In today's episode, Kip breaks down an action-packed session for our markets. Beginning with the shocking news over the weekend of the attempted assassination of President Donal Trump. His defiant response has only fueled his growing support, and today the markets rallied, at least in part, due to the "Trump Trade" and future prospects under his second term as president. Tune into today's VRA Podcast to learn more.

Don’t look back to because The market is closed. Good Monday afternoon, everyone. Kip Herriage here with the VRA investing podcast. Hope you had a good day today.

We start today’s podcast just with the very sobering news over the weekend. Of course, the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. Looks like he may be future president as well today, by the way, he picked JD Vance, a senator from Ohio, as his running mate, can be his vice president.

Looks like a pretty formidable team. But, of course, Saturday, by now, everyone knows what happened. Of course, we all have the same questions, right? How could this have happened? Not really getting any answers. The biggest question I have is, with everything we knew about this shooter being on the premises, being seen crawling across the roof, obviously, the snipers saw him. Counter snipers for the Secret Service were, had them in the scopes for over 40 seconds, as we’re told. You can see it in the video. And yet they left Trump on stage knowing, knowing what was happening, they left Trump on stage. And of course, Secret Service has refused to do a press conference or make a statement about this.

Kip Herriage [00:01:12]:
So now the FBI has the case. Yes, the same FBI that produced the Russia host, the same FBI that launched a coup against Trump, are in charge of the investigation. And, of course, they’ve already tagged it as a lone shooter attack from a mysterious young man. So I think the tell is probably that they’ve already called it, already said he acted alone, even before they got on the cell phone, which I heard they have gotten into it now, but they already said he acted alone. A lot of questions. A lot of questions. My guess is he had help, I think, without question, he had some help. And, of course, Secret Service did a horrible job here.

[00:01:52]:
But the takeaway is that Trump survived miraculous, miraculously. So if he hadn’t turned his head just a little bit, of course he wouldn’t still be here with us. And his defiant reaction, that’s really what stands out, you know, following the shooting, really remarkable. Of course, the country’s falling back in love with Trump, even though a lot of those it didn’t have as well now. So very, very thankful that Trump was protected, I think, as he was, and that I think this is his election to lose without question now. So we’ll continue to pray for his safety and for his success. It’s certainly in the best interest of America. As we also wrote this morning to our very members, this continues.

It now really probably takes the red pilling of America up on, puts it on steroids, makes it go parabolic, because, again, many people woken up to the insanity that we don’t want this country to go down that road anymore. And that’s a very good thing. It’s one of our five big bride mega trends, the red pilling of America. And people are waking up. And that’s always a good thing, right? Waking up to the truth instead of the lies. And unfortunately, at least where the Democrat party is now, that is what they are. They are the party of far leftist, communist and projection artists, gaslighters. It’s just really infuriating to even listen to them talk.

[00:03:31]:
Okay, we’ll move on now. Good day today. All time highs, all time highs again today. We had all time intraday highs on Friday for the Dow Jones got all time closing highs today. First one this May for the Dow Jones, which finished up a half percent today. Our SBF hundred finished up a quarter percent. Nasdaq up 14th to 1%. And Russ 2000, which has just been a house on fire, up another 1.8% today.

Small caps are really beginning to take off. Liftoff here. Semis today were down slightly. Open strong down slightly. We did finish off the highs today. But again, it’s been a great rally here and it’s good to see it continue. Of course, now the RNC convention begins to, I guess it’s already kicked off here, so it’ll be interesting to watch that. See the, I think the energy level is going to be extraordinarily high.

Today was really about the Trump trade. This was again the markets moving higher. When the futures market opened, stocks were higher. That only became more the case when the market officially opened at 930 Eastern Standard time. And then stocks that are Trump trade stocks, of course, DJT, which is Donald J. Trump, his initials, and also Trump media soared today at one point up as much as I think it was up in the pre market, about 60% finished up on the day, 18%. But anything tied to Trump, even Tesla, which of course, Elon Musk came out within about an hour of the shooting and loudly endorsed Trump on Saturday. And Trump, Trump has expressed a like for Elon and for Tesla.

[00:05:17]:
Tesla was up nice today, although it also sell off the highs. Trump has called himself the crypto president is going to speak at a crypto meeting here pretty soon, I think the end of this month in Nashville, next big crypto conference. And bitcoin responded immediately from the election, from the, from the shooting, frankly, finishing up today from Friday’s close, a big 10.5%. A little more share with you on that. Cover that in our bitcoin section of the podcast small caps again, soaring. We’re up. Was it four straight days, really? It’s been parabolic from Wednesday’s lows. And if Trump is going to be president, then one thing you can be pretty certain of is that the us economy is going to be strong, which means the us markets will continue to be strong.

