In today's episode, Tyler covers another day of all-time highs for the S&P 500 and one other sector that hit an all-time high today that may surprise you. Despite a wall of worry from various headlines, the market remains resilient, which was reflected in another strong smart money hour today. He also discusses exciting innovations like Microsoft's unveiling of the world's first quantum processor. Tune into today's podcast to learn more.

Foreign don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Wednesday afternoon everyone. Tyler Herriage here with you for today’s VRA Investing podcast. Hope you all had a great day out there today. It was another day of all time highs for our markets here today. We got a record close today from the S&P 500. Once again here, very good to see and similar to yesterday, a strong smart money hour, which is exactly what you want to see from our markets. I’ll touch on that here in a second.

But we got a couple of other all time highs and a few areas that we’re seeing either right at all time highs. And while I’m on this podcast, could be hitting one right now. So stay tuned for for that. One of these in here might actually surprise you as well. So again, stay tuned for that. But exactly what we want to see from the market action now, similar to yesterday, the gains weren’t sharp gains, they weren’t particularly impressive. The impressive part of course is the all time highs. As we say here often, new highs beget new high, new highs, right.

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And so to see a few all time highs today again, I’ll get to those here in a minute. Is very good to see for our markets. And the repeating pattern that we’ve talked about here as well, this is why I talked about at length yesterday, is this pattern of strong smart money hours. We’re going on about three weeks of this kind of action where it’s just been a regular feature. Maybe not every day but, but most days has seen. Even if we don’t get back to the highs of the day, we, you know, we’re finishing strong, very strong in some cases. Today was enough to get us into positive territory with the kind of close that we saw. And so two sessions of that in a row is very good.

This is the kind of trading that we see as very bullish. And that’s the bottom line here. You know, it’s called the smart money hour for a reason. And strong smart money hours are a feature of bull markets. It shows again the resilience today. I talked about this a lot yesterday as well. But when you have sentiment at these levels, right, Extreme bearishness from aaii, the Fear and Greed Index, same as yesterday. We we opened yesterday at a 44 at fear, we closed at a 48, which is neutral, you know, really leaning fear though there.

And we closed the day at a 48 as well. So to see bullish investors coming in and stepping up, the bears just haven’t been able this not for a lack of opportunity, you know, to try and take this market lower. Then, you know, there’s been plenty of headlines. This is the wall of worry that we talk about. There’s a number of bricks out there right now in this wall of worry and that’s what the market uses to climb higher, to use an analogy there. And so on the bearish side of things, we have seen a slightly more bullish leaning put call ratio. Nothing excessive, nothing like excessive bullishness at this time. But today that wasn’t the case.

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We opened the day at a 1.14. If you’re a regular listener, you know, the average put call ratio is a 7:7. Okay? So anything above a 1 is seen as bearishness, leaning on excessive bearishness. So we’re at a 1.14 to start the day. We finished the day at essentially a 0.9. So again, leaning bearish as well. So as contrarians, we don’t mind seeing action like that, especially on a day where the market still managed to finish higher. So again, bottom line, that’s the resilience of this market and we want to continue to see these strong, smart money hours continue.

In other headlines today, one that I mentioned we would talk about here yesterday is the Fed minutes which were released today at 2pm Eastern Time. And on the news, which I’ll cover here in a second, yields fell, you know, telling you what the market thinks about what the Fed has to say 10 year down, you know, not, not huge losses on the day down 2/10 of 1% at a 4.53. And on the surface, you know, not nothing really worthy of headlines, right? The same thing that we’ve seen from the last few Fed minutes and the last few Fed meetings that the Fed is in their wait and see approach, right? Their data dependent approach, which really is that just should be what J. Powell says most of the time and not take any, any questions. Because when, as you know, we’ve talked about this for years now, when Jay Powell gets in front of a microphone, it’s generally not very good for the market. And as a matter of fact, he’s the worst at sending the market lower of any Fed chair in recent history. That’s how bad it is. But what the, what the reaction from the market today, which again yields fell on the news, markets continued to move higher on that news.

