Welcome back to the VRA Investing Podcast with your host, Kip Herriage. In today’s episode, Kip Herriage returns from a short business trip to Dallas, fresh off a conversation with Grant Stinchfield of Real America’s Voice, and ready to tackle a week packed with market anxiety, big headlines, and fresh opportunities. The show dives straight into recent market jitters—how fears over Blue Owl Capital sparked new comparisons to the 2008 financial crisis and why Kip Herriage believes those fears are overblown. He breaks down the latest in the AI innovation boom, what it means for investors today, and his outlook for generational bull markets, drawing parallels to the early days of the dot-com era.

Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Thursday afternoon, everyone. Kip Herriage here with the Daily VRA Investing Podcast. Hope you had a good day today. Good to be back with you. Uh, we did not have a podcast, of course, on Tuesday, Wednesday. The markets were closed on Monday. Uh, we’re on a short business trip, uh, to Dallas for a couple of days.

[00:00:22]:
Got back in late last night and, um Just finished— before I recorded this podcast here, I just came off a podcast with Grant Stinchfield, who’s the number one guy over at Real America’s Voice. Just a great guy. We had a chance to meet him yesterday as well in Dallas where he lives, and it was a great trip. Uh, we were there with Lost Soldier Oil and Gas and some new investors they were talking to, and the developments there continue to be very good for those of you that are in Lost Soldiers. There’ll be a lot of news in that coming the very near future. A lot of money chasing that deal, and it’s a lot of big money. It was a good trip. Great to be back with you.

Hope you’re all doing well. Uh, today, well, we got a little more scare in the market today. We finished well off the lows, which is always good to see. Good Smart Money Hour. But the fear today is, it’s, um, it’s fear today wasn’t from AI. Uh, the fear today was from a company called Blue Owl Capital. Uh, we’ll go through that in a minute. Uh, again, a lot of fear-mongering out there.

Mohamed El-Erian, who you probably know I’m talking about, uh, he’s pretty commonly seen on CNBC and Bloomberg. I think more often now on Bloomberg. But, uh, he loves to fearmonger, and today he made the comment— this is when the market started to take a dive— that Blue Owl Capital might be the next Bear Stearns. It could be like Bear Stearns, like the bell’s gone off, here comes the next 2008 financial crisis. So we’re going to go ahead and debunk that fully today as well, because this era could be— could hardly be more different than 2007-2008. Uh, still a lot of fear out there about Iran. I mean, look, we talked about this over the last few weeks, the buildup there is, uh, is, is pretty remarkable. Uh, if something happens there, I think that it would be— it would be very similar to the last time.

It’d be a short-term hit. And then, as we’ve covered often with you over the years, when bullets fly, stocks are a buy. Just history proves that up. Right when the attacks are taking place, you go, oh my God, what am I doing in stocks? Oh my God, oil’s going to $100. What am I going— we’re all— it’s gonna— we’re gonna get hit so hard. That’s the bottom. It tends to be on the first day. Again, when bullets fly, stocks are a buy.

That’s held up over my career, uh, Essentially every case, and I would expect this to be not much different, assuming the worst case happens there. But we’ll stay on top of that. We’re not honestly not concerned. I think it’s a— I think personally it’s a bluff. I can tell you Americans aren’t behind this. I don’t know what’s really, uh, what’s really brought this on. I don’t think most people could tell you what’s brought it on, uh, except that, you know, Israel doesn’t like Iran, and, uh, we often do Israel’s bidding for them. So I think that’s probably what most Americans would tell you.

[00:03:06]:
I think that’s probably fairly accurate. Uh, but anyway, be that as may, uh, I don’t think that’s— I just don’t see that as a big concern for the markets. Uh, certainly not, not today. Um, I think it’s about leverage. I think it’s all about leverage. Uh, we are in the second half of February. That’s, that’s really, I think, what’s happening here. Of course, a lot of AI fears.

We also don’t think those are real because, look, will there be dislocation? From AI? Will there be companies put out of business from AI? You bet there will be. But that’s not the story of this, of this boom. That’s not the story of this innovation revolution. That’s not the story of this generational bull market. The story of this, of this time, this era that we’re in, is we’re in the very early stages of an era like the dot-com melt-up. And if you put me on the spot and said, okay, where are we? Is it ’96, ’97, ’98, ’98? Where are we, Kip? Tyler and I, and I think I can speak for Sam now too. Sam is new, of course, to us here, but I mean, we’ve talked about Sam is, Sam knows all this stuff as well as Tyler and I do. He’s now really digging in, learning all the details of how our VA system works and all that.

