In today's episode, Kip dives deep into the current market dynamics under Trump's presidency. Kip discusses the extreme fear dominating the sentiment indexes and the potential hidden opportunities in this market climate. He highlights Trump's tariff policies, and the crucial pivot needed for a market rally. Kip also sheds light on specific sectors to watch out for, like semiconductors and housing stocks, and their signals.

Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Tuesday after everyone. Kip Herriage here with the daily VRA investing podcast. Hope you had a good day today. I’m going to fly through this podcast fairly quick today. Got a number of things that must be attended to here just in short order, and I think it’ll benefit us all. So let me just say that. But let’s get right to it here today, because, look, yesterday, as Tyler covered was.

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It was a pretty monster day. But were we ever do that? Okay. Sentiment reaching levels of extreme fear that we’ve just never seen before. When you have the fear and greed index in extreme fear for like a month, that that’s never happened before. Same thing with AAI investor sentiment survey. 40 point spreads between bulls and bears. This is all coming as we’re what, in Trump’s first quarter as president. It’s a little insane, but see, this is the way the propaganda works.

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And boy, does it ever work. It’s even working on people that we know that are typically immune to it. I mean, it’s like the pandemic. It’s. It works. Indoctrination works. And these bears, and of course the media, 247 spin cycle, okay, even, even Fox, they’re all doing it. Everybody is addicted to worrying about Trump’s tariff policies.

It is insanity. It’s just another form of pandemic insanity. And that’s what the markets told us, I believe, yesterday. And that’s why we think this market is a melt up from here, because Trump’s got the bears right where he wants. And this is the mother of all bear traps. I really do believe that. And it’s coming at a good time, by the way. Today we got news on consumer confidence that it, it disappointed greatly again today.

So we’re seeing what this, they call a soft data. Right. Of consumer confidence surveys. The soft data is telling us that people are losing confidence here. Well, maybe it’s because they just lost 10% and the 401k in three weeks. You think that might have something to do with it? Yeah, There you go. And then the media again, 24 7. So that’s the pylon and it’s worked.

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But if you’re a contrarian, you look at these, okay, we’re now in an extremely bullish period, seasonally speaking, we’re about to enter April. And of course that means we’re wrapping up a quarter. So we’re getting quarterly earnings that start on April 11th with the big banks. Okay. It’s going to be a very good quarter all around. Now on the guidance calls you’re going to hear tariffs talked about more than, than anything else. Every major company on a Fortune 500 company is going to say the word tariff at least 20 times. That’s my, that’s my prediction.

I’m probably on the low side, but it won’t impact their earnings. So we’ll be talking about go if this happens. It may, it may, it may. So far that is not going to show up in the numbers. So we expect a very good first quarter. So we’re going to have front running of Q1 earnings, right? We’ve already, we already had front running of the Federal Reserve and now we see again the very, very dovish Fed meeting FOMC statement. And now we’ve got the end result of a market going higher. And again the season is sentiment, is sentiment may be the biggest of all because again, Trump is in his first three months in office.

I think if you have half a brain, you know that Trump is pretty good when it comes to business. If you have half a brain, you know that Trump’s, his cabinet and his financial advisors, economic advisors, these are the smartest, some of the smartest people in the world and they’re on Team Trump. So everything he’s been doing has been working, right? He’s got all these victories in the border victories with, I mean, there’s a list about Dei, right? List of about 10 major things he’s already accomplished in just his first couple of months in office, right? There’s just one thing that has, hasn’t been working and that’s the stock market. There’s, that’s it. Name another thing that Trump is failing at other than the stock market. So look, this has been our, our, our base case for some time now. Trump watches the stock market probably more than any president in the history of the presidency, right? He and every, all of his, all of his, all of insiders, friends, they all, they’ll all tell you this. The guy loves to watch, especially the SP 500, okay? The biggest companies and the apples of the world, okay, because he likes to be buddies with these guys.

