In today's episode, Kip covers today's significant hit to the markets, with all of our major indexes experiencing notable losses. Kip breaks down what we are seeing in the current financial landscape and the strategic adjustments made to the VRA Portfolio. With a focus on short-term risks and long-term strategies, Kip provides an analysis of the potential future market direction, highlighting key dates such as April 9th and the possible implications of Trump's policies. Tune into today's podcast to learn more.

Hi, everyone. Kip Herriage here with your VRA investing podcast. Good Thursday afternoon. Hope you had a good day today. I wanted to catch up with Tyler. Tyler does these video podcasts on a daily basis when he hosts the podcast. So I haven’t done one in a while. So it’s not a good day to do it on a day where the markets got hit pretty hard.

I want to cover some important points with you. We made some changes in the portfolio today. We sold a number of positions and I want to talk about that. So, so this is going to be both for our VRA subscribers and members and for the entire world that wants to watch this. There’s important points here I think, that need to be made, that we wanted to really explain to you our view on this, how we’re going to handle this, what our game plan is going to be. So let’s go through it pretty quickly. First of all, market today closing at the lows of the day. Dow Jones down 1700 points.

Let’s just say we had losses of 4% and 5% and 6% from Dow Jones SB 500. Nasdaq down 6%. Rust 2000 down 6.6%. So it was a pretty ugly day. We did close at the lows of the day. The fact that we’re selling, we were the original bulls. We, we called the bottom of the, of the bear Market on October 13, 2022, and we did it pretty loudly with some aggressive long positions. And it turns out we were right.

[00:01:17]:
We read our book the Big Bribe just before that. So the timing is pretty good. So the, the key point here, maybe because we sold some positions today, maybe that’s capitulation. Maybe that’s what the market needed to see. But we did, we did close below support, important support levels today. We do think the market’s going lower. The concern here is that this could pick up speed because there are a number of factors here that show we’ve not yet had true capitulation. We, we have a lot of fear in the market based on the sentiment surveys.

But what we don’t see is, is capitulation type readings and the put call ratio and the vix, that kind of thing. So I think we’re not there yet. Again, the April 9th is the key date. If you watched, pay attention to the tariff situation. April 9 is the deadline for when these tariffs, global tariffs go into place. And you know that. Well, I guess we’ll find out. What we’ve decided to do is to stop giving Trump and his administration the benefit of the doubt.

[00:02:23]:
You know, we’ve been talking about the art of the deal. We’ve been talking about selling the rumor by the news. I was exactly wrong on all of that because he’s not. He’s very serious about this, clearly. Will he come to an agreement with all these countries by April 9 that his self imposed deadline for this? Maybe, but we don’t know that. I don’t think we can assume that anymore, can we? The other thing is that April 9th is still a long ways from here. It may not seem like it, but that’s what, four or five trading days from here. And if this picks up speed, which the way it’s trading, I believe it looks like it wants to pick a speed.

To the downside, I would be surprised if global markets, if you listen to the podcast yesterday, I told you I expected today to be ugly. I expected last night’s trading in Asia to be ugly as well. Europe actually held up pretty well today. I would be surprised if the Asian markets don’t fall big again tonight. And I would be surprised if that doesn’t spill over into our markets. So we sold our leverage UTF positions. We sold bitcoin today. Just as a reminder of since 2021, we’ve booked gains.

[00:03:35]:
This is now our second time to be in Bitcoin. We booked profits of 2,200 and something percent in those two trades. I would not be selling bitcoin if I didn’t think that we are at risk of having a liquidity event in this market. This is when bad things happen. I don’t see a lot of fear about that. Again, I want to be wrong. I probably am wrong. Okay.

I hope that I regret selling positions today. Hope every guy’s selling bitcoin. I really want to be wrong. But our VR investing system now sits at 5 out of 12 screens. Bullish. So that is a sell signal. Of course, when it comes to leverage, ETF’s discipline is job number one. We failed on that.

We held these too long. Just I did not see this coming at all. And Trump does not seem to want to moderate his views on this. They seem very locked into this is the way it’s going to be. I think for the long term, I think that’s going to be great for America. But for the short and medium term, I think it probably means if he doesn’t moderate and if this continues, I think it does, I think it does indicate a bear market’s headed our way. I do not. But we do not believe a recession’s coming.