But no, look, we’re probably still in 1995, maybe early 1996. The difference is This is going to be much— this, this, this, uh, this, the general innovation revolution, which is what we’re called, you know, the AI boom, we called it that now for 3 years. This is going to be much longer lasting, much broader in scope. This isn’t just going to be dot-com stocks. We didn’t know what those were in 1995. This isn’t just going to be a select group of, of tech stocks that are going to rally. This is going to be essentially every sector in the market It’s going to be much broader, longer lasting, far deeper. And again, we think well into the 2030s.

So this is very early. These dips are buying opportunity. That’s a high confidence call from us. Look, we’re not, we’re not Pollyannas. If there are risks out there that it makes sense to pay attention to, we pay attention to those risks. We are not seeing those right now. It’s certainly not 2000. It’s laughable.

[00:05:16]:
It’s laughable to say this is 2007, 2008. It just is. Uh, so much liquidity. I’ll come back to Blue Owl in just a moment. Um, we’ll talk about that. We’ll talk about the, uh, the big shift to bears over bulls that’s happening now. Uh, we’re seeing in all the sentiment surveys. And I want to spend a minute with you on gold miners.

This is something we covered a couple weeks ago, but now that we’ve had this kind of a flush, right, in gold and silver, and now they’re doing their backing— classic backing and filling. It’s a basing process. The lows are in. Uh, that is our call. It also remains our call. The lows are in for Bitcoin. I think we’ve got a lot of data to back that up. These are, these are both really good buys.

[00:05:53]:
Uh, but the miners, of course, that’s where the leverage is. And I might spend a minute or two on Tesla as well. Uh, because that’s, uh, that of course is our number one stock to own for the innovation revolution. First of all, uh, Blue Owl Capital, uh, if you probably watched, if you saw the news today, I’m sure you saw this. Uh, Blue Owl Capital is a private equity company. Uh, this is not a public company. Of course, there are scores and scores and scores, hundreds of these companies out there now. Uh, just a massively big market.

Now, Blue Owl is not small. They do have $300 billion under management, but these are accredited investors that invest in private equity because they want the deals that you and I, most public, can’t get, right? And that’s all hunky-dory until you get a bad management team or a company that runs into trouble and has to restructure, which is what they’re doing now. But as they said today, Uh, again, you probably didn’t hear this in the media. They— their, their restructure plan, uh, because they, they’ve halted— and this, again, this is— this scares people— they suspended withdrawals. They used to have monthly withdrawals. Not anymore until they restructure. Those, those withdrawals are gone. Again, that sounds awful scary, but the restructuring plan, which is, I, I think, highly credible, says that investors are going to be paid more than 99% of the amount they invested, not including what they’ve been paid in monthly, quarterly, annual distributions over the years.

That, that money’s still theirs to keep. So no, this is not the next— this is not the next Bear Stearns. Uh, again, I do think it’s laughable, uh, just to cover a couple things we’ve covered with you for 3 years. This is a— there’s an absolute ocean liquidity out there, uh, and that certainly applies to the capital markets in the US and public companies in the US. Just in the S&P 500, uh, right now, uh, this is the S&P 500 now is trading at a 53-year low, uh, a debt-to-market cap. That’s how much cash public companies have, especially the largest companies. They barely need to borrow money. They’ve got so much liquidity, which of course is why share buybacks continue to hit record level after record level.

[00:07:58]:
Now this year has been impacted a bit because of this infrastructure build-out for the AI boom, right, for all these data centers. And these hyperscalers, what, we’re up to what, $700 billion now just from the majors that, you know, the biggest tech companies are spending this year. And so yeah, that, that impacted their buybacks a little bit. But again, there’s so much liquidity, $22 trillion in M2 money supply in the US, that’s cash and cash equivalents, $7 trillion in money markets alone. Uh, again, we’ve covered this so often with you, uh, the housing market has rarely been stronger. Now, right now we, we’ve got, you know, a bit of a dislocation because rates are too high. That’s all going to change very soon with Kevin Walsh as the new Fed chair. We expect there’ll be 4 more rate cuts this year, and we think the 10-year, which is now just over 4.07%, we think it’ll be 3.5% by year-end.