Is that nothing about rates? Again, wait and see on rates. But as you dig a little deeper, the Fed finally discussed the possibility of pausing or slowing their balance sheet runoff. So stopping quantitative tightening, qt, you know, we’ve talked about this for a long time. The Fed loves doing QE and they do QT when they have to. Right. They’re can’t wait for the next opportunity to turn the money printers back on. If they had the opportunity, especially if Combo had won, they’d already be back on. Right.

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So we’ll see what the Fed’s actions look like under a Trump administration probably is a little bit more of the wait and see. But the fact that they’re even floating the idea that’s the change in tone from the Fed. You know, they really hadn’t addressed the their quantitative tightening that we’ve seen from rolled off something like $2 trillion off their balance sheet. That might sound excessive. I’ll have to get that’s just off the top of my head here. But they have significantly rolled off their balance sheet. I’ll get the the exact numbers for you here on, on a future podcast. But again, they are still running off the balance sheet right now.

So the change in tone here is what the market is looking at and that’s a potential big swing here. So we’ll see. I had a note on this. Sorry, I’m just rereading my taking a look here. So here’s where the the Fed’s exact words. The Fed discussed possibility or generally paraphrasing discuss the possibility of pausing or slowing balance sheet runoff pending resolution of the debt limit given the potential for big swings in reserve balances. There we go. Had to get it out.

I had to make sure I covered it here for you. We got a lot of topics here still to go on the day. Again, it’s been an action packed start to the shortened holiday week here Monday. The markets were obviously closed for President’s Day and then we had to catch up for it here in the last two sessions. It’s been good stuff though. So we’ll get to some of the other headlines out here on the day. You know, in other macro news before we move on to the next topic here, one thing investors will be watching this weekend is the election in Germany. And I say that I really wouldn’t have even noticed most of the time, but this one has the potential to shake up some EU politics as the conservative parties have been gaining momentum here and now I’ll admit I am not familiar with how most of the countries in Europe politics really work.

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You know, you’ve got all of these different parties and then you’ve got the majorities and then the parties change and this one’s fascist and this one’s a socialist and all kinds of different and they switch somehow. It really is very different. You know, I think I’d have to go live over there. I’m sure many of you understand it much better than I do now. I do understand it on some level. I’m, I’m making light of it a little bit here. But point being on this, the, the reason why I’m even talking about it today, because it has been, I hate to say it in this way, but it has been pretty humorous to see the mental gymnastics on display from the left leaning parties in Europe and especially the reaction to J.D. vance is just incredible speeches of the last week or so.

Have you watched these speeches? Actually go and watch them. You know that there’s really nothing radical in them, right? I mean it probably would have been something to be said by a Democrat just 25 years ago. Right. Common sense policies, free speech policies. And it’s been, you know, I said humorous, but really it’s pretty disgusting the way that they’re trying to spin what J.D. vance has said. Right. If you’ve watched, again, if you’ve watched his actual speeches, that’s where it’s hard not to laugh at the people who are criticizing J.D.

vance saying he’s instigating the so called far right in Europe. As many people have said. What is so intriguing about Europe is that it, it’s just become anything that you doesn’t agree with the left is automatically now far right. If you disagree on any level of, of the immigration debate. If you, if you can’t just bring in unlimited immigrants, then you are far right. If you have any disagreement with any immigration policy, you are branded far right. If you don’t think that there’s free enough speech in Europe, you’re branded far right. As J.D.

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vance talked about, they’re putting people in jail over social media posts, praying in public and the potential to even, you know, I, I’ll look into all of that some more. I don’t want to dive too deep into. I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of it. Right. But J.D. vance is talking about free speech in Europe and then you have the 60 Minutes interview which it’s, the timing of it is just so humorous where they’re saying, you know, it is, do you have free speech in London or, or in, in Europe? I forget it was Germany. Yeah, we’ve got free speech. Okay, but is it illegal to insult somebody? Yes, it’s illegal to insult somebody in person.

