In today's episode, Tyler dives into the latest tech earnings reports following another busy week of Q2 Earnings. Tyler also pulls back the curtain on Federal Reserve decisions, the ongoing impact of J Powell’s policy decisions, and why this moment in the market cycle might be a golden "buy the dip" opportunity. Tune into today's podcast to learn more.

Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Thursday afternoon, everyone. Tyler Herriage here with you for today’s VRA Investing podcast. Hope you all had a fantastic day out there and what was a bit of a, a summer month, if you saw the market action from the outside and if you just looked at a chart of the daily action. But under the hood, so much happening today. We’ve got a lot of earnings to cover here. Originally, going into the day, the markets were higher. We got a pullback at midday, finish at the lows of the day.

Not what we want to see from our markets, but as we’ve been talking about here on the podcast really for the last couple of weeks now, this market is at overbought levels, you know, and going back to those two weeks ago, it’s exactly why we said then there’s nothing more bullish in their market that gets overbought and stays overbought. And that’s exactly why we said it. You might maybe even going back three weeks ago. Now, I’d have to go reference the podcast because we’ve just hit all time high after all time high going into this week. Every single day last week, The S&P 500 hit an all time high. And then including Monday of this week as well, 646 in a row. So, you know, a little bit of a pullback here really. You know, not a whole lot of action.

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What we don’t want to continue to see more of is, you know, some of the reactions to earnings maybe have been a little bit to the downside, but not in any kind of a scary way because earnings have absolutely been crushing it. We’ll have to wait to get the latest updated numbers because it’s been such a busy week of earnings. We’ll get into some of that here today as well. We had Apple, Amazon, of course, we had Meta and Microsoft yesterday, which Kip covered as well. We had Coinbase, Micro Strategy, Reddit. Some of those will cover, some we won’t, but those are big names out there. Yeah. So we’re really in the heart of earning season here.

And again, so far, absolutely has been a big win for earnings. Remember, going into this quarter, the, the estimates for one were low. But even at the beginning of Q2 of this year, going back to April, when Trump announced his tariff policies, everyone said that Q2 earnings were going to be abysmal. It’s just not what we’ve seen at all so far. So we’ll get this into some of that today. If you happen to Catch my interview on War Zone with Wayne Allen Root on Tuesday night. We got into a little bit of that there as well. And just how wrong the economists and the analysts and the so called experts have been time and time again on the economic front especially.

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So we’ll get to Jay Powell a little bit in this today as well. Let’s go ahead and kick it off with earnings though because we did have Meta and Microsoft yesterday, both up nicely today. Meta finished the day up over 11%, Microsoft up nearly 4%. But that is an all time high as well. Chasing after Nvidia’s $4 trillion valuation just right on the door of it right there, which is kind of an, a crazy number to think about in terms of market cap. You know, this is an admittedly not an apples to or apples to apples comparison here, but this was pretty funny. So I’ll go ahead and share this here. To get us started today, Nvidia approaching a 5 trillion dollar market cap in talks to buy Italy for company retreats and food supply.

Which is honestly very funny because Italy’s technical, if you want to get into like country market caps, you go by GDP is, I mean Nvidia is almost four times larger market cap is four times larger than Italy’s gdp. Now when you compare that to actual revenues though, completely different story. Like I said, it was apples to oranges, but it is pretty crazy to think about that with a 4.3 trillion dollar market cap, Nvidia has a larger market cap than all but four or five of the world’s largest economies by country. That’s, I mean, absolutely incredible. And then so I said from a revenue point of view though, you know, Italy’s like in the 20s for top GDP right at about a trillion dollar, you know, you know, the equivalent of a market cap there for, for a country. Again, the more comparative perspective of Nvidia’s 2024 revenue, you know, a little over $60 billion. You know, that’s less than 3% of Italy’s GDP on a yearly basis. So it’s completely different from that point of view, but pretty crazy to think about with that kind of evaluation.

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And even on the revenue front, Nvidia does have more revenue than hundreds of some of the smaller economies combined, which is absolutely incredible. All right, so didn’t have Nvidia earnings today, so I’ll get off of that one here. But again, Meta absolutely crushed it. We had Apple today, good earnings. Let’s see if I missed anything from After Hours. I was on that call. That’s why we’re getting the podcast out a little bit late today, so hopefully I’m catching you later in the evening or if I’m catching you in the morning, I will actually be on the Charles Schwab Network Friday morning, tomorrow morning at 11:50 Eastern Time. So 10:50 Central Time on Trading360 with Diane King Hall.

