In today's episode, Tyler breaks down an action-packed day in the markets as we navigate through a rollercoaster of events. We saw the Dow Jones hit an all-time high and the S&P 500 near its record peak, only for the markets to experience a shake-up due to an unexpected early earnings release from semiconductor company ASML. PLUS, we will dive into President Trump's recent remarkets at the economic club of Chicago. Tune into today's podcast to learn more.

Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Tuesday 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 certainly an eventful day from our markets today, so we’ll go ahead and jump right into today’s action. We started out the day positive across the board. Good looking action from the open this morning. The Dow Jones hit an all time high.

The S&P 500 was banging on the door of an all time high as well. And then we got a little bit of a mix up out there today from ASML, the semiconductor company, which was scheduled to release their earnings tomorrow morning ahead of the open, but due to an accident. Use air quotes there. They released their earnings one day early. And on the initial look, it was actually pretty good numbers. They beat on revenue, they beat on earnings as well. But when we dive into their forward guidance, that is where things fell apart, where their bookings for Q three ended up falling by over 50% in. That is what really shocked the market.

[00:01:25]:
Looking forward, they essentially cut their revenue guidance, they cut their gross margin as well. Both big hits there, and the stock absolutely just cratered. And it really is on the fear that things are slowing down in the us economy. At least that is what the company was going to say tomorrow when their earnings report came out. And that fear about the slowdown is what really took the stock lower, took a large part of the market lower with it as well. So, yes, we saw a big hit to the tech space today, but throughout the podcast, I’ll explain why we don’t have any big concerns from that here. And again, the initial reports here were solid revenue growth, solid earnings. But it was the forward guidance that spooked the market so much.

ASML was down over 16% on the day to day, and then that cascaded into the rest of our market, taking tech lower first. And the rest of our major indexes followed, except for the small caps, which I’ll get to here more in a minute. But point here being is the slowdown is what concerned everybody. Now, remember, this is just guidance here, right? So it’s a whole lot of people freaking out about something that hasn’t even happened yet, hasn’t come to pass. You know, we’ve talked about this here a lot, and this idea that a recession must be coming to the us economy. Well, we see a ton of facts that state otherwise in this market, not to mention the fact that once Trump gets elected in November, and we’ve talked about all of the reasons why the economy will do so well under Trump. We’ve coined it the Trump economic miracle, and this will be the Trump economic miracle 2.0 here. He talked about it in his Bloomberg address to the Chicago Board of Economics today, where if you happen to catch part of that, Trump just eviscerated the guy who is interviewing today, at least as far as the reports go.

[00:03:35]:
The audience were of, you know, business people from Chicago, undecided voters. If you wouldn’t have known that going into it, you would have been stunned because the audience reaction to just about everything Trump had to say, it was almost like it was a Trump rally there. I mean, he just made this Bloomberg interviewer, or whoever it was, look like an utter buffoon in this interview. It really was just a masterclass in an interview format there. It was really quite a fun interview to watch. But kind of back to the ASML story here and the economy in general. Yes, we’ve seen a slowdown in the economy. Slowdown does not mean recession.

And again, I’ll get to the facts that matter most here in a minute. But what is important to remember here with ASML, this company is completely different from, let’s say, Nvidia out there, right? They make some of the high end products that chip makers use. But at the end of the day, ASML is only one 10th of the size of Nvidia. So yes, this spooked the market here, but we look at this as more of a one off. And the real concern was for the economy. But if you’re worried I about the us economy, just remember a few of these facts that we’ve been sharing a lot here over the last couple of years, which is that 40% of Americans own their home outright. Now, there’s a record high number of Americans. Consumer net worth is at an all time high.

[00:05:15]:
Net equity in homes, all time high. Credit scores all time high. You’re getting the trend here, right? Since the financial crisis, consumers have cut their debt to disposable income by 25%. And corporate debt is on the same page as well. Corporate debt to market cap right now is at 50 year lows. So those are just a few of the strong underlying trends of this economy right now. There’s plenty more that we could talk about as well in showing the strength of this economy. Of course, it has absolutely nothing to do with the Biden Harris administration.

This is all carrying over from the Trump economic miracle from his first term. And you remember the really now famous quote from Obama when he was talking about jobs creation. Does Trump just have a magic wand that he’s going to wave and get all these things done. Well, apparently he does, because we’ve seen it from 2016 to 2020. Right. And we expect to see it again with Trump. Round two here. But again, back to ASML, we see this as more of a one off story and a lot of the fears being built around it right now, we don’t see is coming to pass.

[00:06:33]:
But it was big news on the day and it was enough to hit the market pretty hard today. So let’s take a look at our market action here on the day. I have one more point to make about the Bloomberg interview. Well, if it comes to me, I’ll get back to it here. Oh, I remember. So we’ve talked a lot about here that the mainstream economists very rarely get any calls, right. We’ve seen it time and time again. Like in 2020, going into 2021, 100% of mainstream economists were calling for a recession that never came to pass.