A lot of people have been believing that the markets were already discounting a Trump win. What, we saw a little bit more of that today, didn’t we? And again, if the economy’s going to do well, small caps will do well. Over 70% of all small cap revenue, small cap companies revenue come from domestic sources. That’s another reason they’ve been taken off. And we like this group very much. As a reminder, small caps, even though they’ve broken out their 52 week highs, they’re still about 12% below the all time highs, which are almost three years ago. Small caps have some room to run. We think the markets are giving us a gift with a lot of different areas, but certainly in small caps.

[00:06:51]:
We like this group here, continue to like it, think it’s going to continue to move higher. What else? Semis, again, have been on a tear. It’s another group, I think you can call it a Trump trade, because again, it’s very strong America based economy. Now we have the chips act. Of course, that was actually to give thanks to Biden for that. And that’s funneling so many, many billions of dollars into us semiconductor companies. We look that group to continue moving higher. Of course, if the semis are moving higher, that means the market’s going to move higher because the semis lead in both directions.

End of the day, whether we’re talking about the Trump trade, we’re talking about these gains in the stock market. The bigger picture now is that this rotation that we’ve been talking about, I’ve been talking about the last week, this broadening action internal is getting so much better. Tyler’s reminding me for this podcast that the advanced decline line just hit a new all time high. Remember, there were a lot of people, a lot of very loud voices over the last month or so that were saying, boy, this market is going to fall apart because the internals market breath has been so horrible. Well, we told you that was the wrong. And that the truth was that because the generals were leading, the rest of the market would play catch up. A rising tide lifts all boats. That’s what the generals did.

[00:08:12]:
Now here comes market breath. Small caps rallying. This is rotation taking place. This is textbook bull market action. We’ve seen it for some time. Matter of fact, we’ve seen this really from the birth of the bull market in October 2022. And again, we think that continues. We do look for second quarter earnings which have already kicked off.

Goldman reported today pretty good numbers. Of course, the JPMorgan city, Wells Fargo reported on Friday and they all three sold off. But those gains were recouped today. BKX, the bank index, finished up a big 1.7% today. XLF, the enter the financial ETF actually hit an all time high on Friday and again today. So fintech doing, doing quite well again, market broadening. This is going to be, we believe, a familiar theme. So this week is going to be we’ll get about 40, 45 companies and this, we have 100 reporting earnings this week.

Again, we’re looking for 9% earnings growth. That’s, that’s the official estimate for analysts, 9% earnings growth in the second quarter. We think it’s going to come in much higher than that. And, but we’ll really get, the majority of companies begin reporting next week. We’ll get 130 companies reporting next week gets 500. And then finally, as August rolls around, we’ll start getting earnings from small cap. So over the next four weeks, we’ve got a long Runway here to go through Q two earnings. Finally on this subject, we have eleven of twelve VRA investing system screens remain bullish.

[00:09:47]:
We’ve been at that level now for quite some time. That is back up the territory. And even as we’re hitting extreme overbought levels in our broad markets, we’re just hitting that. And we’re not extremely bought on steroids. Our most overbought designation, where all of our momentum oscillators are overbought, extremely bought. That’s not the case. Some are, though. So it is time to start using some discipline.

But by no means are we talking about selling anything here, and here’s the big reason for that. Here’s why we think we have a really long Runway in front of us. Our two top market timing indicators for medium to long term market moves outside of our shorter term momentum oscillators. Our medium to long term ones are the percentage of stocks in the SPF hundred above the 50 day and the 200 day moving average. And as of as the Fridays close, I haven’t updated as of today yet because the Friday’s close, just 70.2% of the SB 500 was above the 50 day moving average. That is not a really high number. Until we get to better than 90%, we won’t be concerned. This market will remain cheap, cheap ish.

Anyway, as far as the percent above the 200 day, that number just sits at 74.8%. Again, same thing. Until we get to over 90%, frankly, it’s 92, 93%. That’s when we will be taking some profits. Until then, we see a long Runway. Again, we may be short term of a bot. That’s the reason for some discipline. And then what do we do? We buy the dip.