So thank you appreciate for having me back on the program. Looking forward to being on there. Hope you can join us as well. You can find it@schwabnetwork.com that’s where it’s all streamed and really is a phenomenal program from the financial point of view during the day. The latest breaking news, purely financial breakdowns, trades, whether you like technical or fundamental, you know, they really do a lot there and they have a lot of great guests on as well. So, you know, very grateful to be back on again. It’s always fun. So looking forward to it.

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We’ll recap a little bit of Apple’s earnings. So I won’t get too heavily into the earnings here today, but it was good numbers. Let’s see what the the now Apple is a little bit, excuse me, it was lower on the day and after hours ahead of the earnings result, Apple was starting to head higher, up about 1% as soon as earnings were released. We were up over 3% at one point finished or right now up up just over 2% for Apple’s earnings there again good beats. And as I was listening to the earnings call though, which there are some exciting things I’ll get into a little bit here today. You know, Apple’s not a VR a recommendation here just as we don’t see it as, you know, potential Timbagger, that’s what we’re looking for here. We are an ultra aggressive portfolio here at the V and Apple just doesn’t fit that category today. Now at one time it absolutely did.

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And so I was kind of reminded of that while listening to the earnings call today. You know, the anticipation there used to be around, you know, maybe not necessarily Earnings Call but Apple events when Steve Jobs was at the helm and giving the keynote speeches, maybe not so much on the earnings front, but they were talking about their latest worldwide developer conference. I was like, I almost forgot that that even happened. Right. It’s almost a non event at this point for anybody other than just Apple enthusiasts and analysts really because no one could capture an audience like Steve Jobs could. No one could tell a story like Steve Jobs could. Especially from a a business point of view. Some of those were just incredible.

I mean I remember being excited to go see them. And the first time I saw one I had to go back and watch all of the other ones I hadn’t seen before just because they were so captivating. And the way, again, the way he told a story was great. I think there’s a big story at Apple that really isn’t being told now. Again, earnings were good, iPhone sales were good, beat on revenue as well. Actually one thing that impressed me, maybe I’ll talk about this a little bit more tomorrow, but was the Mac Mini sales in China? Maybe that was a little bit of tariff front running but Mac Mini for Q2 was, was the number one selling desktop in all of China, just in Q2. Now I’ve got to say I, you know, like I said, been an Apple fan for a long time. I have some Apple products as well.

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And when they made the upgrade, the switch to making their own chips in house, switching from intel into the M series of chips, I got an M1 right from the beginning. My laptop broke at the time actually and it just, the M1 chips had just come out and so I got one and I followed it up with another one since then. And I’ve got to say for my, what I use my computers for, it’s got, you know, it was very impressive. It did a lot more than I was expecting and I’m really underselling that here. It really does run a lot compared to their previous models and I think that that innovation has been undersold and what creating your own chips in house does, the opportunities it opens up in terms of hardware for the company. Now they’ve got the A series I believe, which is the iPhone chip series as well. So we’ll continue to see what that development looks like and really that has been overlooked because Apple’s been so far behind in the AI race. They’re really.

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That’s a non story right there. You don’t hear Apple, you know, they just actually were talking about this on Charles Schwab network today that they were talking about some earnings that had come out and the AI story and somebody said, one of the anchors said, you know, one name I haven’t heard come up in this at all, in this conversation at all. Surprisingly. I think we’ve named every other mag7 name except for Apple. Right. That’s how much of a non story it is for Apple which is a problem for them right now. But maybe they’re building the hardware side of things out with the chips that will be able to integrate with AI. You know, they’ve got a massive Capex plan for the next four years spending over $500 billion.

Not just for Capex, that’s for spending, but increasing Capex as well. So we’ll see the. There’s some rumors about AI acquisitions out there. You know, at this point they’re so far behind, at least in the public’s point of view. From what we can see, they’re so far behind that that’s, that might be one of their only options. Sorry, knocked the microphone here. Let me set this back up. There we go.

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All right. So I mean again Apple certainly lost some of that luster and it has been the laggard for the Magnet or one of the laggards for the magnificent seven so far in 2025. You know, down on the year obviously up from the April lows, but down for 2025 compared to some of the other big movers out there like Nvidia, like Microsoft, like Meta stock. Speaking of that, another one, this is funny because it, it is right now. This just, you know, we just hit this point. Another person who did not like these, you know, when inverse Kramer’s calling you out, it’s not a good, not great. This is the Chama tweet. Check this out.