[00:04:49]:
Right. If it would be, it’d be so shallow because again, the consumer is in great shape. Talking about the first American, not the second America, First America, that supporting this market, supporting the economy is still in great shape. Of course, that can change quickly. Animal spirits certainly have turned on a dime. This is the kind of thing we really believe that Trump would pay attention to. And again, so far he seems very committed to his tariff policy. I think long term, again, that’s going to be great for manufacturing.

It’s going to be amazing for us manufacturing. Great long term, great for America, great for our kids and grandkids, all of that. We’re talking about short term here. That’s what we’re talking about. I actually think the second half of this year is probably going to be extremely good. I don’t think this is going to be a long, drawn out thing here. But again, I think in the short term there is downside. There’s a black swan risk here.

We have a highly leveraged global financial system and right now, guess what? Guess who’s winning. Trump’s enemies are winning. This is what Trump’s enemies want to see happen. It’s a little perverse. I’ve made this point, look, for a month and a half now, I’ve been saying that I think I, I, I, I complete support of Trump’s agenda with terrorists. But the messaging and execution has been a, a dismal failure. But that’s not new for me. I’ve been saying that for a while.

[00:06:08]:
But again, that doesn’t matter. My views don’t matter to President Trump. He’s committed to this. But what that means is, and this is where it gets really perverse, maga, Trump supporters, people that voted for him and support his policies, which is again, that’s a lot of people in this country. They’re the ones being hit the worst. I find that nauseating. Right. We’re the ones that are paying the price for this.

While Trump’s enemies are short the market, they’re bearish. Talking about New York hedge funds, New York pretty much in general. The, the financial world, including global and us short the market profiting from this. And I have a personal problem with the way this has happened because if you watch the, the Rose Garden ceremony yesterday, you saw rug pull. You saw a complete rug pull. And again, understand this, I’m a big supporter of the president, but you got to call it like you see it. When he started his presser by saying that there was only going to be a 10 baseline tariff, the market celebrated. Futures jumped after hours Trading jumped, everything was jumping higher and we were frankly celebrating.

[00:07:17]:
And that was big time premature because then we learned just minutes later when he started, when he got his big boards and started showing the tariffs that are, that are going to be paid, that’s when it we, it hit us that, okay, no, this is going to be worse than we even thought it could be. That’s a rug pull. Didn’t, didn’t appreciate that. I also believe that Trump has been cavalier about this. I’ve seen him in a number of interviews where he said, for example, today on Fox, he said it’s going exactly like I told you it do would be and exactly like I told you it would look like this is what we wanted. I’m paraphrasing, but that, that’s his message. I have a problem with that. I good people are being hurt here.

And this is again, the messaging and execution is what I have a problem with, not the strategy in and of itself. And I don’t like the fact that his enemies are winning. The, that’s where the downside risk comes from. Because if Trump’s enemies, and there are vast. Right. Intelligence community, we’re talking about the original enemies that, that, that tried to bury him and, and rig the election in 2020. Those guys, including Global as well. This is what they want to see happen.

[00:08:22]:
They want to see a market that is topsy turvy. They want to see a market that’s at risk. How difficult would it be for them to tip it over and tip the markets over to a black swan event? It wouldn’t be hard at all, in my opinion, if that’s what they want to do. I don’t have any insight that says they want to do that. But, but it’s the what if. That’s why we sold today and that’s why we’re taking, taking, taking money, raising cash. And again, it’s a discipline thing. I would love to be wrong, but now we’re going to implement our, our, our if you will, bear market trading strategy.

We. I have experience in this, for those that know me, go back a ways. 2007, I was on stages all over the world telling people they should reduce their leverage dramatically in housing. That I forecasted a housing crisis and possibly a crash was coming. Of course that’s what happened. So I said that from a year to you and a half, year and a half in advance here. The vra, we’re out of the market. We had short positions.

[00:09:22]:
We did quite well. And then we bought on March. The March, the March. I believe it was March 3rd. Bottom. That was the bottom. I called it within five minutes. Over that one year period from being short to going aggressively long, using leverage ETFs.

March of 2009, we crushed the market over about a one year period. We did very, very well. So I have experience in trading this. I think that we’ll be looking for singles and doubles. We’re looking for trading opportunities into rallies because again, the bears now have control of this market. Unless Trump does something very different than what he’s laid out, I think maybe it doesn’t even matter at this point. I think that the bears have control and that we are going to have a period where markets are going to go lower and struggle to go higher. Rallies will be sold.