It’s going to be extremely good for the economy, certainly for the second America, which has been harmed the most from Jay Powell’s tight money at the Federal Reserve. And the housing market will really come back to life at that point. By the way, the housing market is market is already beginning to discount that news. Uh, we like it, we’re going to be back in it very soon. Uh, but, uh, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll, for all of our VRA subscribers here and members, uh, you’ll know that in the very near future. But in addition, you know, again, the housing market, $40 trillion sitting in home equity, right? $40 trillion. That’s average home equity of average homeowners, 71%. 40% of Americans have no mortgage.

This is quite different from 2007-2008, both for individuals and for corporate America. So no, blue owl capital is not a concern of ours. Private equity is not a concern of ours. If that changes, we’ll let you know. If a trend develops, uh, then we’ll let you know. Uh, but, uh, yeah, the, the bullish case as we see it is still firmly intact. And look, we’re in, we’re in the second half of February. Seasonality has been pretty good.

[00:09:55]:
If you believe— if you invest using analytics, seasonality has been pretty accurate over the last several years. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but by and large tends to hold up, at least for a time. And if you listen to the seasonality right now, uh, the second half of February, which of course we’re in now, uh, tends to be not great— not super bearish, but not great. It’s sideways action, maybe a little weak. That’s really the trend. But all that changes come March. And what are we— I mean, we’re only, you know, what was it, 7? Well, it’s a short month anyway, right? What are we, 6 trading days away from that? So March is almost here. All of a sudden we’re now looking back at March, March and April, talking about analytics.

March and April, two of the most bullish months of the year. And so, uh, again, we think this is a very short-term pause. The lows are in from the AI shakeout that we had. Uh, that of course really impacted the software stocks and momentum stocks. We think all that’s over again. We think those lows are in, those lows will hold, and we’re buyers on these dips, absolute buyers on this, especially in the holdings in the VRA portfolio. Uh, interesting also today, the put-call ratio, um, today it’s been very elevated, okay, like almost at point of like it’s screaming buy me. You got to buy the market when it gets this high.

And we kind of saw that again today. A put-call ratio today closed at a 0.94. That is very elevated. Again, if you see 1+, uh, that’s a buy signal by and large. Uh, you know, in, in deep sell-offs you can see 1.2, 1.3. That’s an extreme. We rarely see that. But 0.94 is very high, uh, and it didn’t get below a 0.85 today.

So again, this is all elevated as it has been over the last week. As Tyler just reminded me, the AAII Investor Sentiment Survey, which we voted in— I voted in since 19 88, I think it is. Um, and I just voted bullish again last week, uh, but it just came in. It’s a weekly survey, and for the first time since November, there are now more bears than bulls in this survey. How interesting is that? Basically, market’s basically flat this year. Uh, of course, equal-weighted, uh, indexes are higher on the year. Uh, small caps, which are up again today, The Russell 2000 is up 7% on the year. But all it takes is a little bit of rotational action.

[00:12:16]:
That’s what we’re seeing here, is rotational action. And people can’t wait to sell their positions, get short, and raise cash. And so that’s what we’re seeing in sentiment surveys. We also see it in the Fear and Greed Index, which is now down to 39. Again, as Tyler just told me, on January 21st, this index was— this Fear and Greed Index was at 65. Again, reading of 39 now, so back into fear territory. Again, this— if you’re bullish, this is what you want to see. This is exactly what you want to see.

You want to see people get bearish. And that’s again another hallmark indicator of how early this bull market is. Remember, NASDAQ during the dot-com, you know, boom— NASDAQ rose 575% in those 5 years. Stunning. Never seen anything like it, right? What do you think NASDAQ is up from the bear market bottom of October 2022? What is that? We call it 3, 3 years and a few months. NASDAQ’s up just over, I think, 110%, right? So no, we’re not near a top. This is extraordinarily early. And again, the fact that so many people get bearish so quickly, that’s, that is an indicator if you, if you follow investor psychology.

