this podcast. But that’s not fair to our members, is it? By the way, for all our members. Next week looks like it’s going to be next Thursday. We’re going to have our members podcast. We’re going to be doing this once a month now. And so that’ll be our first one where we just talk about the portfolio, go over the economy, what we see happening seasonally speaking, timing wise, all of that Fiori investing system and answer your questions as well.

And then we’re also going to add a call for a zoom for non members as well so we can get your questions answered there and tell you how we see things as well. But again, not really going to be able to talk much about. And it’s too bad because I want to talk about these stocks. We have two mining stocks that we own. And Todd and I had a very interesting experience today with the CEO of one. And yeah, we’re going to make a lot of money in these folks, like, you know, gold and silver. All time high again today. Ed Yardini called.

[00:17:37]:
Ed Yardini. I like his work. A little squirrely if you have a bad day. He’s bearish. Have a good day. He’s bullish. I mean, I, I, we have Todd and I have no use for that. You always know where we are, right? And I just had no interest in listening to somebody that was fully bullish the day before.

And oh my God, now what’s going on? Things could be falling apart. What? Grow backbone, man. Where’s your spine? Make a call, stick with it. But Yardini called gold the new bitcoin. That’s this, that’s what you just call gold. No, it’s not the new bitcoin. It’s, it’s gold. And it’s always been the only true currency and it will continue to be.

And yeah, gold, gold should have been $4,000 ten years ago, should be $10,000 today sans manipulation. The likes of JP Morgan and a lot of their central bank buddies around the world shorting it, you know, manipulating it lower. We lived through that, didn’t we? Again, hats off. Big tip of cap to all you gold bug silver bugs out there. I know it knows a lot of you, you know, and what I love about you is that unlike, unlike bitcoin. And I’ve always had a problem with this nouveau riche in bitcoin that love to talk about how much they’ve made now, you know, there’s no way to verify that. It’s probably made up anyway. Bragging about them as they made, oh, how much better bitcoin is in gold.

[00:19:11]:
You can say what you want to, but gold is gold. Everything else is a pretender. And we own bitcoin. We love bitcoin, but it’s not gold. And I think that what we’re seeing in gold, I’m just very happy for a lot of the old timers, you know, the gold bugs, silver bugs that just had to live through this manipulation and suppression of gold prices that went on for decades and now finally starting to go. This is what should have happened all along. Well, I think it’s going to keep happening, folks. And you know, again, we’ve raised our price target on gold to 15,000.

I think that could be low. There’s no, it’s overbought as Gold and silver is, and yes, they both are overbought. But these shakeouts, I think it’ll be short lived. I think these shakeouts can be very short lived. Gold’s going to go a lot, lot higher for a lot of reasons we’ve been talking about here. We’ll get into that today. But we talk about it often here. And I just want to say again, my hat’s off to because you know, they don’t, the old timers in gold and silver, you don’t, you don’t hear them bragging, you know, you don’t hear them saying, preaching from the mountaintop how much better gold is than bitcoin, you know, and trying to, and calling bitcoin people clowns.

I mean that’s, that’s what we heard for the bitcoin crowd. And every time I heard that I would say, you know what, there’s a thing called karma. And I don’t, I wouldn’t be doing that if I were you. You know, and I’m not, I’m not even hinting that bitcoin is going to have a big fall. But I think this outperformance in gold is going to continue for some time. But again we like both, we own both. But just making it, make it a case we’re very happy for all the long term gold and silver bugs. And yes, I am in that group as well.

[00:20:54]:
A lot of great people that are by the way, a lot of very quiet wealth is being built in this group now. Yeah, a lot of people that are sitting around stack, looking at their stacks of gold and silver coins and just maybe celebrating with their wife, maybe closest friends and family say, you know what? Finally, hey, we waited. It wasn’t easy. But big wealth, big wealth now is being accumulated by people that really deserve that deserve to have that wealth accumulate for them. So congratulations to all of you on your patience and in your resolve and again, let’s keep it going. Right? I believe that is absolutely what’s going to be the case. What else today again, semis today up 2 1/2 percent. GDX Goldminer ETF up 4% today.

All while this is hilarious, the fear greed index today opened at 29 this morning. That’s in solid fear territory. Not that far away from extreme fear which is days away from all time highs. What is going on here? The good news, the good part about that is that when you see people get that scared that quickly on a Friday was, you know, a bit of shakeout right down to 800 points. When you See, people go from greed to fear that quickly. That’s an important sign that tells you just how early we are in this bull market. Because, and this day will come and we’ll be talking about it when it does here on this podcast. When we get to the point where we have those big shakeout days, I’m talking about years from now, we get to the point 20, 30, 20 30, we start getting those big shakeouts.

And, and the fear and greed index doesn’t budge. Right? The investor sentiment surveys don’t budge. That’ll be a tell. Just like what we’re seeing now is the tell. What we’re seeing now is extraordinarily bullish. It’s exactly, if you’re bullish, it’s exactly what you want to see. You want to see everybody, oh my God, sell everything, you know, just, just freak out, right? But it will flip. And they’ll come a time years from now where we’ll be saying, you know what, we are lightening up, we are taking some profits, we’re raising cash because now we’re seeing a personality of a market that’s mature.

[00:23:18]:
But again, we are light years from that and that’s great news. All right, let’s take a look at the hood today. The internals today were pretty good. NYSE 1.7 to 1 positive advanced decline. Nasdaq 1.5 to 1 positive advanced decline. NYSE up volume 59.5%. Nasdaq even stronger, 62.7%. And we had 436 stocks hit a new 52 week high.

Just 80 hit a new 52 week low. And our sector watch today, also good. We had seven sectors finished higher, four finished lower. Upside, utilities up. Excuse me. Real estate up 1 1/2 percent. Utilities up 1.3. I wonder what those markets know.

They know that rates are going to go a lot lower. And that is what’s going to happen. The 10 year is 4.0, 4.6, 4.04. By year end it’ll be well below 4%. And then next year we’re looking at, you know, low threes. And when the mortgage rates drop below 5%, you know, down to 4.5%. And that $34 trillion in home equity starts to loosen up and flow back into the economy. In the stock market and more.

[00:24:27]:
Housing, other investments, gold and silver, bitcoin, all of it, Right. Your money, you’ve joined with it again. That’s what feeds the melt up. That’s what feeds that animal spirits start to really flow. And that’s what’s going to happen next year as Trump’s economy really begins to hit high gear. And that is what’s going to happen next year. Take that to the bank folks. Take that to the bank.

In a commodity watch today again all time highs, Gold 4224. Just a little bit off the highs today but still up $61 now. So it’s almost a slow day now up 1.4%. Silver today up a big 3.7%. 52.52 again tip of capped. All the gold and silver bugs out there, Copper today down 1%, 497 a pound. Accrued oil today 58.76 flat on the day. And finally for the day, bitcoin last trade here is 111,052 again for all of you that aren’t with us, vraletter.

Com sign up for 23 weeks. Vraletter. Com appreciate you. Thanks as always for listening. Thank you for your feedback. We’ll see you back here again tomorrow after the close.