You know, when 100% of economists are on one side of an argument, it usually pays to take the other side of that argument. Yet they still continue to reference these so called economists. Right? And so what they’re talking about is Trump’s economic plan, how it’s going to add so much debt, which I do agree, Trump’s not exactly the president of austerity, but the growth is what matters most. You know, you don’t save your way out of debt, you’ve got to grow your way out of it. I think that’s what his plan leans towards. So when you have a majority of economists saying that Trump’s economic plan is somehow worse and is going to add more debt to the economy than Kamala’s, then you’re smoking something, right? These economists, again, very, very rarely get these calls, right. So we’re absolutely fine taking the other side of that bet here. And again, it was just a masterclass and how to handle a opposition interview like this.

[00:08:16]:
The interviewer just tried time and time again to interrupt him, to come back with kind of gotcha moments, and the crowd was just having none of it. It was very encouraging to see. All right, so next up here, let’s take a look at our market action on the day to day, where we did finish lower across the board. And I will point out we did finish closer to the lows of the day, which is not what you want to see. But there were certainly some bright spots out there. So hang in there with me here. Again, small caps did lead the way today, finishing just fractionally higher on the day Russell 2000 up 0.05% to 22 49. Next up, the Dow Jones was up, or, excuse me, down three quarters of 1%, or 324 points to 42,740 after hitting an all time high this morning.

Also point out the transports actually hit a 52 week high this morning as well, which is very encouraging to see. But excuse me, did pull back to finish negative on the day today. After that, the S and P 500 down three quarters of 1% as well to 5815. But I got to stop there and point out as well, not only have we seen the S and P 500 hitting all time high after all time high, but we’re seeing the equal weight s and P 500 did hit an all time high here today. As many people would say, oh, it’s only seven stocks taking this market higher. Then why is the equal weight s and P 500 also hitting all time high after all time high and mid captain S and P 500 hitting all time high after all time high again. Also Mdy is the mid cap ETF hit an all time high before pulling back today. So as we say here often, even though we pulled back today, new highs still beget new highs after that.

[00:10:13]:
The Nasdaq was down a full 1% on the day today to 18,315, while the semis were hit hard today, down 5.4%. Again, ASML being down 16% certainly didn’t help that cause. But again, we look at this as more of a one off here with this company. And so no big concerns for us here, but certainly something we’re keeping an eye on. But again, no big concerns for the industry as a whole as of right now. Next up, let’s take a look at one of the majority bright spots on the day to day, and that was from the internals, which this morning when our major indexes began moving lower. The internals were firmly, firmly positive even an hour before the close. With our major indexes near the lows of the day, the internals were positive across the board.

Now, we did pull back from that a little bit, but not much. All right, so let’s take a look here. We did have more advancing stocks than declining stocks on the NYSE, even if only barely, but slightly negative on the Nasdaq. Pretty much even on the day today. But on a day with the Nasdaq down 1%. We’ll take it. Next up, 52 week highs, lows came in positive across the board. Our bright spot on the day to day coming in with a combined 583 stocks.

[00:11:40]:
It might be more than that with the last second refresh year to just 112 stocks hitting 52 week lows. And similar story from volume did come in slightly negative on the NYSE, but nicely positive on the Nasdaq today. So on a day with three out of our four major indexes down three quarters of a percent or worse, we would call these internals pretty good here and exactly what you want to see from the market action like we saw today. I’ll also point out today the ten year was lower on the day by about one and a half percent at a 4.03. But the US dollar continuing some of its move higher. There were some comments and from Trump in there as well about the strength of the us dollar during that Bloomberg interview today, talking about companies that want to get rid of the us dollar’s dominance if they want to stop using the US dollar as their reserve currency, that he would hit them with 100% tariffs across the board to protect the strength of the US dollar. All right, next up here. Well, one more factor here, the VIX.

You know, on a day like today, you might expect the VIX to be up big, just marginally higher on the day, with a lot of fears out there right now. All right, so next up here, taking a look at our sectors on the day to day. Get a quick refresh of these screens as well. We finished with five out of our eleven s and P 500 sectors higher on the day today. We were led by real estate, up nicely. But as we say here often, you know, the real estate sector is mostly made up of reits in the s and P 500. So we, like the home builders, which hit an all time high today, you know, and housing is leading, we look at that as a leading economic indicator. And when housing is hitting an all time high, you do not want to be short this market after that.

[00:13:44]:
Excuse me, we had consumer staples and utilities here continuing to just tread higher, really. And what that tells us is the market is a forward looking indicator that tells us that yields are at least, investors are making big bets that yields will continue lower. We also had financials performing well today, hitting an all time high. And then for our laggards on the day, we had energy as oil got hit hard today, followed by tech, healthcare and industrials, which actually hit an all time high as well before pulling back into the close today. So again, just five out of our eleven sectors hitting or higher on the day to day. But again, no major concerns for us there. Next up, looking at our commodities on the day today. Good, good action here.

Some green on the screen with gold up half a percent now to 26 95. And I’ll also point out that GDX, the gold miner ETF, which we have been pounding the table on here, was up nicely today, just under 1.3%. Next up, silver, up 1.2% at $31.69 an ounce. Then copper now down 1.4% at $4.34 pound. And then oil, as I mentioned, getting hit hard today, all the way back down into the $70 a barrel range, down 3.9% now at $70.94 a barrel. And finally here for today, bitcoin on a big move here, hitting its highest level since late July. Today got almost back to 68,000. Got to $67,821 of bitcoin.

It has pulled back some, still up 1.15% to $66,670 of bitcoin. Folks, that is all that we have time for here today. Please be sure to subscribe to receive our VrA podcasts 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.