When all it takes is a 1-month, 5-week, whatever it’s been, semi-shakeout, which is, again, more of a rotation than anything. Yes, tech stocks have been hit. That’s all it takes for investors to start turning bearish and put-call ratio to really start exploding higher. Mark, take this to the bank, folks. When this bull market starts getting long in the tooth, we will have 5 to 7% shakeouts, and this— these, these, these sentiment surveys will barely budge because everybody will say it’s just another opportunity to buy the dip. This is a buy-the-dip moment. When everybody’s saying that, we will notice that. We will be lightening up and we’ll probably be telling you, okay, this might be the beginning of a pretty tough fall because investor sentiment has gotten far too bullish.

[00:14:19]:
So again, Really important, uh, a point we think to keep in mind that not enough people are either aware of or really stop and think for a second. Hey, that’s why we’re here. That’s why you have us, right? I’ve done this 40 years. I ought to be good for something. That’s one thing I think I’m pretty good for, understanding investor psychology and where we are, what cycle we’re in, in this bull market. Again, very, very early. Uh, what else today? All right, well, just talk about the market again. Uh, at one point today, the Dow Jones was down close to 500 points.

All right, finished down, uh, what is this, 267 points. So good smart money hour. Again, Russell 2000 finished higher on the day, up a quarter of a percent. Uh, S&P 500 was down, uh, 3/10. NASDAQ down 3/10. Uh, the— so again, these aren’t big losses, and we did have big comebacks. NASDAQ was down at one point to— I saw, I think I saw 260 points, finished down just 70 points. So good comeback there as well.

Small semis, which of course we, we, we watch like a hawk because the semis lead in both directions, of course. SMH, the semi ETF, finished down 0.8%. So it did lead lower today, but that’s been a rarity. That has not been common. One day does not concern us. Now, if we see 3 or 4 days like this where the semis lean lower, our tone, our tone is going to change, and, and we’ll be the first to tell you. Uh, but that’s not been the case. The semis have been leading higher.

[00:15:42]:
Consistently from the April 7th tariff mania lows. They’ve led the market higher. That’s been our buy signal, and they still continue to. One-day down action, uh, again, something we track, but it’s not a concern, certainly not at this early juncture at least. Uh, what else today? Uh, let me spend a minute on the, on the gold miners, and I’m going to touch on Tesla, and, uh, and we’ll wrap this podcast for the day. Um, I think it’s so important. Again, we’ve had a shakeout. Uh, people are, people are wondering, okay, what’s going on here? Uh, we’ve had a great run.

Gold miners have led everything, but the number one sector now for, uh, well over a year, which is a forecast that we made in January of last year. Uh, is, is it over? Should we, should we be raising some cash? The gold miners have come down. Obviously silver’s been slashed from what was the high, $120 or something. Uh, silver’s now down to— what is it— 70. Uh, last trade on silver is, uh, 78, right? Uh, let me give you an exact 52-week high here. Uh, 121. I was pretty close. 121.78 was the high.

Again, we’re now down to 74 with gold at— uh, both were slightly higher today, by the way. Gold now is, uh, up $6. At 5,015, so it’s reclaimed, uh, 5,000. Its high was over 5,600. And, and the gold— and the gold miners have fallen back too. So what’s going on there? I want to tell you again, for our newer listeners, great to have you with us. I want to tell you exactly how early this bull market is. Add every gold miner on the planet up, their market caps, the total market cap of all gold miners globally is $1 trillion, give or take, right at it.

Walmart’s market cap is $1.1 trillion. So add them all up, they’re all smaller than a single company called Walmart. That’s not normal. Uh, the gold miners used to make up like 14% of the S&P 500, right? It’s less than 1% now, right? Less than 1% globally. Investors have less than 1% of their portfolio in gold miners, less than 2% of portfolio in gold and silver itself. Again, that’s only because this group did horribly for about a decade. All right, it takes people a while to come back to it. That’s happening, but it’s only beginning to happen.

[00:18:12]:
Check this out too. Capital expenditures, CapEx, is right now at lows we’ve never seen before for the gold mining industry. That means even the insiders that run these gold companies, even they don’t believe this. They’re not confident that gold’s going to stay above— must forget $5,000. They’re not sure gold’s going to stay over $3,000 the way they’re acting now. They’re not spending money. There’s been no merger and acquisition boom. And again, these are all thing hallmarks of a bull market that keeps rocking and rolling, which is what this one is still going to do.