Is it illegal to insult somebody online? Yes. And as a matter of Fact, you might get a longer sentence because in person you just say it and it’s gone and online it’s there forever. That’s really what they said. That’s actually what was said. So the projection that we’ve seen time and time again, right, the projection from the left, which essentially boils down to whatever you’re doing that’s wrong, accuse the other side of it. Right? So they’re saying that J.D. vance is being a fascist and anti free speech and anti Europe, inciting the far right while they’re throwing people in jail over social media posts, throwing people in jail over speaking out against the government’s policies. So again, that’s why, you know, it definitely is macro news.

I’ll just discuss it here briefly, but it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out. You know, the German market has been hitting all time highs. The DAX, it was down 2 1/2% or sorry, 2.15% on, on the day today. But again, that’s coming off of all time highs, so no worries there. And as the, if the market’s a discounting mechanism, this election should go pretty well in favor of common sense Germany. Hopefully it’s what we want to see. I mean, it goes back to I, I do love Trump’s take on it that it is for us here in the US It’s America first, but why can’t Germany have Germany first policies? I’ll take out Germany because of the whole World War II thing. But you know, why can’t France, Great Britain, the uk why can’t they have their own country first policies? You know, competition is the hallmark of free market capitalism.

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Right? So let’s make countries competitive again. Let’s have fun with it and see what discoveries we can make. We think that’s what we’re headed towards and that’s the golden age that we see not just for America, but globally. That’s another thing we wrote about in the Big Bribe that and I know we talk about here a lot with Trump, the golden age, Trump Economic Miracle 2.0. This isn’t just bullish for the US this is what is coming. If, if the world can accept it and somehow, you know, the EU doesn’t completely destroy itself from the inside. Right? This is a global golden age coming for us, for everyone. Europe, South America, North America, Russia, China, India, Japan, everywhere.

This could be the potential for a global renaissance. Right? That’s really what we think the innovation revolution is capable of. It’s. Are we willing to capitalize on it? Is the question all Right. So with that said, I’ll get on to our next topic here. Let’s cover the market on the day today. Again, not particularly impressive gains on the day to day, but an all time high from the S P it led the way up just shy of a quarter of 1% to 6,144, again finishing just about at its highs of the day today as well. Next up here, the Dow Jones up 0.16% to 44,627.

Again they’re just about 500 points away from an all time high as well, so less than 1% or so. Then the NASDAQ up 0.07. So again not particularly impressive gains. Also again right in the range of all time highs though for the NASDAQ at 20,056. And I want to point out the semis again led the way today. We saw this yesterday from the semis as well. SOX. The semiconductor index was up 1.18% on the day today, so over 4 to 1 outperformance from the NASDAQ today.

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Even in SMH, the semiconductor ETF was still 2 to 1 outperformance essentially today. And now almost back to the levels or right at the levels depending on which chart you’re looking at of where we were before the Deep SE sell off. So yes, it’s great that the S and P is hitting all time highs, but this might be the bigger story because the semis have actually been outperforming the S&P 500 since those deep seek lows. This could be a pattern change in the making here. You know, we’ve talked about this here often. The semis peaked last year in July and really have been moving sideways since. Again, we remain incredibly bullish here, but that has been the case from those highs and the S and P has outperformed semis since that time. So if we can get a pattern change here and start to see the semis continue to outperform the S and P again, something that we’re looking at, that makes us even more bullish.

So very good there. Also in the news today, Microsoft unveiled the world’s first this is a big deal, potentially the world’s first quantum processor. Now this would require an entire podcast and an expert in the field to go through all of the various innovations that they’ve gone through for this. You know, they put out a piece on it today where they’re essentially saying to boil it down into about a 30 second sound bite here would be that this new processor, the world’s first Quantum processor has the potential to vastly accelerate quantum computing. You know, what a lot of people have speculated was years and years down the road, they’re saying might not be quite as far off as people were projecting. And the potential power here, right. What the impact would be would essentially be it’s a pretty incredible claim that these new chips could put these quantum processors, could put the power of all of the world’s current computers combined into the palm of your hand. That sounds like a crazy claim.

