In today's episode, Tyler covers a dynamic day of market action that we see as setting up for the next leg higher of this bull market. He discusses the potential for a Santa Claus Rally and what it would mean for stocks going forward. We'll also examine the trends that underline our long-term bullish outlook. Tune into today's podcast to learn more.

Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Friday afternoon, everyone. Tyler Herriage here with you for today’s VRA Investing podcast. Hope you all had a great day out there today. Hope it was a great end to your week this week as well. Coming out of the gate this morning, it was looked like it was going to be a really hot day from our major indexes. We were higher across the board, hit all time highs as well, but we ran into a little bit of turbulence throughout the day still. We finished mix on the day, but a good day overall, especially some stuff we’re seeing under the hood.

So I guess I should say, yes, it was a mixed day, but there were certainly some bright spots throughout the day today. Again, you know, all time highs. We had NASDAQ hitting an all time high to start off the day. The semis were up big as well. But then it looked like the buyers got a bit of an early start to one of these holiday weekends here. Again, mixed finished, but again, we saw some bright spots, some major bright spots on the day today. And Kip and I, as we talk every day before this podcast, we’re going through some of the charts we’re watching closely right now. And as we head in really to the second half of December here, we love the setups that we’re seeing for stocks.

[00:01:29]:
You want to see a good second half month of the month of December, and I’ll explain why for a few reasons here in a minute. But seasonally speaking, that’s also the case as well, that the second half of the month of December is historically the stronger part of the month as well. So, you know, again, we look for that going forward. But another reason why it’s important is for the Santa Claus rally, which a lot of technicians would define as the last five trading days of the year and the first two trading days of the new year. When that time period is positive, it bodes really well for the incoming year. So in this case it would bode really well for for 2025. So what we’re seeing right now, yes, we’ve got the Nasdaq at all time highs, a little bit more on the overbought side. But the number one area that we’ve wanted to see outperform has been the semis.

Right? Kip talked about this on his appearance with Charles Payne on making money yesterday that the semis haven’t seen an all time high since July. Well, the rest of our market has been on an absolute tear here. Really. We’ve talked about this earlier this week as well, with the software names making up for what we’ve seen lacking on the hardware side of things. So software names doing really well. The symbol for that ETF is igv. You know, we had a little bit of a struggle in there today. Adobe has sold off since its earnings and again, we want to see things rotate back into the semiconductors here, which are nowhere near overbought levels as well.

And also the Dow Jones here has been over the last, I don’t know, maybe seven sessions or so underperforming where we’ve seen the Nasdaq at, right? It hit those all time highs early in the month of December and since has headed lower. This now makes actually seven days in a row lower since its all time high. Now we’re out of overbought territory again, setting up nicely here for a rally into year end when we’re at oversold levels, getting back to support levels. Right. Very important on a technical basis. And this is what looks to be setting up for a launchpad kind of move higher. Kip and I’ve talked about this a lot as well. You know, a lot of the excitement around Trump getting elected for November, a lot of that excitement is still here.

[00:04:06]:
So we could be looking at a little bit of a buy the rumor, sell the news event leading up to the inauguration on January 20th. Now that’s not to say that we think it’s a top right. We don’t think that that’s going to be a reason to sell everything and run for the exit. But we think that’s about when we would expect we’re hitting overbought levels across the board, major indexes, semis, everything. And you know, if we’re gonna monthly dollar cost average, which we’re big believers in here, we might pause our buying, take some profits in certain positions and wait for a pullback to go back heavily into this market. As you know, again, we are incredibly bullish going forward. So I’m very much talking about tactics here versus strategy. Right? Nothing has changed over our long term strategy.

We look for this market to continue to melt up. We’re in the middle of the innovation revolution, the roaring 2000s and now the Trump economic miracle 2.0. So we don’t want to miss out on any of the potential of that move higher. But this bull market as we see it will run into 2030, taking the Dow Jones to 100,000 and the NASDAQ to 40,000. That’s been our call here for the last two years. So nothing has changed from that point of view. But again, tactically speaking, that’s kind of the short term setup. We’re looking at a potential for a buy the rumor, sell the News event into January 20th.

Now we’ll reassess over the coming month. Right. You know, do we get to those overbought levels ahead of that time or could it actually be a rally from that point that begins there? You know, we’ll continue to talk about that here on the VRA Investing podcast every single day. But just know for right now and where we’ve been, buy the dip continues to be our call. We see that as the smart money move here and nothing has changed from that point of view. If we were seeing something different, we were starting to sell positions and running for the exit, we’d be talking about it here. That’s just nowhere near where we’re at right now in this market cycle as we see it. Again, we’ve compared this often to the 1995-2000 bull market melt up which rallied in the NASDAQ 575%.

