In today's episode, Tyler breaks down today's rocky trading day for our major indexes, despite a weak session, he lays out why the VRA remains so bullish. He also covers bond yields making new multi-month highs and discusses why rising yields might not be as concerning as they appear. 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. Hope the start to your week has been good as well. Unfortunately for the markets, we got a bit of a turnaround Tuesday, which if you tuned into Kip’s podcast yesterday, you might have guessed as we joke about here often, Kip gets the big up days and I inevitably get the down days here. So I should have taken yesterday’s podcast is the moral of the story here. But opening up this morning, our major indexes were higher across the board.

Semis continued to lead the way, but we couldn’t hold on to those gains today as our major indexes sold off across the board here. All four major indexes finishing lower on the day. Semis finishing lower on the day here as well. Some slight good news. We got a little bit of pop into the close to finish. Just slightly off the lows of the day, but there were certainly some bright spots out there today which we’ll get to in the podcast here today. Some good economic news on job openings out earlier today, but the concern remains that yields continue to move higher, hitting a multi month high here today for the 10 year, up another one and a half percent today now at Drumroll 4.68%. Now we’ve talked about this here a lot on the podcast.

[00:01:38]:
It’s interesting to see so many people so concerned about yields. Yes, this is the higher end of the spectrum of what we’ve seen over really, you know, the last decade plus here. But in our view there’s no reason to be concerned about yields at a 4% level here. Remember, we’ve equated this time period the roaring 2020s meets innovation, revolution meets the Trump Doctrine 2.0. All of these great things we have working for us here. We compared it to the 1995 to 2000.com melt up where the NASDAQ rallied 575%. During that time period, yields averaged above a 6%. So no, yields at 4 1/2% aren’t a concern for us here.

You know, we continue to look at at this from many different angles, which I’ll jump into a few here. But first and foremost, if you take a long term view at this, zoom out on yields and we remain in the long term downtrend for yields and we think that’s going to continue from here. Trump was speaking today at Mar a Lago and what was it ended up being a Fantastic press conference. But he said it himself too, that interest rates are too high. And we would agree with him there, they are too restrictive here. But at the same time, and again, we’ve talked about this here often here, that rates are not at levels that have us concerned. So too restrictive, yes, but concerning, no, we would not say so. And right now we’ve got yields at overbought, heavily overbought levels here, right up against resistance as well.

[00:03:26]:
This is about where we would expect yields to start pulling back. And once we can get into some new Trump era policies which begin in just 13 days here now, just less than two weeks away from the inauguration, we think we’ll, we expect to see that play out very quickly here. Now on that note, we do get asked often, how do you see yields heading lower from here? You know, especially when we’re talking about the future of a strong economy getting, you know, the Trump Economic Miracle 2.0. So if the economy is going to strengthen, why would yields head lower from here? And it is a great question with a very simple answer though. And that answer is really one word, gravity. When you look around the world and you look at yields from other developed nations, the United States has essentially the highest yield of any developed nation out there. Take a look at China where you’ve got yields collapsing right now, hitting all time lows on multiple end of the yield spectrum for China. You know, so where else are you going to invest in bonds? Right? Well, China’s off the table, right? You know, a riskier economy, a more controlling government and lower yields.

No, no one wants anything to do with that. Germany in the EU is the EU’s largest economy, but the German 10 year boond is over 2% lower than than where US yields are today. You know, so where else are you going to go here in America? You’re going to go to Canada. You know, the 10 year yield is in the low threes right now. So you’re going to tell me if you’re a bond investor, a big bond investor, where are you putting your money to work right now? You know, are you going to go look at a developing nation to get higher yields? You know, nations that risk default on their debt time and time again? Probably not. Are you going to look into a European country which seems to be doubling down on their fascist tendency here tendencies here? And, and you know, thank God that we have a new regime coming into power here in the US that actually calls out the European Union on their hypocrisy here. Right. So no, you’re not Going to look at a European country, the obvious choice is the strength and security of U.S. Government bonds where we have not defaulted on our deb before. And so again, as we look around the world, we see this as simple gravity. When you have no bond yields that can compete with US Debt at these levels, you know, the, the US Dollar remains the king as well. The US Bond market remains the king here. We think it’s simple gravity that money will continue to flood into the US Economy, especially if we can get some reshoring like we saw from 2016 to 2020 in Trump’s first term from companies. It’s going to be massive, massive investments in the US Just today in Trump’s press conference, he got a commitment of an additional $20 billion to be invested here in the US from foreign dignitaries or companies as well. You know, add that into Japan’s believe SoftBank, right.