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So you know that he is impacted by this and you know that every advisor he has is telling him, sir, make a pivot. All you got to do is just make the pivot. You’ve done your, you know, you’ve done your heavy lifting, you’ve done your art of the deal, you’ve played hardball and now all you got to do and they’ve already, they’re already starting to cave, okay? You just have to let them save face. And then just don’t end the World on April 2nd when you’re supposed to announce your tariff policy. Okay, so this is coming, this is the front running. This is all happening now. And so, yeah, we think this market’s going to zoom higher again. April is an extraordinarily bullish month.

I think it’s the second, second most bullish month of the year. So that’s coming up. Q and earnings again, we got a lot of reason to be bullish here. We just need one thing to happen. Need Trump to make a pivot because then what do the bears have to hang on to? The only thing they’ll have to hang on to that point is, well, we’re in a correction. And oh, by the way, the Atlanta Fed and maybe a few other economists are predicting the economy could go into recession or slow down dramatically. Right. Neither of which is going to be true.

Right. So I think, I think Trump’s got him right where he wants him. This is maybe the best looking bear trap as far from a construction point of view that I’ve seen in my career. And it’s because everybody is scared shitless. And that means Trump has got him right where he wants them, including a lot of people that should understand the propaganda game and the indoctrination is taking place. Okay? But at the same time, and Tyler just talked about this, the. Look, there are some negatives, okay? There are some negatives that have to be dealt with. Number one, why are the semiconductors and housing stocks this far below the 200? Why are they below the 200 day moving average? Yeah.

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And why are they, you know, what is it, 6, 8, 8% below both of them below the 200 day moving average. That’s a sell signal. They’re rolling their 200 day moving average now, are rolling over it. You might say, well, it’s just two sectors, but this problem is those are our leading sectors, right? There are leading sectors, both the economy and the stock market. So we got to get housing stocks going, which by the way, we believe is going to happen. But if I was a bear, that’s what I’d be looking at. I’d be looking at the 200 day moving averages rolling over for two leading sectors in housing and semis. Because they both have to get going here.

But look, all that’s going to take is a little bit of common sense from President Trump on this tariff policy and the Federal Reserve. It’s about time somebody gets in J Pal’s face. I don’t want it to be Trump. I want it to be Scott Bessant. And I think we saw Scott bet Treasury Secretary. I think we saw his work from the last Fed meeting because remember, the markets turned on a dime when Jay Powell said, no, we have not changed our inflation forecast for 2026 and 2027 because we think inflation is going to continue to spike lower. In other words, inflation is a near term concern only as it applies to tariffs. That was the biggie from Jay Powell’s pressure.

That’s why the markets have done what they’ve done, because Jay Powell is essentially admitting, look, even if we have the worst case scenario in tariffs, it’s not going to be a long term problem. We’re going to be kind of one and done with and then that’s going to be dealt with. So, and again, let’s just remember the art of the deal. This is how Trump negotiates and I think we’ll all be fine. But we want to see the semis, want to see housing stocks get going. We own both of these in leveraged ETFs, so it’s important that they do. But if you’re wondering what we’re watching, what concerns us, that concerns us honestly, there’s nothing else that concerns us. Investing system remains at 8 or 12 screens, bullish.

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Anything above 7 means we’re still not just in the market, but we’re still buying. And it won’t take much to get back to 9 or 9 or 10, 12, 9 or 10 screens bullish. But most importantly in the very system, the way we approach a market, timing, sector, timing, et cetera, is it’s 70% fundamental, 30% technical. So we never let the technicals override the fundamentals because I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen the technicals, you know, flash a major signal that’s completely wrong because the fundamentals actually were different. So that’s why we had that approach and it served us well over the years. Also today, GameStop, this just, just announced at the, at the close here, GameStop announced their corporate earnings. They actually made money. That’s back to back quarters that they’ve made money.

So Brian Cohen, the CEO, has clearly is in the process of cleaning this company up. Now. I doubt in my lifetime, I doubt that I’ll ever be in a GameStop location. I don’t know many people that plan to go to go to them anyway. I don’t know why you still need them with everything online and streaming. Okay. But Ryan Cohen’s pretty smart guy and he sees something, by the way, Ryan Cohen, CEO of GameStop takes no salary. Takes no salary.