But that’s how early it is. None of that has started yet. Check this out. Gold miners, large-cap senior gold miners, are trading at 0.90 less than their net asset value. Basically call it breakup value. They’re trading it less— not books, not quite the same— that we call it net asset value, less than net asset value. The junior miners are trading at 0.6 0.6 of their net asset value. Again, not normal.

[00:19:22]:
These are the lowest records. These are the lowest levels ever seen. The gold miners are trading at historically low levels, never before seen. Another, uh, stat that I think this is probably what the senior gold miners or the management teams are thinking— they think gold’s at $2,000 because that’s what— that’s, that’s where these are. Gold miners are trading at as if gold is still $2,000 an ounce, not $5,000 an ounce. All right, so, uh, based on all this, again, we think in the next 3 to 4 years we’re going to make 10 times our money in this group, and probably more than that in select ones. Of course, you know the ones we love here, uh, Vista Gold, Snowline Gold. Got it, got it, got to put it out there every now and then.

Uh, those are our two favorite junior miners. They’ve done quite well for us. Again, very early. We think this— they’re probably 10-baggers from here. Right? And if gold hits our target, which we’re pretty confident in— $15,000 an ounce, that’s our target, uh, 2030, 2032— we’re looking at making 20 times our money, maybe 30. And if gold really gets legs— there are a lot of people out there saying gold’s going to $40,000, $50,000— those people are out there now. I’m not sure that’s accurate, but that might mean for a very different world than we live in now. Uh, and at the end of the day, these are still companies.

These are still equities. They trade like stocks. So if the market gets hit, these get hit. So I— for those that think they can outsmart the market, no, you can’t. When the market goes down, the miners go down because they’re equities at the end of the day. So we don’t want to see— we don’t want to see that happen. But again, the bottom line is that there’s a lot of money to be made in this group. We’re very early in this bull market, uh, and this is— yes, this is a buy the dip opportunity.

In gold, silver, physical only. Again, physical only. You can buy— there are physical gold and silver ETFs, right? You can certainly buy those. Just don’t buy the paper ones. Don’t buy the GLDs of the world, SOVs of the world. Look, these things hold up until they don’t. And if there starts becoming a call on gold and a call on silver, and, uh, they, they won’t be able to deliver. They won’t be able to deliver.

They don’t have the gold and silver. Uh, it’s like Fort Knox, it’s just not there, right? At least that’s, that’s, uh, that’s the speculation. But I can tell you it’s not there in GLD and SLV. So if things get hairy, uh, you’ll see like we’ve seen in Blue Owl Capital, right? Private, they’re almost like private equity companies, dislocation taking place. They would have to restructure because there’d be a call on their gold and silver and they ain’t got it, right? They may, they may say they do They don’t. Um, you read the prospectus and you’ll find it. It’s very deep and it’s several hundred pages long. Enjoy the reading.

But, uh, you know, they had derivatives of same, but they don’t have physical gold and silver that they can go find in a vault. It’s not there. So again, very early, we love this group. This morning I’m going to touch on this real quick. This morning. I, uh, this is not— this is something that most people aren’t spending time on. You know, look, I’m not— your eyes might glaze over if I start going through the, the, uh, the one big beautiful bill. I’m not going to do all of that, but it’s not being focused on nearly enough.

[00:22:38]:
This, this bill, uh, as part of what we call the Trump economic miracle— again, basically giving the people— giving the power back to the people, the Trump Doctrine, right? And it’s putting pressure, of course, on global countries to do the same or get left in our dust even further, right? True free market capitalism, at least as true as it can be, is taking place in America. And the One Big Beautiful Bill is, is playing a big role in it. Look, uh, we know what Trump stands for, uh, at his core. It’s tax cuts, again, giving the people back some of their money. One Big Beautiful Bill does that in spades. Uh, of course, deregulation, Uh, which is really extraordinary. Again, very few people talking about this. You know, Trump’s goal with deregulation was to slash 10 to 15 regulations for every new one he put on.

They’re at like 107 to 1. 107 regulations are being slashed for every new one put on, right? And then the third, of course, is his tariff policy that may be overturned by SCOTUS. I’m telling you, the markets may react initially,. But this is not a problem. I think the market goes higher either way. If SCOTUS rules against, they’ve got backup plans for us. They’ll be announced almost immediately. Uh, even if they didn’t have those, the market— it’s just not a big— it’s not a big enough amount of money.