[00:11:26]:
That’s been the smartest of smart money strategies from the birth of this bull market. We expect that will continue to be the case. All right, let’s get into the internals. Today. Again, we’ve been on a serious run with the internals. Been really hot. Not as hot today, but still very good. Nasdaq today, one and a half to one, positive on both advanced decline and volume.

Nyse, not quite as great. Very close to it, though. One and a half to one on advanced decline. Volume was positive by about $400 million worth of trading for NYSE. Again, solid days here. And also, this is what continues to be garlic strong, the 52 week highs to lows. Today we had 658 stocks hitting a new 52 week high to just 50 hitting a new 52 week low. It won’t be too long until we’re talking about numbers of over 1000 stocks hitting a 52 week high on a daily basis.

That’s when the markets really get rolling again. We’re not quite there yet, but we’re headed in the right direction. And our sector watch today, a little bit of a mixed bag here, but most of the gains where most of the sectors did finish higher, six sector students higher, led by energy of one and a half percent, financials of 1.4%. To the downside, really just one group, utilities, kind of a group of their own, frankly. Down 2.4%. Centerpoint energy is now in the crosshairs of our governor, Greg Abbott, for their horrible handling of really everything. Frankly, our energy situation in the Houston area, really throughout Texas, has changed dramatically in the last few years. But now with this hurricane barrel, which still has so many people, our neighbors, that are without power, of course, we were for a short while, we could handle it.

[00:13:14]:
We can handle it a couple days, but there are a lot of people in this area that cannot handle it now. Deaths are starting to pile up against Centerpoint energy, Houston Democrat leadership, and yes, Greg Abbott, who is now reacting forcefully. It’s a little bit late. Mister Abbott, you knew about these issues. We all knew about these issues. It’s your job to take care of this. You haven’t done that. It’s too bad, again, Ron DeSantis isn’t our governor because this would have been a minor hiccup because only a cat one storm.

So everyone in the Houston area, reach out to us so we can do anything to help you. And if you know someone that’s in need of help, please reach out and let us know. Let’s see what’s next here. Commodity watch. You know, interesting things happening here because, and I’ve got some stats for you here that I think are pretty compelling. Goal today, first of all, goal was up $6 an ounce. Had been much higher today, midday, up just at one point today, less than $20 away from all time highs. Closed at 24 27.

I put it right at about $40 away from all time high. Again, up $6 today at 24 27. Silver today was down eight tenths of 1% at 30 90. $30.90 an ounce. Copper down 1.7% today to 451 a pound. Crude oil just down slightly, down nine cents a barrel at 80 93. And I will mention this about the gold in the miners because part of the Trump trade we talked about the beginning of this podcast, this is getting very little attention, is gold and the miners, because in Trump’s term, from the day he took office until the day he left office, 2016 to 2020, gold was up 83%. Not many people talking about this gold rallied sharply.

[00:15:08]:
The miners, the gold miners did even better, up more than right at 250% over that four year period. So we like this group. We’ve liked it for a long time. We think the bull market, this is that bull market in precious metals and miners as well. And gold and silver, silver didn’t do quite as well. Silver’s up 40% over Trump’s first term. But again, assuming Trump’s going to win, knock on wood, we still like this group. It really doesn’t matter who wins.

Frankly, if Biden were to win again, they probably, gold would probably do better because of the expectation of massive money printing. But still, we’re going to have to keep putting a lot of money, folks. We got to pay for the debt. And gold has broken down on the charts. Beautiful looking charts. The miners now trading at better than two year highs. The group looks fantastic as well. And again, we like this data that points to much higher prices.

Should Trump and now JD Vance win in November? Finally today, bitcoin, interesting. Again, another, another Trump trade for the crypto president. Bitcoin today had a, as I said earlier, a sharp rally right now trading at just below 64,060 3800. Again, that’s up almost 11% from Friday’s close. And in addition to the Trump trade effect, we also this morning, Larry Fink, you may have seen this, did an interview, and he said that, where he said bitcoin is legitimate. Okay. Well, okay. You have the leading ETF that blackrocket sponsored.

[00:16:47]:
So I hope that’s your view. But remember, Larry Fink has gone from just a couple of years to hating and calling it a scam to now saying it’s legitimate. And, of course, making serious bank from their sponsorship of bitcoin ETF. And, of course, they’ve got filings for several ether etfs as well. All right, folks, that’s it for the day. Hope you had a great day, maybe a better night. We’ll see you back here again tomorrow after the close.