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And it could be, you know, a crazy moonshot claim, right. But it also could be the next stage of the innovation revolution there. We’ve what we’ve seen in technology, right. If you would have told somebody 50, 60 years ago about an iPhone, they’d probably think that you were crazy, right? You get color TV anywhere you want in the world, pretty much any show you’ve ever wanted to watch, essentially commercial free, right in your pocket. You search any question imaginable and you carry it around in your pocket all day and it doesn’t take up a whole lot of space and you can reach anyone in the world just about at any time. That would have sounded crazy 60 years ago. Less than that, right. In the 90s it would have sounded pretty crazy.

You’re telling me I’ve got these 10 devices, I’ve got a Walkman, I’ve got my laptop, I’ve got a desktop, you know, I’ve got a cable package, my Internet’s dial up and you’re going to tell me that I can get all of that in faster and better quality in my pocket, Right. It would have sounded crazy. So to think that that might be the next step. Maybe it’s not as crazy as it sounds. We’ll have to see. We’re going to continue to report on it here. Pretty incredible story though so far. We’ll see what other companies come out with it as well.

But quantum computing stocks did pretty well. There’s some ETFs out there for that as well. Finally here for our major indexes, the Russ 2000 was our only major index to finish lower on the day, down just over 310 of 1%. It was our leader yesterday, then lagged a little bit here today. Next up, looking at our internals on the day to day. You know, I’m not going to sugarcoat it and say these were fantastic internals, but for a day where we spent the majority of the session in the red, again, strong, smart me hour, exactly what you want to see. But we did spend the majority of the session in the Red today. These really weren’t bad internals.

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I, I would lean towards good even, especially in a few areas that I’ll highlight here. Let me get a sip of water real quick. All right, so let’s take a look. Advancing to declining stocks was negative for both the NYSE and the nasdaq. But just, you know, again for a day where we spent so much of the day in the red, you’d think these numbers were certainly worse. I mean almost verging on flat on the day really then 52 highs lows came in positive for both the NYSE and the NASDAQ today. And volume here as well. Big upside volume for the nasdaq, strong day there.

Let me do a quick running of the numbers here. Nothing too crazy, but I mean big upside volume and then NYC essentially flat on the day, slightly negative. But again, you know, for the day that it was, we’ll, we’ll take that as a slight win there from the internals on the day. All right, next up here, looking at our sectors on the day. I mentioned that we saw an all time high today that might surprise you. Well, here we go looking at our sectors. Healthcare led the way followed by consumer staples. What was impressive was the tech sector.

The Nasdaq again about a 1% away from an all time high. The semis haven’t hit an all time high since July, but the tech sector today hit an all time high. Very good to see. As we say here often new highs beget new highs. We think that the rest of tech will follow here, the Nasdaq will follow here and the semis might take a little more time given that they are a little further away from all time highs. But that is, we remain incredibly bullish. Fantastic opportunity here. Our other leaders on the day, we did have financials finishing higher here.

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Oh sorry. They actually did finish lower here at the close, but hit an all time high today as well. The financials talked about this a little bit yesterday as well. Has been a group just kind of flying under the radar. Hitting all time high after all time high. The laggards on the day really just won. The financials were flat on the day. Materials were down over 1% on the session but overall good, 2 unchanged sectors, 1 lower.

So 8 out of our 11 sectors finishing higher on the day today. Next up here, looking at, excuse me, our V. Excuse me, our V. Commodity watch here. Gold again still right in the range of all time highs. We talked about this yesterday as well at the highs of the day at 2964 an ounce that would have been $4.50 away from its all time high. As you know, we are very bullish on gold here and the story just continues to get more and more interesting. You know, we’ll keep you updated on the latest developments, but to quickly cover here, Kip wrote about it to members this morning.

If you’re not already a V member, I encourage you to go take a look. You can sign up for our 14 day free trial@vletter.com you can also find our podcast there as well. But the story here is from multiple angles. So I’ll go ahead and start with the Doge team. You know, you keep hearing stories about what agency they’re going to next. Are they going to the irs, Are they, you know, where in the treasury are they? And they keen to continue to expand here. Now it appears that they might have set their sights on Fort Knox. As we know, we need an audit of the Federal Reserve.