That’s what we’re going to be doing here. So we’re holding our gold silver positions, holding our mining stock positions, our 10 baggers, Vista Gold, Snowline Gold, you know the names well, they’ve treated us well. Gold has been fantastic for us. Silver’s been fantastic for us. Bitcoin till now has been very good. Again, we took profits today and we have our 10 baggers. Okay, it’s Tesla and our other top holdings. Right.

[00:10:32]:
We’re not selling those. We would simply add to positions if the market goes lower. Again, I do not think this is going to be a long, drawn out ordeal, but I don’t have that crystal ball. The crystal ball that I thought I had has not worked at all with this tariff situation. Right. I’ve been completely wrong on all of it. And so it was just time for us to have a fresh start, to take positions off the table and to not have that risk exposure in case Trump’s enemies decide this is how they want to take, this is how they want to deal. They couldn’t kill him.

They literally tried to. But this is how they could do it. In the Federal Reserve, you have to know Jay Powell and his buddies, they are not fans of Trump. You can see any number of ways this could go horribly, horribly, horribly backwards, horrible, horribly sideways. And that’s what we didn’t want to. We wanted to raise cash and be ready for that. But again, I want to stress this in our, in our book, the Big Bribe, we talked about the innovation revolution. That’s still completely intact.

[00:11:29]:
We talked about our five Big Bribe megatrends. Those are still intact. This is only a short term trading a situation and, and likely a very short term. Again, meaning what? We could have capitulation in a month. It could be like, Rona, you know the plan Dimmick, this whole thing could be over in a few weeks. Again, maybe selling today. Maybe my capitulation was the bottom. I don’t think so.

Could we broke important support levels? Again, I want to stress this again, I want to be wrong. But all of our long term, medium to long term reasons to be bullish are still in place. So we are going to be, we’d love to be wrong and have to buy these positions back at higher prices. That’d be, that would make me very happy actually because that would mean the worst case scenario did not happen. You know, I had a number of people, by the way, maybe some of you watching right now that told me this is what you thought was going to happen. You called it. I did not. My apologies.

[00:12:28]:
You got it right. This is the way they’re going to take out Trump with the stock market economic crash. Again, don’t know if it’s going to happen but this is the setup for that. This is the setup for bad things to happen and we want to make sure we’re on the right side of this. Okay. Again, gold and silver. Silver is an industrial metal but gold is that we’re 80, 20. Gold, silver, gold could skyrocket in this kind of environment.

It was down some today because again we’re seeing liquidity events now. People are selling what they can with their profits in Bitcoin also could move lower as a liquidity event. People again take taking money out of things that have liquidity, easy to sell and that they have made some profits in this feels like that kind of a setup to me. April 9th is the key date. I, I, I hope that Trump understands the people that are really paying the price for this here. If I get a personal message, the President, maybe, maybe Wayne can send this video to him today. They have a, as you know, a, a very good relationship and my guess is Wayne’s texting him pretty much because Wayne is long the market as well. He’s of course one of our long term friends and, and VRA subscribers.

[00:13:42]:
So maybe, maybe people can get through to Trump. Maybe something can happen before April 9th. Again, I’d love to be wrong. I’m repeating myself here, but that’s because I’m a little shell shocked by what’s happening here. I know you are too. Longer term. Again, not concerned here. This is a short term situation.

That’s why we did what we did today. We’ll, we’re going to be here every step of the way. We’re going to be putting out. Even if you’re not a VRA member. We’re going to be putting out more regular commentary about what we’re doing, what we’re seeing with these various market levels, sectors. And on the back side of this, there are going to be some extraordinary buying opportunities and some great companies that we didn’t get to own the first time around because they zoomed up too much. And so that’s, again, that’s what we’re going to be doing here. We’re here for your questions.

[00:14:31]:
Reach out to us, call us, hit me up on Twitter anytime. Me and Tyler and Josh, Foley and Danielle, our whole team are here to help any way we can. And folks, we’ll get through this. Brighter days are ahead. I haven’t lost faith in President Trump, but again, this has been reckless. This is a, this is, this is, this is dangerous what he’s doing here, playing with the markets the way he is and a very cavalier. Again, this is a little scary what the way this approach has gone. Let’s hope it’s all negotiation and that we’ve wrong about selling here and that the market’s going to go higher again.

85% of the economy in the US is based on domestic only 50% tariffs. You can see how this could be overplayed in a hurry. And again, we’d love to be wrong. That’s it. Hope you had a good day. We’ll see you back here again soon. Have a good night, folks. Bye.