It’s just not. It’s not going to hit the markets. Matter of fact, at the end of the day, if they have to give the money back, it’s going back to the companies that paid it to begin with, the importers. So it’d be like fiscal stimulus for the United States. But regardless, it’ll be a big thing in the news. It’ll be like blue-out capital. It’ll make a big splash, whatever SCOTUS does, and then the markets will be higher at the end of that day. That’s our call.

Not concerned with it at all, right? This has been in the market for some time. But I think what people aren’t focused enough on is the fact that we have a perfect storm for equities because of the one beautiful bill, because of innovation revolution. And it’s, again, true disinflation’s here. We, again, have you read where Truflation is now? They’re down, they show inflation at 0.87%, less than 1%. Again, the Fed believes the CPI data, which is now down to 2.4%, very close to the Fed’s target, but we’re much slower than that. Again, Truflation’s been so, they’ve been around 5 years. They have millions of data points, it’s crazy, real-time data. They release it every day.

I think you can probably track it in real time, but they release it every day. And they’ve been below 1% now for some time. And the Fed’s always late. Their data’s slow. It’s just, by the time you get it, it’s extraordinarily lagging the actual data, what really matters, which is why it’s so confusing for a lot of people to invest on. By the time you get it, it’s months old. It just doesn’t matter, right? And it’s used to fearmonger, and it’s just never been accurate. But again, we have true disinflation taking place now.

[00:25:29]:
We think that continues. Again, that’s a key feature of this innovation revolution, bringing prices down on essentially everything. That is just beginning, and that means rates have to plummet, right? And they will under Kevin Warsh. And then of course, again, the One Big Beautiful Bill is going to do so much more than it’s being given credit for. There’s so much in this to help the average American. And again, taxes on tips for retirees, uh, and, you know, 100% expensing. Uh, why do you think they’re building all these data centers this year? Why do you think all— they want to, they want to write that off 100%, and that’s what they’re able to do in year 1, right, instead of expensing over a number of years, a decade, or whatever. So, uh, this is all a massive tailwind for the U.S.

economy. It’s a combination of cheaper goods and capital, fat profits, and technological leaps. And this combination is going to create a massive bull market this year. We’re in a weird period again for seasonality. We haven’t yet had a full quarter featuring the Won’t Be Beautiful bill. That’s going to be this quarter right now, Q1. And we expect— again, we’re on, we’re on record looking for earnings per share growth this year of 18 to 20%. Most analysts are in the 13 to 15% range, which is still extraordinarily good, but that we believe is on the low side.

So again, from a macro point of view, uh, we’re bullish. From a micro point of view, we’re bullish. From a technical point of view, we’re bullish, right? Uh, we have 10 to 12 VRA system screens that are bullish right now, uh, and that means we must be long equities and these dips are buying opportunities. Uh, Tesla, again, if you know, if you know us You know, we’ve been long-term Tesla bulls. I’ve owned the stock since $18 a share. Uh, my cost basis is like $81. We’ve been long the stock in the bureau officially since $174. It’s a long story why that took place that way.

I won’t get into it now. Uh, but the stock just jumped. It got away from me, so I waited for it to pull back a little bit. Anyway, uh, big fans of Elon Musk and Tesla. Uh, everything happening this year is crazy. It is absolutely insane. What’s happening this year. Look, uh, we just again went, made a, made a essentially a day trip to Dallas, uh, spent, you know, one night there in, in our Tesla.

And, uh, Sam and I did, uh, Tyler drove in from Austin. And, you know, 500-mile round trip in my Tesla Model S, and, uh, which is extraordinary car. I, I’ll never not own a Tesla. Using FSD, full self-driving. I did not touch the steering wheel a single time on that 500-mile round trip. It did everything. It passes cars. It has 3 different modes, right? It’s got a Mad Max mode, it’s got Hurry mode, and it’s got Chill mode.