[00:06:49]:
Committing $100 billion already to invest in the U.S. trump is working on making that 200 billion here now. So you can see all of the exciting things happening here. But, you know, I’ll pause one more time here on this Trump press conference from today because as I was watching it, just tuned into some of it here, I just have to say what a breath of fresh air this is to have Trump back here. You know, I was looking at the topics he was covering from the Middle east to potentially introducing Greenland and Canada into the United States, which are looking more and more like real possibilities. Right. And at the very least, bring Canada in line from where they are right now. Already we’ve got Justin Trudeau out of office.

How good is that? Right. But how great is it overall to have a president back who actually answers the questions that Americans care about, who actually addresses the topics that other politicians, other politicians shy away from? Right. He’s actually addressing the American people and their concerns, really, in this short press conference, all I could get away, take away from it, was that Trump has covered more topics in 30 minutes of watching this than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris did in all of 2024 campaigning for the presidency. Right. They wouldn’t even touch some of these topics during the time. But what’s so important, I think, about having a charismatic leader like Donald Trump is that these are exciting topics. This makes us seem like not the sun is setting on America anymore, but the sun is rising and we are due for a golden age. That’s something we’ve talked about here, even under the Biden Harris administration.

[00:08:47]:
We published a book about it in 2022, the big bribe where we called then for roaring 2000s, called then for an innovation revolution. And now, you know, two little over two years since we published that book, and look at how many of those calls have come true and are just now beginning to really take hold here. So we couldn’t be more excited about what we have to look forward to here. Right. I mean, we’re looking at the potential for a U. S expansion for the first time since the 1950s when we added Alaska and Hawaii to the United States. Now we’re looking at a Manifest Destiny 2.0. And for all those who may have forgotten from their history classes, Manifest Destiny was from the mid-1800s when the US decided we were going to control east to west coast of America.

And that’s what happened. Right? We took from the east coast all the way to California, Oregon, Washington. Now we’ve got manifest Destiny 2.0, north and south. Let’s go ahead. Let’s get and welcome Canada into the fold. Welcome Mexico into the fold. What a beautiful country that’s been absolutely ruined by corrupt politicians and cartels. Right? So let’s go north to south and include Greenland in that as well.

[00:10:09]:
Trump addressed some of that today. Not on the Mexico front, but. But on the Panama Canal front. And what a boondoggle it was for Jimmy Carter to have sold it in the 70s, right. And how it might have cost him an election at the time as well. So now we’re getting back to including these areas and territories into the United States and for very good reason, not just economic, but military strength as well, which, I mean, well, that’s another topic for another podcast. But the US Needs to be the military leader of the world. And, you know, in my opinion, I’m sure many people would disagree, but we have to get away from the endless wars, right? From what we’ve done in the Middle east, destabilizing the region, and get back to common sense policies.

And all of the things he talked about today are very common sense. You know, yes, these are complex topics, but he doesn’t make them complicated. Right? No added needed un or sorry, no added unnecessary steps in there. One other, as you’ve likely already heard, he talked about renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. I mean, these are just fun, exciting things that, you know, these are the kinds of comments that make someone proud to be an American. And hopefully, you know, our future Canadian brothers and sisters will be happy to be Americans as well. Now, Pierre Po Poier. I don’t know how to say his name exactly, but he’s been a rock solid politician to go against Trudeau in Canada.

[00:11:39]:
He’s already come out and said that, you know, he won’t allow it to happen. He’s kind of the front runner on the betting sites right now to become the next prime minister of Canada. We’ll see what happens. You know, he’s taking a hard stance now. Maybe he’s using it as a negotiating tactic as well. So we’ll see. But again, this guy Trump technically isn’t even in office yet. And he has accomplished more in the last two months since the November election than Biden and Kamala did in four years.

There’s no question about that at this point now. So, yes, we are very excited about the next four years and not just because of Trump. You know, we look for this bull market to continue into 2030 as part of our Innovation Revolution theme, roaring2020s. And then of course now added the Trump Economic Miracle 2.0. And that has us even more bullish. So on a day like today, it’s always good to recap, you know, your longer term thesis on these things. We’ve been laying out our 2025 forecast in our daily updates@v letter.com if you’re not already a member and you want to see what our forecasts are for the year, come and join us. We’ve got a 14 day free trial going on right now to get access to everything that the VRA has to offer.