[00:06:25]:
That wasn’t without corrections, including one bear market, a technical bear market right in that time period though. Yet The NASDAQ rallied 575%. So again, it pays to buy the dips. All right, so looking back to today’s market action here again saw some big highs on the day to day. Again, Nasdaq all time high. Bitcoin back over 100k semis leading the way. It helped that Broadcom was up a massive 15% plus this morning, finished up 24.5% today and now officially becoming part of the trillion dollar market cap club here. So for those of you keeping score at home, that’s roughly a, excuse me, $200 billion market cap increase today probably ranks in about the top seven of all time.

As you might expect the record the top three go to Nvidia, which is a $3 trillion company has been on an absolute tear this year. Right. And it has seen multiple days of over $300 billion in market cap increase, I believe. So it’s Nvidia for the top three. You got Apple, I think is number four, Meta. And then Broadcom is probably right up there with it now again, probably 190, $200 billion market cap increase today. Earnings coming in with a slight beat, but the estimates were high. Right.

The, the growth rate that was expected here is a big one because this was 51% revenue growth year over year for Broadcom today, increasing their dividend by 11% as well. Obviously the stock market loving it today. Finishing up 24.4% on the day today. And the semis led the way. Exactly what you want to see. We had SMH up over 2 1/2% on the day as well. So let’s take a look at our major indexes. As I mentioned earlier, the Nasdaq hit an all time intraday high today, just shy though of its second close above $20,000 at 19,926.

[00:08:36]:
So not an all time closing high, but it was an all time intraday high up 1. 10 of 1%. Now we did get an all time high from the NASDAQ 100 today, which was up big earlier in the session. Even at the lows of the day though, when we had our major indexes lower across the board, the NASDAQ 100 was still up at least 4.10of1%. Similar story from the semis today when the market was lower, the semis were still up roughly 1.4%. You’ll finish up 2 1/2% on the day overall. Good day. And on the semis again, nowhere near overbought levels here as well.

So something we’re watching for closely there. Next up, the S&P 500 finishing essentially flat on the day today, or almost exactly flat. Right. Not a point move in either direction here now at 6051. The Dow Jones here now hitting oversold levels as I mentioned, down the last seven sessions here, down another 2/10 of 1% today to 43,828. And lastly here, small caps down 6.10of 1% to 2,346, also hitting close to oversold levels here again this slight pullback still holding on to its major moving averages that we want to see. Again, we like this setup a lot here. Looking at our internals now on the day, this is where we are starting to see some yellow flags.

You know, Charles Payne pointed out this yesterday, pointed it out again today. We’ve been talking about it here that we’ve wanted to see this action in the internals improve. Now this makes 10 sessions in a row with negative advanced decline. So more declining stocks than advancing stocks and not a great day here either. Coming in 2 to 1 negative for the NYSE, just slightly better for the NASDAQ, but pretty close to 2 to 1 negative. A lot of people are talking about, you know, this is one of the longest streaks on record of consecutive days in a row and we’re declining than advancing stocks. You know, if anything, to be totally honest here, I think this is might be another example of what A great setup this is going in to the second half of December and to start trying 2025, you know, if we’re getting close to a record here, how much longer is it going to go on for right now? You know, knock on wood. But if we’re getting up to the record here, then we must be hitting oversold levels as well from this point of view.

[00:11:13]:
Right. So again, you know, a lot of these stocks we’ve seen a broad rally from the November election in a big rally, a broad and large rally. Right. A lot of stocks were overbought. It’s been an incredible last month we had to take a little bit of a pause to begin the next leg higher. I think that’s what we’re looking at here. Right? A lot of stocks hitting oversold levels that have a lot of room to run now heading into the latter half of this month. 52e highs lows also negative on the day today for both the NYSE and the nasdaq.

And lastly here, volume did improve a little bit before the close today, much like our major indexes which all I’ll point out finished well off their lows of the day. Didn’t get back to their highs of the day, but well off the lows of the day. Similar here from volume no. 2 to 1. Beats there for the NYSE or the NASDAQ. Looking at our sectors on the day, just 3 out of our 11 sectors higher on the day. We had tech leading the way, exactly what you want to see, followed by consumer discretionary and utilities, but no all time highs today, although they’re not far away from it. Our laggards on the day, communication services, materials and energy.

Finally here for today, our VRA commodity watch. Let me get a quick refresh of my screens here. Now some red on the screen here today. Gold now down one and a half percent to 2,666. 7. Silver now down 1.9% at $31 an ounce. Copper down 1.1% to $4.19 a pound. Oil back above $70 a barrel here, holding on to that level at $71.06 a barrel, up one and a half percent.

[00:13:03]:
And finally here for today, as I mentioned earlier, Bitcoin, you know, getting back above $100,000 here. We want to see it take out yesterday’s high which was just about $100 above where we’ve gotten to today at the highs of the day but now up 1.6% to $101,406 a Bitcoin folks, that is all that we have time for here today. Please be sure to subscribe to receive our VRA podcast every day at the market close. You can sign up @vraletter.com click the podcast link at the top and we’d love to have you with us. Thanks again for tuning in. Have a great weekend. We’ll see you back here on Monday for the close.