00:28:21]:
And if you want to go fast on the highway, it’ll take you up to about 10, 12, in some cases 15 miles over the speed limit in Mad Max mode. And you adjust it simply as a little control on your steering wheel, right? It’s just amazing technology. And then if you want to go 0 to 100 in 3 seconds, you can do that in what’s called drag strip mode. And I will tell you that if you’re ever in Sugar Land, drop by and I’ll give you— I’ll take you on a safe private road and I’ll take you 0 to 100 in less than 3 seconds. Make sure your head is pinned back. Don’t do it without your head pinned back against your seat because you will get whiplash. I’m not kidding. We found that the hard way the first time.

It literally catapults you at true acceleration because there’s no gears, so you’re not shifting gears. It’s just true acceleration from 0 to 100 less than 3 seconds, 0 to 60 in 1.99 seconds. Fastest production car on the road. Uh, yeah, that’s a great feature in my opinion because it’s fun. But it’s really everything else. Of course, I love EV and not having to fuel up. We get close to 300 miles a charge, which is— I mean, it’s going to only get better, right? So yeah, we’ll be at 500 miles probably inside of 5 years. So EVs, yes, are the future.

Batteries only get better, etc. But still, you know, I don’t mind stopping for 15 minutes to recharge and let my car get filled up. We made it to Dallas on a single charge. I was still about 20% less. So again, that’s, that’s about as long as I want to drive at one point anyway, you know, 4 hours or so. But anyway, um, what’s happening this year is just extraordinary. Uh, a lot of it’s happening in April. The, the, the CyberCab, the robotaxi mass production begins in April at Giga Texas here in Austin, right? Um, and again, it’ll be slow at first and they’ll ramp up When they ramp up, they’ll be producing a CyberCab every 10 seconds.

[00:30:23]:
New manufacturing process, which is basically one piece, uh, every 10 seconds, new car. No one will be able to keep up with this. It’s an unboxed process, revolutionary. And, uh, that’s going to be unveiled this year as well. Also, by the end of the year, Musk says you’ll be able to buy a CyberCab for, for under $30,000 or right at $30,000. These are cars without steering wheels and without gas or brake pedals, uh, and the car will just drive you everywhere, right? And so you get in the car, you press a button, say take me to here, right? It’s all voice activated, which is pretty extraordinary too. Grok is in the car. It’s fun to have ongoing conversations with Grok.

Anyway, you get— just, it’s, it’s never a boring drive in our Tesla. It’s a lot of fun, very educational, by the way. Grok, I think, is the best AI, at least from— for my money. It’s the one that I— it’s my go-to. Um, so mass production this year of the CyberCab, again going into sales again this year as well. This— the, uh, the Tesla Semi also has a volume ramp. They’re now producing that. A lot of, a lot of companies have these already.

[00:31:24]:
A range of 500 miles, drivers love them. Of course, an amazing amount of power. You can put anything with this. And then also, uh, you know, the, uh uh, unsupervised fleet. You know, if you want to have your own fleet of robo-taxis or CyberCabs, you can do that. Those will be for sale this year as well. And once these hit the market— they’re expanding this year to 30 US cities for fully unsupervised robo-taxi, right? Similar to Uber, Lyft, but without anyone in driving, right? And the cost difference is just stunning. It’s going to be at least 40% less than, uh, Uber or Lyft or Waymo in that range.

And I’ve seen as high as 70-80% for some of these trips, really short trips. Again, you’re not paying a tip, right? You’re not going to tip an AI system. And so again, all that’s happening this year, and then 2027 of course will be really insane. But where they’re doing energy storage and their BAT Megapack 3 megablock production begins at a new Houston megafactory this year. Uh, growth of, uh, 49% year over year for energy alone. And then of course Optimus robotics that begins this quarter. Gen 3 unveiling takes place this year. Uh, there will be Optimus is available for purchase next year.

[00:32:41]:
My guess is you— there’s a long waiting list. I’ve not yet seen that list because I would be on it. Uh, but as soon as it’s available, the Harrisons will be signing up. We want an Optimus in our house as soon as possible. Uh, my guess is they’ll come out, be fairly expensive at first, and then, you know, the goal is to get this down to $20,000, $30,000. Longer term, it’ll be much less than that. These will be in every home, every home, uh, all over the planet inside of 10 years, likely. That’s how low the price will be, certainly within 20 years.

