In today’s episode, Kip breaks down what’s shaping up to be a pivotal week for the markets. Kip covers the recent shift in sentiment as the rally continues after months of bearish outlook, and the critical role that upcoming trade deals, economic data, and especially major tech earnings—from Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Apple—will play in defining the next move for stocks. Tune into today's podcast to learn more.

Don’t look back to the market is closed. Good Tuesday after everyone. Kip Herriage here with the daily VRA investing podcast. Hope you had a good day today. Pretty solid day in the markets today. It’s a big week as we’ve been talking about here and really starts tomorrow with, with both the economic news and with earnings. Really I think Tyler and I were just talking about this. You know, we’ve come a long way in a short period of time.

Just as the sentiment was as bearish as it has been in my career. Okay. You just, you don’t get more bearish than sentiment’s and that’s produced a pretty good rally so far. Of course the trade news has gotten a little more positive. We’re starting to see, okay, maybe some deals are getting done here looking a little less onerous. It does appear that China and the US are at least having conversations. I believe today Trump indicated that, I think he said India is almost done. We also heard that, heard that Japan is almost done.

[00:00:53]:
So I think that’s really gonna be key, getting some of these countries, some of these deals done with countries. Get two or three of these done. So we have kind of a roadmap or what the others will look like and then we can get 15 to 20, excuse me, maybe 15 to 20 less complicated deals on the back end of that over the next couple of weeks. And then we turn all our attention to China which is really where it should have been all along. So Marcus is certainly feeling better about that. But the real excitement of course is about tomorrow. It starts tomorrow with Q1 earnings. Tomorrow after the close, Microsoft and better report.

And then after close on Thursday, Amazon and Apple report, I think it’s these four earnings reports. They’re going to tell us where the market’s going next. This is, it’s not the news that’s going to matter, it’s the market’s reaction. Of course a lot of that’s going to depend on what the guidance is. How do they guide on Capex, how do they talk about terrorists and how they’re going to hurt their business if they are at all. So yeah, you know, we learned, we heard from Tesla and Google last week. We heard no warnings. You know, Tesla had obviously had a horrible quarter but the stock began to rally and really they, they, as far as Capex goes, no impact whatsoever.

Yeah, they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re fully engaged, spending as much money as they can to grow their businesses and that’s what we’re going to Listen for tomorrow in these, on these earnings reports also. It’s a big week of course for economic data. I think the biggie get to the end of the week is going to be the jobs data. But prior to that, tomorrow morning we get the first quarter GDP report. Atlanta Fed now is updated their Q1 report. I believe they’re looking at minus 4, 1.5%, minus 1.5%. Obviously if this number comes in negative, it’s just the first report. These are all revised I think a couple of times.

[00:02:46]:
And it’s hard to trust this data period anyway, to tell you the truth. But if we do get a negative quarter, then everyone’s going, okay, that’s one. Now are we going to get the second? And that, that, that would make a recession. Of course, more and more Wall street firms are leading toward that conclusion that yeah, we’re going to have a recession. We covered this yesterday with Apollo Global and the excellent report that they put out. They do great work by the way, Scott Bessant’s friends with these guys. So when they’re showing, you know, 20 different, 20 different slides in their deck, they’re showing 20 different slides that all say a version of the same thing. The economy is slowing and it’s likely slowing by a lot and the consumer is getting in trouble.

That, that has to be something is communicated from Scott Besant, Treasury Secretary to, to the President and to his economic team has to be, right? So Trump’s aware of this, as we’ve talked about here ad nauseam. I think Trump has always been okay, if we’re going to have a recession, get out of the way in his first year, right? Finish strong. I think he, I think, you know, he’s a long term planner. I think he’d be fine with that. But what he doesn’t want to do is have a hard recession that’s going to last multiple quarters and maybe even something that could have been a depression. The D word which he used in two separate meetings has been reported pretty widely in the media now and no one’s denied it in the administration. So obviously Trump cares about the economy. This, he cares about the economy and the border.

I mean those are the two biggies for him. And maybe cleaning out the deep state. We’ll see how that progress continues or not. But obviously Trump’s very aware of this. He’s on top of this. I think he’s got, as we talked about yesterday, you know, there are some pressure points that the President is aware of. We know this because this is what he reacted to. When the market was very close to breaking, like a serious breakdown.

[00:04:35]:
And just when that was about to happen, here came the leaks, right? Two different leaks. One on the pause of the tariffs, it caused the third best day since World War II in the stock market. And then the leak from, which is really a criminal leak from Scott Besant at a private JP Morgan event where he talked about this is unsustainable, you know, and you know, this is, this is not something we can continue to do with China. That was, that was, that was, that was a code for, yeah, we’re going to end this, you know, we’re going to pivot when we need to. But, but what happened there was, we learned that there are. So the pressure points are the 10 year yield at 4.5%, that’s where it was then. Because that’s getting fairly close to 5. And I think that’s, that’s, I think that’s economic Armageddon.