All. Every one of the. I think he owns 36 million shares of. I saw that this morning. It stuck in my head. That may be wrong. The point is though, every single share that he owns of GameStop he’s bought with his own money. This is not acquired through stock options or something.

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This is, this is his money and he doesn’t take a salary. So. And you know, he’s, he’s. Let it be known that they intend to make really smart decisions with their almost $5 billion in cash they have. It’s really kind of crazy. Show me another company of this size. Okay. Oh, it is GameStop.

GameStop is a, is a, we’ll call it $12 billion company. All right. GameStop’s a $12 billion company. Show me another $12 billion company where 43% of that market cap is in cash. Because that’s what GameStop is. Almost 5 billion in cash makes it 43% of the entire market cap is in cash. Right. I don’t think you can show me another company of size that’s like that.

So Ryan Cohen has made it very clear they want to take their time with this money. And because they, you know, they developed a market, a market timing system of their own where they like to come to the market and do secondary offers whenever the stock gets hot. That’s financial engineering. And they kind of mastered it. Honestly. It’s cost long term shareholders because again, just when the stock gets ahead of steam, here comes a big secondary offering. But this is Cohen’s strategy. It is what he’s going to keep doing.

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Apparently. I have no problem with it as long as we know what he’s going to do. All we have to do is act with him. That turns us into more short term, you know, traders than we want to be on GameStop. But again, it’s CEOs doing it. If it’s a corporate strategy, I think it’s kind of what we have to do. But anyway, here’s the key point. We’ve been waiting forever and I’m gonna be on Charles Payne show tomorrow on Fox Business.

And I know Charles Payne owns and recommends GameStop to his folks as well. So I’m sure we’ll talk about this tomorrow. But they just announced it there. They’re going to execute a, a Bitcoin like Strat, a bitcoin strategy for their treasury holding. So again, almost $5 billion. How much of that are they going to put into bitcoin? I have not seen the breakdown of that. Yeah, I just saw the headline. But again they announced earnings today, turn into the profit and then announced they are going to purchase Bitcoin as a, in.

In as part of their treasury account. So looking forward to getting those details. We do own the stock. Would you like to stock here? I know a lot of our folks that join us on these podcasts own the stock as well. So there you go. And stock is only up four and a half percent, just below 27. That’s a little surprising, but I think maybe it’s because it’s just a lack of, a lack of information so far. Unless they’ve already announced another secondary that I’m not aware of.

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Also today, Tesla again, mass massive day yesterday. Fifth best day in the company’s history today up another 4%. They tried to hit it this morning down to 271 right now as I speak to you, it’s right at 290 even. Okay, up again almost right at 4% on the, on the day. So back to back 16% as Tyler covered yesterday from the, from Governor Tim Waltz, who of course was the running mate for Kamala. Don’t know how you pronounce her name. Don’t know anyone that does. She doesn’t know how to pronounce it.

But the unsuccessful attempt to become Vice president Tim Walsh just marked the lows the other day when he was talking about how happy he is if he’s having a bad day. He just pulled up his app and he looks at the quote on Tesla and it makes his day. Since that statement, Tesla’s up now 25%. That’s in very short order. So thank you again for that. Tesla bottom. Tim Waltz, let’s get into it here. Again, we are bullish.

We do think we’re gonna have, we think we’ve got a great bear trap set here for the bears. Trump just needs to give us a little bit of reason to celebrate with these tariffs and I believe that’s exactly what he’s gonna do. All right, let’s look at the hood today. Not a great day for the internals today. But again, yesterday was such a good day. Not that unusual really. Nasdaq today Vs decline 1 and a half to 1 negative. NYSE only negative by a couple hundred issues.

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No big deal there. Also really, honestly, same thing with NASDAQ volume one. Not even two to one negative one. And after one negative, NYSE was only negative about $300 million worth of trading. That’s nothing. And we did have about 75 more stocks hit a 52 week low than High but again there’s not a whole lot there in the internals. Yesterday again yesterday made up for a lot of sins. Today we had in sector watch, seven sectors finished higher, four finished lower.

