Welcome to the VRA Investing Podcast with your host, Kip Herriage. In today’s brisk Wednesday episode, Kip Herriage breaks down a packed afternoon in the markets, covering major moves following the Fed meeting and the latest earnings reports from tech giants Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet. He also previews the upcoming Parabolic Options Program #25 at VRA, shares why he believes we're still in the early innings of the AI boom, and provides his outlook on oil, gold, Bitcoin, and overall market conditions. Tune in for keen insights on market timing, sector analysis, and stock selection as Kip Herriage explains why the market rally has more room to run, which trends to watch, and how to position for what’s ahead.

Foreign. Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Wednesday afternoon everyone. Kip Herridge here with the daily VR investing podcast. Hope you had a good day today. Got to get to a meeting here in a bit so it’s going to be a bit short today. I’m gonna fly through this quickly. Let’s get a lot to talk about today.

Fed meeting. Big, big four earnings today just come out just after the close. We’ll go through those just a bit. Let’s start with the announcement on Friday. We’ll be launching Parabolic Options program number 25. These are four month programs that we do here at the VRA and specializing in options trading. We have a bit of a different way of doing it, but anyway, we’ve had good results over the years again from our previous 23 programs. 84% have been profitable from our 23 programs.

The average gain at each program has been 129% and that’s 387% a year annualized by the way. And anyway we look make, we’ll make the announcement Friday morning by email looking for that about mid morning. And then we’ll launch first trades starting Monday morning for parabolic number 25. Hope you can join us. We’ll start with the Fed meeting again. The good news first. The good news. Jay Powell is going to be gone as Fed chair.

We knew that going into today. And then here came the curveball that I think most of us kind of expected. He’s going to remain on a state governor. I think it was anybody else, we’d say no way. But with Jay Powell, he is, he likes being Trump’s kryptonite. The importance, the significance of this, most importantly is that, is that the banking cartel is going to have their guy remain on as a governor. They’re a spy, if you will. And more importantly, if, if Powell had resigned, just left the Fed altogether as he should have done, then that would have given Trump another governor to appoint to the Fed, which would have given Trump a majority position.

His, his, his appointees would be a majority Trump appointee. So it’d be a majority Fed. And that’s not going to happen. Now Powell may stay on as long as he wants to, at least until I believe his, his chairman, his Fed governorship is up in early 2028. So yeah, we’re gonna be stuck with Jay Powell for a while. He says he’s going to be, you know, in the background, not making his presence felt. I’ll believe that when I see it. So anyway, the good news is Always going.

[00:02:31]:
Kevin Warsh will be a new Fed chair. He was, he’s confirmed today, at least by the Banking Committee. So he’ll be, he’ll be fully appointed soon and he’ll be, he’ll take his job at the Fed as fed governor on May 14. Another important thing is happening in May. That is Nvidia earnings, the last big company to report a course on May 20. And after these reports we just got in today from Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Alphabet, everyone’s going to be as, as Tyler just said, almost like always on pins and needles. Right, with Nvidia. Let me just, let me just, let me, let me, let me ease your concerns.

Nvidia is going to crush. All right, we got a snapshot of that today. The most important company reporting today was Microsoft, by the way, the largest by a market cap of the four reporting today by far. That’s the reason, number one for the importance. But they’re also really the backbone of everything in this AI build out process because of the areas they work in. Of course the stock has been destroyed because the AI is going to eat all software. Microsoft still below, by the way, still 8% below is 200 day moving average. As I wrote this morning, my letter, I wouldn’t buy this stock just based on the VRA system reading on it.

We’re trading it extremely bought. 8% below the 200 day. Those are two big negatives right there. And but the, the broader corporate perspective is that this AI boom is still very, very early. That’s the thing, that’s the most important thing to remember. You know, if this was a nine inning ball game, honestly we’re in the second inning. That’s how early this is, that’s how big, broad, long, deep. This bull market in this group and this build out of AI is going to be.

We haven’t even gotten to the new invention stage yet. You know, it’s one of my favorite topics because AI, with all these data centers being built, why are they all being built to power things we don’t have yet? And AI is going to create so much prosperity, abundance, productivity. And again, we’ve yet to get to that stage yet. We need these data center buildouts for that to happen first, for these new inventions to come as AI helps create those. That’s why we’re in the early innings. That’s why really, you know, again the key point is this. The markets at extreme robot, we’ve had a hell of a run. Oil, oil’s now 108, right? That’s up 8% on the day, it’s a bad combo.