I think the markets really melt down if we get to 5%. It’s just not that 5% special, but that’s just the environment that we’re in right now. So Trump’s aware of this. 4.5% gets his attention. Anything above that? Okay, let’s pivot. Okay, that’s number one. SPF one hundreds. Number two, you know, we’re rallied back now to 5560 on the SPF 100 get, about 4833 was the low.

So anything I think below 4900 will also get his attention. But again, we’ll know. I think we’re going to know tomorrow. I think we’re going to know tomorrow. If we get Microsoft and Meta tomorrow and then Thursday, Amazon and Apple and again like Tesla, right. It doesn’t really matter what the news is. We want to see what the stocks do. That’s the key.

[00:06:06]:
That’s the tell. As you know, it’s almost like watching the semis, watching housing stocks. They’re telling us what the markets really think instead of what the old news is because all of this now is old news, right from the previous quarter. So that’s what we’ll be watching here. What do I think? Well, we’re overbought. We are on the very investing system on our short terminal oscillator stochastics. We are at extreme overbought again. We’ve had a big move higher.

So we’ll see how, we’ll see how the reaction is tomorrow. My sense is that the lows are in and I think that, you know this. I Think Trump realizes he’s got a window maybe another month or so before things really start to go sideways. And so I think he’s going to use that to just keep upping the pressure and try to get as many of these deals done and then back into that, you know what, he’s got his big tax bill. He’s got his big beautiful tax bill today. Get that done. There’s a lot of exciting things in that very pro economy. And then, then we’re talking about, you know, this is in our rearview mirror now.

We’ve got new trade deals in place. And again, some of these, like they’ve even said with China, we could do something temporarily now, but this can take two or three years to get something, you know, permanent final done with China on all of these non, non, non, non tariff barrier, non, non tariff barrier issues. Right. You know, currency manipulation, et cetera. It’s going to take time. But I think that we get this done at these earnings coming. Good. Because again, something else that I think a lot of folks that are predicting recession just have not fully accounted for the front running of this tariff.

[00:07:46]:
There’s been so much buying. We covered this yesterday. Apollo Global had a chart on this showing how inventories are skyrocketing because US Companies are buying everything they can now before these tariffs went into place. All right? So they have products to sell to their customers. And I think that’s really going to play a major role, at least in the first month or so of the second quarter. That really can save the quarter. So I will be surprised at this point if we have a recession. I would put it, I think we’re at maybe 30% likelihood of a recession.

But what concerns me the most is the second America and the way that their finances are breaking down, because they are. That is happening. That’s something that is not. It’s not, it’s not even up for debate. Okay. The housing market remains strong. That’s because 40% of Americans own their home without a mortgage. So it’s almost impossible, as we’ve said now for a long time with you, it’s almost impossible, almost impossible to have another housing crisis like we had in 2007, 2008, when 40% of Americans own their home without a mortgage and net equity in homes is at an all time high.

It’s like 58, 59%. Uh, so, you know, I think that the housing market’s gonna remain strong. Our big bride, megatrends are still intact. One of those, of course, being millennials who are driving everything they are they are clearly the Mrs. Watanabes of this market. They have just backed up the truck in every big decline and bought, bought, bought. We saw it again today. NASDAQ volume home to tech stocks, right? A lot of small cap names in here as well.

[00:09:22]:
A lot of small cap tech stocks, penny stocks as well. Nasdaq volumes day 13 billion shares traded. That’s a lot. That’s a lot of trading with no real news out there. It’s just you’ve got this is, this is one of our mega trends for a reason. It’s we, we actually have a very strong economy in the first America. But there’s so much money in that first America that you know it. I hate to even say this, but it almost doesn’t matter what happens in second America, as sad as that is to say, it’s just the reality of where we are.

So I think the economy is still in pretty good shape. I think Trump understands where he’s got a pivot. He knows his pressure points, the markets do as well. And I think we come out of this okay. Again. I assign low odds that we’re going to even have, I don’t even think we’ll have frankly a true retest of the lows, but it wouldn’t surprise me to have another shakeout. And when we get to this level of overbought, that’s what get ours gets our attention. Also, as Tyler pointed out to me in our pre pre podcast meeting, the semis aren’t leading now.