Five years ago, the growing shortcase on Facebook and Google, a five year bet. Well that would come due about today and we’ve got Meta at all time highs. Google has had a good year as well. Let me see, I’ve got those returns somewhere in my notes just to give you the, the right numbers. So this is from a little bit earlier but Google, you know, 37% up from the April lows, 2% year to date. So at least in the green though year to date. That was as of earlier today. We’ll have to see, you know what happens again bit of a SEC tech sell off outside of Meta and Microsoft they really held up the NASDAQ on the day to day.

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So again, big earnings day today. You know, I don’t want to take up too much time talking about earnings here. We’ll be able to get into a little bit more. I’ll kind of, I’ll kind of come back to it here as we go. I’ve got some other stuff to show here before our markets on the day today again on the tech side of things, really held up the market today. We’ll see if we get the same thing tomorrow. Like I said, I’ll bounce back to earnings. Amazon had some nice beats today.

The stock was down last I checked. You know, we’ll see how the market digests that news there. Nasdaq was our leader on the day, if you want to call it that, essentially flat on the day at 21,122. Next up here, we had the S&P 500 at 6339. The NASDAQ though, sorry, this is what I was looking at. The Nasdaq did hit an all time high before finishing lower on the day today. Again, bit of a selloff into the close. Not what you want to see, but we are at overbought levels.

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This will alleviate some of that here. S and P also did hit an all time high earlier in the session. Dow Jones down 3/4 of 1% at 44,130and the Russell 2000 now just about 1% at 2,211. Of course, the ramifications of yesterday’s FOMC meeting still being felt by the market here. Kip did a great job of recapping that in yesterday’s V Investing podcast. So I won’t dive into it quite as much here. But really, J. Powell’s got to go.

That’s what that it’s, it’s summed up as here. You know, he’s held rates now for the seventh straight meeting. You know, a lot of people look at this as being political. I’ve got something to kind of show for that here. Let’s go ahead and take a quick look at it because this morning we got back the latest look at PCI data. Let’s see. Here we go. All right, so I pulled up this chart before.

Again, this is AI, very helpful here. I’ve always wanted to run these charts myself. So, you know, if there’s any hallucinations, as they call them, that come from AI. I did check the latest data just to be sure. So we got back PC PCE data today. So here’s core on the right. Let me get my face out of the way. All right, there we go.

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So we’ve got core here on the right, PCE regular here on the left. Cpi, ppi. What I thought was interesting. So we got a slight uptick here in core from 2.7 to 2.8. Uptick as well from PCE. Still 2.6. Manageable range and some good numbers we’ve seen lately. Right.

Low twos here, you know, so start to reference here. J Pal just said yesterday there’s still too much uncertainty and maybe more on the way to come right again, if you want a full recap there, go listen to Kip’s podcast. He, he nailed it yesterday. But when where where were inflation rates the last time Fed. The Fed cut rates. Their first rate cut of last year was in September. Look, by some metrics were lower for CPI and ppi. Lower, right Inline the same for PCE core.

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All right, 1/10 of a percent. So maybe that’s what they’re talking about. Well, they also cut rates in December where pce was at 2.8 and every other metric was higher than currently as well. So I don’t know what J. Pal is waiting for here, but this is what was so interesting. All the expectations going into the meeting yesterday were for the first rate cut to be in September. Obviously J Pal’s hawkish seeming tone has moved that back again. Now the, the Fed 61% probability they will stay paused in the upcoming meeting in September.

Kip, thanks again for covering for me on the Fed meeting yesterday. By the way. I’ll, you know, we got a nice break here now though, what, six weeks at least until the next Fed meeting. So I’ll get that one. I’ll be sure to get that one. So let’s see where we have to go out to now though. You gotta go to October to look for a cut. So Jay Powell’s gotta go.

I mean, just incredibly out of touch. Kip covered this with our members this morning as well. Just how out of touch this Federal Reserve chairman really is. No, no grasp of what everyday Americans are feeling when you see story after story of Americans feeling like they’re priced out of, of home ownership. Yes, obviously home prices are very high. But when you have rates at 7% versus a few years ago at 3%, that’s a massive difference in your monthly mortgage. Same thing goes to car rates. You know, credit card rates are higher, all kinds of things.