[00:12:54]:
So come and join us. We love to have you with us. Again, that website is v letter.com so, yes, we do remain incredibly bullish here even after a day like today. And the question in our heads actually remains, are we bullish enough here at these levels, which is, you know, with all the fear that you see out there, you know, we like being the contrarians in that regard, looking at the sentiment indicators still, we’ve got the fear and greed index at fear mode on the verge of extreme fear as well, which, you know, makes sense. I’m sure there’s a lot of uncertainty for people out there. But you know, in our view, the smart money move remains to buy the dip. And we look at today is no exception to that as well. So let’s take a look at our market action on the day today.

As I mentioned earlier, we did finish lower for our major indexes. Excuse me, across the board here. So not what you want to see, but we did have tech leading the way lower. And it’s kind of a little bit of this, you know, rolling rotation that we’ve talked about. Here over the last six months as well. Where we had energy in the Dow lagging yesterday, today we had energy and technically the Dow led as well. And I’ve got one more point on that too. But again we don’t look at this as a larger move, but another opportunity to buy the dip.

[00:14:23]:
So NASDAQ down 1.89% at 19,489. After that the S&P was also down over 1% on the day to day small caps down 3/4 of 1% and then the Dow down 410 of 1% at 42,528. But I do want to stop and point out here that for the Dow, one important factor if you’re a Dow theorist is you want to see the transports leading the Dow or vice versa as well. But kind of the common take from it there is that when one is making new highs, the other is soon to follow. Well, the transports despite the Dow being down yesterday, actually finished up yesterday. Despite our markets finishing lower across the board today, the transports were still up a quarter of 1% on the day. And it found a nice support level here above their 200 day moving average. We want to see that hold and this continue.

So a little bright spot in there on a day of red. And we’ll get through a couple more bright spots here on the day as well. But let’s take a look first at our internals. There was one bright spot in here, but first we did have more declining stocks than advancing stocks. Roughly 2 to 1 negative for both the NYSE and the NASDAQ. 52 week highs and lows came in negative on the NYSE. Slightly positive though on the NASDAQ. And this is where it gets interesting.

[00:15:49]:
NASDAQ volume was big today. This is large upside volume here for the NASDAQ almost 2 to 1 positive with 8.76 billion to the upside, 13 billion volume overall. That’s a big day of volume for the nasdaq. Then you know, similarly but different here on the nyse. Essentially flat on the day to day for volume. But on a day we’ve got the S&P 500 down over 1% on the day, you know, slightly negative volume. You know, we’ll take that as a wash on the day to day and not as much of a negative there. You know, we do want to continue to see the internals improve though.

We got that weak period of breadth in the month of December. We’re still recovering from that a little bit. You know, the percentage of stocks above their 50 and 200 day moving average remains at recent lows as well. Again we look at that as an opportunity tells us that not a lot, not many stocks at all are at overbought levels right now. In fact we’re closer to oversold levels and those we use as buying opportunities. Next up looking at our sectors on the day to day. As I mentioned earlier this rolling rotation theme Energy was one of our sectors that finished lower yesterday. Well it led the way higher today up over 1%.

[00:17:07]:
Oil and gas or excuse me, oil specifically was higher on the day as well. But nat Gas has been on a tear here was up over 9% yesterday just below 52 week highs. It has pulled back some some from those recent highs but was hitting 52 week highs just not long ago at all. After energy though healthcare was also higher on the day. Our laggards as you might expect technology, consumer discretionary and communication services on the day. Finally here for today, our VRA Commodity Watch. Let me get a quick update of my screens here because there was some nice green on the screen here today and that has continued. Gold now higher on the day, up six tenths of 1% now to $2,663 an ounce.

And just what you want to see from this group. Outperformance from the miners which were up 1.3% today. So 2 to 1 outperformance from the gold miners exactly what you want to see from this group. Silver also higher on the day today to 30.6 an ounce. Copper higher as well to $4.17 a pound and oil as I mentioned earlier higher on the day, making some moves above $70 barrel now now at $74.44 a barrel. Finally here for today. We did get a big pullback today from earlier in the session on bitcoin. Earlier today we were up to as much as $102,000 a Bitcoin or now down 4 1/2% to $96,894 of Bitcoin.

[00:18:49]:
We do remain extremely bullish here on bitcoin. It was a hell of a 2024 for Bitcoin. We expect similar moves in 2025 as well. So again buy the dip remains the smart money play here folks. That is all that we have time for here today. Please be sure to subscribe to receive our VRA podcast 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.