They led last week but now they’re going the other way. Not with a lot of speed or velocity or big losses, but they are going the other way. Housing stocks doing exactly the same thing. Those are the groups who are watching most carefully. And again these earnings reports over the next couple days and then the Q1 GDP data tomorrow of course before the open is going to be really big and Friday’s jobs report. So we’ve got a lot to look forward to and we’ll see, we’ll see how the markets respond to it. As I wrote this morning, as reckless as Trump’s tariff approaches has been, the truth is we are just three to four good deals away from then having a roadmap to have another 15 to 20 deals get done. And then our focus becomes China.

[00:11:13]:
If it plays out that way. I think US Stocks are going a lot higher. I think the lows are in. I think by the end of the year, probably a lot sooner, we’re back to all time highs again. So we’re optimistic. I think we again I think we have a game plan here. We’ve seen how the markets respond, we’ve seen what the pressure points are for the administration and where they know they have to act. And that’s, that’s all very good news.

All right, let’s take a look on the, oh, by the way, yields just continue to plummet. Again, this is a very, very good news. I think the markets have figured out, yeah, guess what, the rate cuts are coming now. Will we have one at the next DEB meeting, which is May 7? I don’t know, probably not. However, if we get a weak jobs report, like, you know, if it comes, I think the estimate is like 125,000 jobs created for the month of April. If that comes in weak, like maybe 50, 30, 40, 50, 60,000 jobs, I think all of a sudden people are going, all right, you know what, listen, we’re not seeing the inflation that you think is coming, Mr. Federal Reserve, Mr. J.

Pal. We’re not seeing that yet. So stop guessing. You said you don’t guess. Look at what you have right in front of you. You have an economy clearly weakening. It’s time to cut rates because again, the 10 year yield, excuse me, the fed funds rate should be a full percent lower than it is now. This is the worst edge here of our times.

[00:12:27]:
You’ve heard us talk about this for so long now. This is another mess. This is their fifth policy error since Jay Powell got the gig in 2018. But the 10 year, again, the Fed never leads, they follow. Tenure now is down to a 4.17%. So again down from a high to 4.5% a couple weeks ago. It’s a pretty good move and I think it’s beginning to tell us what’s coming here, which are going to be Fed rate cuts. And again, that’s going to be very good news for the market as well, especially if we’re, it starts to be consensus that no, we’re not, we’re going through a slow patch but likely not a recession.

And that gives people a chance to go, okay, they’re going to start cutting. That’ll be positive, it’ll be positive for housing. You know, again, when the, when, when the, when the 30 year mortgage is at seven and a half percent, that’s kind of a shock to the system for a lot of buyers. And so you’re seeing the housing market really begin to slow down now. So these, these things all correlate together and I think it’s, it’s a common sense story that we can paint a Picture here, here as well. Right. So you know, again, short term we are very overbought. But then again it’s a stock pickers market.

It’s a sector pickers market. Yeah. As you know we love mining stocks. We’ve loved precious metals and miners now for a long time. And this group is the junior miners really starting to get going. I think you’re going to see an explosive move higher in this group. I think the Mag 7 stocks have just gotten so beaten down semis as well that there’s great value there and an opportunity to buy some of these key stocks on the cheap. And I think looking back on this a year or two, I think it’ll really, it’ll really prove to pay big dividends.

[00:14:05]:
Let’s take a look under the hood today. Again, good internals again today. That’s the one thing these internals just remember we got the Zweig bread thrust right last week as Thursday. And that’s such a high probability indicator. It’s the, it’s if you like repeating patterns. Sixteen times this has happened going back to 1950. Over the next six months the average return was better than 13%. Over the next year better than 23%.

And the market’s never been lower in any of those time frames. Right. 16 cases going back to 1950, that’s pretty powerful. That’s kind of thing you can bet on. Right. And if, look, if it doesn’t, if this time it doesn’t play out, doesn’t play out. But 16 for 16. Yeah, I’ll put my money on it.

17 for 17. And because there’s so many people following this now it really does help, you know, it really does help. It lends confidence to the markets. People act on that and that is that in and of itself creates a floor into the market bringing your buyers in. We got plenty of those by the way. Again the turtles today, good again 2 to 1 advanced decline for NYSE. NASDAQ 1 1/2 to 1 positive volume today, 60.6% up volume. NYSE 79.1% up volume.

[00:15:17]:
NASDAQ and again 13 billion, 13.1 billion shares traded today. And we also had what slightly more new stocks hitting a 52 week high then 52 week low. So we will take that in our sector watch today. This is also extremely good. A 10 of 11 sectors finished higher on the day. Not a lot of action either way frankly. Again it was Dow is up 300 Nasdaq of 95. I’m sure by now you’ll listen to this, you’ve already seen how the markets did.