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And not to mention just kind of the trickle down of what lower rates mean as well, you know. And so again, to tell people who are low looking to be first time home buyers, the couple who just had a child, you know, the kid who just got out of college who needs a car to get to work, Right. What do you tell them when they have to, you know, maybe they really need it? Are they gonna have to rent it? They’re gonna have to lease it, right? What? Like that’s not ideal, obviously. Are they gonna have to downsize or get something that they don’t want just because they can’t afford the monthly payment now? Right, I understand the Fed can’t do anything about prices being high other than, I guess, raise interest rates. But then we go back to that point as well. What if Jay Powell is right, but for all the wrong reasons. The economy continues to do well. We saw the GDP estimate this week and we’re on the way to 5% GDP growth in our group, in our view here at the vra.

So we’ll see what happens from there. If he ends up being right for all of the wrong reasons, but in the short term here, you know, make an adjustment because by this time of how long he’s been talking about it, you know, it’s been again seven Fed meetings in a row where they haven’t done anything by now. If you would have kept cutting rates then to where it would have been appropriate levels then if the economy overheats, you’d be ready to, you could raise rates again by now. It’s been that long where because we wouldn’t be looking at it today, you’d be looking at it at a year down the road. Plus. Right. There’s plenty of, of just, you know, they’ve got to be more nimble from the Fed at the very least. So we’ll see if we can get somebody else in there pretty soon.

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But let’s recap the rest of the market for the day here for you and we’ll call it an evening. Looking at our internals here on the day about what you expect, negative for advanced decline, not too bad on the NYSE. Just about 2 to 1 negative though for the NASDAQ 52e highs to lows, a bit of a lagging indicator but when you hit all time highs earlier in the session, you might actually expect this number to be a little better. But it was at least positive volume on the day. Not quite 2 to 1 negative but just below that level. So again not ideal numbers there. But also we are at overbought levels. It’s been an incredible run from the April lows.

We don’t see this as a reason to sell but we are in a seasonally weak time of the year. That doesn’t mean that our markets have to head lower. And even if they do head lower, we don’t see it as being a significant pullback. We’d see, we’d look at it as an opportunity to add to our positions to buy the dip. Again, I talked about this on Wayne show on Tuesday as well. If you’re not in this market yet, these are the buy the dip opportunities. Now tomorrow’s a Friday. We don’t like buying on a Friday, we don’t like selling on a Monday.

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So you know, maybe if we are looking for something here, if you’re Looking to get into this market. Let’s see how it looks Monday morning. And as always, you know, we’re big believers in monthly dollar cost averaging. So putting a little bit like Kip said on yesterday’s podcast yesterday as well, go ahead and put a little money to work, right. Don’t go and spend it all at once. But yes, if your, if your wallet’s not in it, your heart’s not going to be in it, you’re not going to continue watching it. So it is, it’s a really helpful way to look at it. You don’t have to go all in now.

Just keep buying, wait for pullbacks, keep buying your favorite positions. That’s we’re big believers in that here. All right, next up, looking at our sectors on the day today, as one might expect, communication services led the way. I say as one might expect because they’re mostly made up of Meta and Google just below an all time high there for that sector. It didn’t help that Google was lower on, excuse me, on the day today. Our other sector that was higher on the day, you know again interesting Jay Powell didn’t lower rates right in his face here. 10 year yields lower on the day. Utilities higher on the day.

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They’re the biggest borrowers of debt in the nation. If the market is a forward looking mechanism, which it is, then utilities are telling you that yields are going lower. And then our laggards here on the day were healthcare, real estate and materials financial. Finally here for today, our VRA commodity watch. Let me get a quick refresh of these ones here. All right, we’ve got gold now slightly lower on the day at $3,343 an ounce. Silver up slightly by a quarter of 1%. 36.81 an ounce.

Copper now up slightly on the day. $4 and 43 cents a pound. Oil got back above $70 a barrel you yesterday. Now below that level at $69.39 a barrel. Bitcoin really has had a good amount of sideways action lately. Not doing a whole lot but it’s building a nice base at these levels. It’s very, you know, healthy back and forth work off overbought levels. You know, could be something similar to what we see in our markets here just in the very short term.

[00:21:54]:
Again fantastic buying opportunities. Bitcoin at 116,200, 273 folks. That’s all that we have time for here today. Again hope you can join us tomorrow morning on trading 360. I’ll be on at 1050 Eastern or sorry, 1050 Central Time, 1150 Eastern Time. That’s schwab network.com so hope you can join us. As always, if you’re not already a subscriber to the V podcast, you can find us at V Letter. You’ll see our podcast link at the top.

And hey, we’ve got a two free week trial going on right now as well, so go check it out. We’d love to have you with us here as a member. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day today. Until next time, we’ll see you back here tomorrow for the close.