Again, not kind of a, it was kind of a do nothing day frankly. It was a very inside day. Leaders today was communication services of 1.4% loser. Utilities down 1.6% and our commodity watch today. You just can’t, you just can’t stop gold, can you? You know I said on Friday’s podcast that you know, I think with this rotation coming out of European stocks back into US stocks and that is what’s happening, it’s going to happen even more as we move into in the second quarter in our opinion that you’re going to have a reversal of some of the other rotations that took place. And one of those I said on Friday podcast could be gold. The minute I said it I regretted it. Because gold is moving.

It has a life of its own now. Gold is going to keep going higher. You, you, you and your. In my career I’ve never seen a better looking 10 year chart. This massive rounded bottom cup and handle formation. There’s, I don’t think there’s ever been one like it. And that’s what gold is broken out of now. And it’s now, you know, really trying to go parabolic.

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Gold is going a lot higher and there’s no way the miners don’t go up with it. There may be rotations out of European stocks and US stocks might be a little profit taking in gold just because people aren’t wor worried about the tariff issue. You know, again if that’s how it plays out. But I just don’t think it’s going to matter. I think the physical demand for gold is so overwhelming with again central banks buying it hand over fist. This will make three years in a row they’ve increased their all time highs of gold purchases. Governments around the world doing the same thing. Something’s going on there and whether there may be again speculations everywhere.

They’re either going to revalue gold. It’s carried on the books at 42 bucks an ounce. Revaluing it to over 3,000 an ounce now would add about $800 billion to the Treasury. That gives you a lot of options. There’s a lot of things you can do with that money as far as leveraging it up again. Financial leverage, financial engineering. That’s something that Trump and Team Trump are going to be very focused on that the US Government really has never done before. This is a whole new world we’re getting here, folks.

And we’re the number one country on the planet to do it. Okay, we invented this stuff. And so as when it comes like, you know, central bank quantitative easing, that’s financial engineering. Like we, we, we, we, we, we engineered all of this and now I believe it’s coming to the U.S. government. Yeah, that may carry some downside risk, but I think with the right team doing it, I think it gives us massive upside potential. And again, the physical demand for gold everywhere at COMEX, etc. Is just a little insane.

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Hitting all time after all time high. So gold up 10 bucks announced today at 3,054. I don’t think any rotation is really going to hit it. Anything will be short term, frankly. Silver now starting to get hot. Up 2.4%. Back over $34. Announced 34.25.

Silver tends to move late cycle. So once gold gets ahead of steam, here comes silver and then we hope they confirm. And so I think that’s really what’s coming up here. I like silver a lot here as well. Copper today, just a house on fire. Copper up another two and a half percent today. 5:22 a pound, all time high in copper. What is Dr.

Copper telling us? The global economy is in just fine shape, thank you very much. Also it’s a lot of demand for copper. And I think this is a theme we should get used to folks. Right. When it comes to commodities, a theme we should get used to not yet for oil because Trump wants oil lower. But just give it a little time. I think in a year or two oil is going to catch, I think it’s going to catch fire as well. Energy stocks are telling us that now, aren’t they? We’re seeing energy stocks move up as oil prices move down in a lot of, a lot of cases.

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So that’s a good sign. Longer term oil today flat $69.18. And finally the day bitcoin again really kind of a do nothing day for bitcoin. But it is up slightly today. 87,950. Actually that’s kind of unchanged on the day. All right folks, that’s it for the day. We’re looking forward to getting more news on this GameStop report.

What they’re going to be doing with bitcoin. Looking forward to a Tesla. Continue back over the 200 day, continue to charge higher. I think we think that’s going to happen. And now there’s rotation that needs to come back into the semis, back into housing stocks. That’s really when we’re going to know we got a market to rock and rolling. And that’s what we think March is going to look like. All right.

As these bears are forced to capitulate. And was a perfectly constructed bear trap. All right, folks, that’s it for today. Hope you had a great day and a better night. We’ll see back here again tomorrow after the close.