Every index was up today. Led higher by the Dow Jones which is up 300 points or 7/10 of 1%. But again no real action either way. It was very, very quiet afternoon. The leaders today with financials up 9, 10 1%. Materials also up 9/10. One to the downside, energy. Oil’s getting smoked again.

Energy stocks today down 3, 10, 1%. But again every other sector was higher on the day. And our commodity watch today, you know they keep trying to hit, they keep trying to hit gold and it just keeps coming back. Gold today was down at one point. Down 50 bucks an ounce, give or take. And it finished down just $20 an ounce at 6, 10 1%. 3327 after hitting extreme overbought levels last week. You know we’ve had a bit of a shake.

[00:16:36]:
All these top callers are coming out calling a top in gold. I’ll just tell you, no one’s got a crystal ball that’s perfect. But we’ve been right on gold. We’ve been right on the miners. And I’m telling you this is that bull market for gold. Silver, Silver hadn’t really gotten going yet. This is that bull market though, especially for the miners. They’re so cheap here.

In particular the Juno miners. I think a lot of money’s gonna be made in this group and not in the short term either. This is gonna be a multi year bull market. Think about what happened from 2003 to 2007 before the financial cris just red hot. And then after the crash of 2008 the miners were the first group to bottom and then they skyrocketed again for a couple years. So this is, I think this is that kind of a setup here for the miners and we’re going to be very locked into this group for a long time. Especially with gold doing what it’s doing. A gold again to close today 33, 27, down 6, 10 1%.

Silver today down 3, 10% at 3289 an ounce. Copper today down 2 pennies at 46 a pound. Crude oil again down almost 2 bucks a barrel today. Just above 60 bucks a barrel. Kind of danger zone. Anytime you get below 60 you start thinking about okay, they can probably make, most of these companies can make money until let’s see, 55 and then they’re losing money. So this is a bit of the danger zone here. What do I think is going to happen? I think we’re looking, we’re looking to buy this group.

[00:18:04]:
Okay, I Think the economy is going to rebound. I think the global economy which has proven to be extremely resilient. Right. Led the way. It’s been leading the U.S. okay. I think when we get this trade stuff at least to some degree put in our rear view mirror, I think energy stocks are going to be a great buy here. We’ll be taking some action in the VO portfolio with probably with etf.

Right. With the leverage etf. We’re looking for that opportunity. We’re looking for one more shakeout. That’s really what we want to say. We’ve got a couple of more positions we want to add. We love the portfolio right now. We get one more shakeout.

Kind of scare people one more time about a potential double bottom. And then, and, and then we’ll, we’ll look to act on the, on these other positions that we’re looking at. But again I think, I think the portfolio looks fantastic right now. I think I, I like our portfolio, the order position right now as well as I think I have at any time. I think it’s really, we’re really set to make a lot of money into the year end and in 2026 which I think is going to be a very, very good year. Final of the day Bitcoin. Very quiet day today for bitcoin. Here it is.

[00:19:12]:
It kind of just looked like it did. It wasn’t even trading frankly. It’s just down fractionally over the last 24 hours at 94,491 as we covered yesterday. As I wrote up this morning, our letter. Look, it’s extreme robot on, on every momentum oscillator except for one. That’s money flow. It’s extreme overbought. And it’s also hit significant resistance.

95 to 97, 000 is significant. There’s like four months of trading that took place at this level. So that’s resistance now. And so again we, we want to add bitcoin on weakness. But this is not. It does look for all I know bitcoin will open at 110,000 tomorrow. We’ll be forced to buy back there. And we would because that would be a breakout.

But do I think that’s going to happen? No. Frankly everybody and their mother is bullish on bitcoin. I can’t find anybody doesn’t like bitcoin. That’s I don’t like. As a contrarian that makes me very uncomfortable. Combined with the fact that it’s extremely robotic. It’s at resistance. It’s not a sell signal.

[00:20:20]:
Okay. I’m just saying that I, I, we’re looking for that opportunity to get long again. I’d love to. I’d love to be able to buy bitcoin in the 77, 78. That’s, that’s my level. 77, 78. I don’t even think it’s going to get there, frankly. But anyway, it’s may just be more an issue of time, you know, Just need more time to pass.

We need some of the bulls in bitcoin to become bears again. This makes me nervous. I can’t find anyone that’s bearish on bitcoin here. Can you, can you? I’m not bearish on bitcoin. I’m just telling you the way we see it. But, you know, this is, this is not a, this is not a great setup if you’re long, in my opinion. Okay. All right, folks, that’s it for the day.

Hey, I hope you had a great day and even better night. We’ll see back here again tomorrow after the close.