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We need an audit of our gold holdings. You know, we’ll get to the Pentagon, you know, hopefully here soon as well in some of these other institutions. Keep knocking these things out. I completely agree with what Kevin O’Leary said on CNN. I was surprised to hear him say it. Glad he did it on that network. Honestly, I completely agree that they should go in and continue to cut, cut, cut. Really? They’re not even doing it fast enough.

Right. That should be our attitude right now. Not responding to the left. Oh, well, let’s pause here and make sure this, you know, money’s being allocated correctly. No, none of that. Cut, cut, cut everything that you possibly can get your hands on. Right. The point that he made exactly right is if you can get in there and only cut 20 to 30%, then in a decade it’s going to grow back.

Even if he said a decade, but no doubt it’s going to come back. Right. It’d be like a doctor cutting out just a portion of a tumor, a malignant tumor. Right? No, get in there, get the whole thing out. Right. That’s what we want to continue to see. So we love that they’ve set their sights here on Fort Knox, on the Federal Reserve. And the question remains here, you know, do they have the gold, the gold that is on the US Balance sheet right now? You know, Elon Musk tweeted the, the meme from south park.

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If you haven’t seen it, essentially they go into a bank, put a hundred dollars into a checking account and it’s gone immediately. Right. Just kind of a joke on what the market can mean for people who are inexperienced in it. But do they have the gold? That’s the question. And what we’re seeing right now in the Comex market, the commodity Exchange founded in 1933 is very interesting. We’re seeing now all time record amount of gold deliveries. So there’s a lot of questions about these deliveries. Why are they coming in at this level now? Are we trying to get our gold back here? Some of these deliveries have been delayed.

So does that mean that the markets that it’s coming from don’t have as much gold as they say? We’ve talked about this here, not I haven’t talked about it in a little while. But you know the hypothecation that occurs with these gold ETFs you have, the SEC could audit something like GLD. I think you’d find something on par with what we see in fractional reserve banking. The manipulation financial engineering behind these ETFs is incredible. Do they have gold, enough gold on their balance sheets, Right. To support these ETFs. Have they got a run of people exchanging for gold? Would they be able to cover it? Right. And so it also isn’t going to be incredibly important to see exactly how much gold right now is on the US balance sheet because supposedly it’s valued at only $42 an ounce.

That is a potential for massive leverage. And what Scott Bessants has said, the new treasury secretary, he’s but even before he was confirmed talked about monetizing the US balance sheet. The asset side of the U S balance sheet. What does that look like? Well, part of it could be revaluing that gold that’s currently valued at 4,200an ounce to I mean you don’t even have to get to today’s prices. Right. Call it 2500. And that opens up a massive opportunities for what we can do with those funds. Do we want to create a U S sovereign wealth front? You do.

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We want to buy back long term treasury bonds to ensure lower yields. So the, the story here that physical deliveries have soared only adds more fuel to the speculation as a whole. You do they have the gold to deliver? How much can we value this at on our balance sheet? I mean it’s going to be a fascinating story taking here over time. And will Doge get to the bottom of this as well? I know they’ve got their hands full right now, but like I said, cut, cut, cut. Let’s keep moving, let’s keep moving faster. But again we remain incredibly bullish on gold here. We think that this is still the early innings of a massive bull market in gold. And the financial engineering only helps our case here, which is why we recommend owning physical gold rather than the the ETFs.

Of course, owning the gold miners, you’ve got to own the stocks. But if you’re going to buy gold, buy physical gold. All right, so next up here, looking at the rest of our commodity watch on the day today. Silver now lower on the day by 710 of 1% to $33.14 an ounce. Copper now down half a percent to $456 a pound. Oil now up 4/10 of 1%. Energy sector, as I mentioned earlier, really leading the commodity here up again today. But oil now it’s 72.13 a barrel.

And finally here for today, bitcoin, you know, again, similar to the market, has seen some afternoon rallies, now up eight tenths of 1%. You know, not a level that would be impressive to you likely, but closer to its highs of the day at 96 $431 a bitcoin, folks, that’s 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. Until next time. We’ll see you back here tomorrow for the close.