And now we have gold going lower. These are liquidity trades, right? Gold’s going lower, Bitcoin’s going lower again. These are, these are counter trends, right? Short term trends, but they’re going lower now. Oil’s up big. 108 is, I’m telling you, 108 is a problem area. And I think, I think Trump’s going to find a way to deal with this pretty soon. I think that the straight is going to be reopened. We heard some reasons for that today.

Apparently in Trump’s call with Russia’s Putin today, the idea came up that this extra nuclear material waste or byproduct that Iran has, that they could turn into a nuclear weapon, Russia may hold that for them. Now that’s, that’s a key ally, of course, of Iran. I don’t know that I can see Trump going for that. But this is the negotiation process. My key point is this. If we see oil at 108 being a problem, the market see it as being a problem. I promise you, Trump sees this being a problem. The midterms are coming up.

At some point, this, this thing with Iran has to end anyway. We’re spending how many billions of dollars a day being there? All right? We don’t want to go to war again. Trump just, he’s already pivoted. He does not want to do this. So they’re going to find a happy medium and this is going to end. That’s why this, this oil being it 108 is a short term problem. But look, short term problems can become big, big time problems in the markets. Unless they’re, they’re, they’re dealt with.

These are going to be dealt with. This is an overbought shakeout. I would even call it a shakeout. It’s an overbought pause. It’s completely normal. Healthy people got a little too bullish. We’ll use this to add to positions. And we’re actually looking at some additional things that may add to the portfolio as well, which means there’s something that’s got to go.

Kip Herriage [00:06:47]:
Maybe one or two things have got to go. Maybe it’s time to take some profits and some things. But the bottom line, our focus here at the VRA is continue to be on market timing, sector analysis and stock selection. Those are the three things that have helped us beat the market. 19, 22 years. I believe this year will be 20 out of 23. And that’s what we’ll stay focused on. But again, let’s Go through the the stocks right now.

The the report today Microsoft most important company by far in the after again crushed. Crushed earnings. Earnings totally. All the key metrics that mattered. They crushed stock however down 2% in the after hours Again, extreme overbought market. This is what happens. Amazon crushed down 2.4% in the after hours again this is what happens at an extreme overbought market. Google up 7% I wish Google’s most important.

They are important of course but 7%, that’s the winner on the day right here Again crushed earnings estimates finally the loser on the day as I speak right now is Meta. Who cares? I don’t, I don’t care about Microsoft, about, about Amazon. Excuse me, I don’t care about Facebook or Meta. Do you? Anyway don’t own the stock, don’t plan to. Stocks down 5% I have no problem with that. Three out of four companies did extraordinarily well. We’re dealing with an overbought market. That’s what this is.

And when Nvidia gets here on 520 folks, you’re going to be long and strong both Nvidia stock as we are and the broad market because this market’s going to rally quite a bit longer than most people think it’s going to. Got some seasonality data today as well. Ryan Dietrich does such good work over the last. I’m just going to just approximate here. Everyone’s worried about selling main go away, not the markets. Over the last decade the market has been sharply higher in May, June and July. Right. Talking about the S P500.

That’s what matters most. Largest, most important equity index on the planet. And so this market rally is going to continue through May into the summer months. This is going to be that year. This is the year the innovation revolution arrives on Wall street in all its glory. And again our estimates remain 30% gains. S500, maybe even 40. 50% NASDAQ I think, I think we’re going to get there.

So again we’ll use any dips as buying opportunities. What else today? All right, that, that’s that. Those are the basics. Let’s get look in the hood today and I’ll let you go Internal state were not good. Quick refresh. Two and a half to one negative advanced decline for a NASDAQ. NYSE right at two to one negative about 100 more stocks and 52 week low 50 KAI and then we had 53% down volume for NASDAQ and 61% down volume for NYSE. Again we’ve had a hell of a run.

[00:09:46]:
However, the internals have been negative. Now this makes five straight days the internals been negative. And again our liquidity leaders outside of the semis are leading lower. This, this smells like a near term pause to me. The commodity watch today again, gold. Lower again. Again. These are counter trend moves.

That’s the most important thing to remember. Oil’s not going to stay here. Higher rates aren’t going to stay here. That’s our call. Remains our call today though. Gold down 50 bucks an ounce. 45, 57. Silver down $90.

That’s two and a half percent. 71, 85 copper today down 8. 10 of a percent. Excuse me. At $5.90 a pound. Crude oil today again up right now 8%. Last trade. Yeah, up 8% at 108 on the dot.

And finally the day. Bitcoin. I apologize. I’ve got it right here. What am I doing? There it is. Apologies. Here we go. Bitcoin.

[00:10:57]:
Last trade down 1%. Last 24 hours. 75,600. All right folks, I say got to keep a little short today. Hope you had a great day, a better night. We’ll see you back here again tomorrow after the close.