This is all combined, it’s going to add many trillions upon trillions in market cap to Tesla. The total market cap today of Tesla is $1.5 trillion. Stock’s at $412, right, $411. Total market cap is only $1.5 trillion. CyberCab, Robotaxi, whatever you want to call it, and Optimus. Those are the future. This is the year that Tesla transforms itself to physical AI dominance. They’re spending $20 billion this year in capex, which is, I think, a record for them.

[00:33:39]:
And so our target remains $1,000, uh, this year, $2,000 by 2028— I mean, meaning 2027. I think that’s going to be on the low side, and I think this is the one stock to own for the innovation revolution. That’s been our call for some time. All right, let’s take a look under the hood today. Uh, again, good comeback today, still not a great close. Uh, yesterday we had pretty good gains. This is kind of like an inverse day from yesterday. But again, second half February, we talked about this earlier, seasonality is not great.

That’s about to change. I think it would— I think in, um, you’re going to start to see front-running of Q1 earnings beginning in 3 weeks, mid, mid mid, mid, mid-March, right? Investors, smart money, will start front-running in 3 weeks. Uh, but, but again, I think the lows will be in— the lows are in, right? That’s our call. But this backward, this rotational process that’s happening now is still going on. We also have a global reflation trade. Global economies are doing quite well. We can see by their stock markets, their leading indicators. And again, this all points to a global reflation trade.

Which is extraordinarily bullish for equities and for economies. So again, these— this weakness is short-term. Under the hood today, uh, internals today were actually good, you know, for the— again, we had steep losses at midday today, but check out these internals. Uh, the advance decline was only, only negative by 100, uh, companies. Yeah, 100, 100, uh, 100, 100. Excuse me, only negative by— what is that, $100,000? $100,000. Well, I tell you what, in volume, how about that? Let’s state it in volume. No, you know what, it feels like a Monday.

I apologize, folks. Advanced decline is number of companies. There are only— there were less than 100 companies that were lower than higher. Same thing for NYSE. Again, slight losses there. It’s very surprising. You’d expect this to be much worse than it was. Check this out.

Volume, which is what I thought I was quoting a minute ago, Volume for NASDAQ today was solidly positive, 64% up volume for NASDAQ. NYC was positive just by a little bit, but still positive volume of the day. As I said, that is a buy signal, by the way, folks. That is a contrarian buy signal with the market down today. And 52-week highs and lows came in basically flat today as far as new highs and lows, uh, in the S&P 500. Nasdaq. Under the hood today, the sector watch today was, um, here we go, uh, not great. 8 sectors lower, 3 higher, but no damage done.

[00:36:15]:
There was not a single sector lower by more than 1% today. Financials down 0.8%. That was our biggest loser by far. Utilities up 1.1%. Industrials up 0.8%. Energy up 0.6%. Again, rotational action taking place here. No damage done whatsoever today.

The commodity watch, we talked about gold and silver earlier. Again, gold today up $6, silver today up $0.85, uh, $50.15 for gold and silver $78.45. Again, those lows are in. We’re aggressive buyers here of mining stocks for the reasons covered earlier. Copper today down $0.04 a pound at $5.76 a pound. We like copper here as well, very good buy here. Crude oil today, uh, up 2.4% against fears of Iran, as we covered earlier. Uh, last trade, West Texas Intermediate, $66.67.

Kip Herriage [00:37:05]:
And finally, the day, Bitcoin, also it’s at the low, $60,000. That was the low. We had a selling climax there. We’ve been covering this with you over the last week, selling climax. Uh, you— we see things, you just always happen to see bottoms. I think the one piece of, of data that might be the most relevant here is that over, you know, the years of what Bitcoin started trading, what, 2008, 2009, over that time frame, uh, we’ve had 10 corrections of more than 50%. We just, we just had one, right? We just had one. Over the next year, Bitcoin has been higher 90% of the time with an average, average gain of of 125%.

We’ve already had this, right? Last trade now, $66,660. That’s 6— that’s too many 6s. 666, I don’t know about that. Uh, but like again, last trade, $66,659. Uh, again, we want to see $65,000 should be a, a good area of support. We absolutely want to see $60,000 hold, uh, and we think it will. And, uh, and we like Bitcoin here for a good rally for the rest of the year. All right, folks, that’s it for today.

Kip Herriage [00:38:15]:
Hope you had a great day and even better night. We’ll see you back here tomorrow after the close.