In today's episode, Kip breaks down a pivotal week for the markets, highlighting a powerful seven-day rally and the bullish signals emerging across equities. You'll hear timely insights on how global events—particularly the wani ...
Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Thursday after everyone. Kip Herriage here with the Daily VRA Investing podcast. Hope you had a good day today. Well, here we go again, another good day. Some very interesting things taking place right now in the market as we, as the war continues to play on. As we told you since last Monday, we thought last Monday was going to be the lows and that’s what’s held up.
We’ve now had seven straight days where the market’s been higher and eight straight days where the smart money hour has been strong. This is textbook stuff. We look, the lows are in. The war is essentially over. I think Trump can’t get this war over soon enough. I saw today he reached out to Israel to try to get them to agree to stop the bombing on Lebanon. Of course, that’s what Iran wants. So what we know about Trump is this.
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When Trump pivots, he pivots and he moves on and he leaves the past behind him. This is a kind of a hallmark personality trait of Trump. I’ll, I’ll be shocked if we see this war start up again. I really will. And I think the markets see that. And remember, this is such a big foundational part of this market. People are really short, right? Institutions are really still very short. Now they’re covering, but that’s not a one day process.
Look, it took them five weeks for CTA’s Commodity Trading Advisors and hedge funds took them five weeks to get short to the level that they were. And it’s not going to be unwound in just a few days. So they’re going to be buying every day. I just saw Goldman Sachs put this out just a few minutes ago. They’re going to be buying every day for about the next week. You know, every day they buy 30, 40 billion dollars worth of equities. And that’s a lot of demand. So that puts a floor under the market also.
And this is a big change in this market. Retail investors finally gave up. I think it was the war that did this. Look, I, I, this is a personal belief, but I think it’s right. When I say retail investors, I’m talking about Donald Trump supporters. They believe in Trump. They were, they were buying from the get go when he was inaugurated. Every dip was bought is why the market did so well.
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But now we’ve been through tariff mania. Now we’ve seen this war very unpopular, especially with younger investors that are not big fans of Israel. So hang with me here because I think this, I think this Is it? We’ve now seen, this is well documented. Retail investors again, mostly younger investors, right? I’d say up to probably 40 years old. Israel’s lost them. The polls are brutal, right? Brutal for Israel. And I’m not telling you something you don’t know, but the war, the minute this war started, retail investors said I’m out. They’ve been again we see these articles every day.
All the data backs this up. Retail investors have been selling the rips, right? And then just buying dips as a trade and then they’re out. That is a personality change for this market and it’s potentially a big one now in my opinion. They’ll come back but right now they’re buying puts that, that, that’s what’s changed. Retail investors now are buying puts. There’s been so much fear mongering about this war. So many huge perma bears and some big voices, right, saying that Trump’s lost his way and that this is going to escalate. We’re going to have a nuclear bomb go off in a, you know, you know, I’m talking about a lot of big names are, are, are really out there.
Fear pointing. Now look, what do I know, right? Maybe the worst case scenario could happen. I just don’t see that. I don’t see Trump in any way, shape or form being that kind of guy. So again, as I’ve been, we’ve been saying now really for the last several days, this war for all intensive purposes is over. The markets believe it’s over and when Trump pivots, he pivots hard. I think that’s what’s happening here. I think this, this rally is going to continue.
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We’ve got some great data on that for you. I’ll share. I talked about the put call ratio. Check this out. We’ve been talking about to with you about the elevated put call ratio. It, it had been non existent for a long time even as the market was falling. We couldn’t get a put call ratio above a 1 to save our lives. And again if you’re a contrarian, you start looking for that, right? Anything above a 1 is extended.
Anything above like a 1.1, 1.2. That’s pretty extreme put buying, right? And a lot of fear, right? Remember the fear and greed index hit 9. We’re seeing in all the, all the sentiment surveys. But this morning the put call ratio, I had to double check this just to make sure it was a good print. This morning the put call ratio, first trade. It updates every 30 minutes. First trade, 1.444. That is extreme.
Second print 30 minutes later 1.28. Third print 30 minutes later 1.16. Fourth print 1.10. The first two hours of trading had a put call ratio above one. That makes us very, very confident on the long side. While I’m on Trump, I just want to put this out there. We, I talked about this with you a couple of weeks ago. You know, we like watching repeating patterns.
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That’s the basis of technical analysis, right? So we look for patterns that repeat and there’s some very, very interesting ones I think out there right now, including fifo. We’ve been talking with you about that. I’ve got some on that as well for bitcoin fans and for, for stock market fans. There’s some good data there that points to higher prices, by the way, for bitcoin and the markets. 2018, there was a four to five week market meltdown. 2018, that was the, the, the, the, the, the J. Powell hiking rates in December, which crashed the markets in December. Worst, worst fourth quarter in December ever.
Worse than Great Depression, which is pretty bad. That was eight. 2018. Four to five weeks. 2020. What happened in 2020? I think we all know what happened. The plandemic. How long, how far, how long do the markets fall? 4 to 5 weeks.
Last year, tariff mania. How long did the markets fall? 4 to 5 weeks. And now this, the war. How long do the markets fall? Four to five weeks. Folks, this is when Trump pivots. This is, this is about the most he can take. Maybe his attention span or just when you realize, hey, you know what, the polls are really going against me. I got people calling for the 25th amendment.
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It’s time to pivot, brother. Four to five weeks. Every one of these. I find that, I find that very interesting. And with the other data we look at, I think it’s compelling. I think it’s very compelling. Seeing a lot of people now, including Stock Traders Almanac joined, joined our call last night for, for a, for a seasonality rally. They get some good data on that.
Midterm elections, remember, and we’ve been telling you this now for just over a week. This is the most bullish data that I can remember seeing in about a decade. It’s very compelling and it’s been, it’s been extraordinarily consistent. This goes back to 1950. Every midterm election year that there is a correction and they are pretty common as it turns out, right? First half, first of three, four months of the year in a midterm election year aren’t very good, but when you have a correction of at least 10%. We had that NASDAQ 13 in a midterm election year, once the correction is over, the next 12 months sees the market, meaning the S500 sees the market up 38%. Well, we’re, we’re there now. We’re in that, we’re in that period.
This is the beginning of it. April’s the second best month of the year. Seasonality is good again, midterm election cycle, as Stock Traders Almanac point out. I shared that with you on a letter this morning. They’re, they’re looking for a big rally. They’re, they’re market timers. They’re, they’re like us, different, different in a lot of ways. But they’re the original, they’re the OG of, of Wall Street Analytics Stock Trades Almanac.
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And many of you heard me tell the story before. It’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a night that I treasure right, because the, the founder, the guy who started Stock Traders Almanac, I met him for a dinner in New York City as a very young stockbroker. And just he and I sat together. It was a group, group dinner, but he and I were seated next to each other and just, it reminded me in a lot of ways of a Donald Trump because he was plain spoken, but he’s a great listener. You’ve heard that, I’m sure, about Trump. Anyway, he found his Dr. Zalmaniac. You know, I honestly didn’t know who he was at the time.
I didn’t take long for me to find out who he is. And now his son is now Jeffrey, Jeffrey Hirsch now is running sta. And again, they do great work. The original, they’re the original analytics guys on Wall Street. And look, for several years now, when the analytics, when the analytics, the data holds up, it really holds up. I think that’s what we’re looking at here. We’ve got a lot of reasons to be bullish again. The war is essentially over.
Trump can’t say buy it fast enough. And that means the market’s going higher. A lot of fear, a lot of put buying seasonality. It’s a, it’s pretty striking, right, how all this is adding up together also. And this is just as compelling. Back to back days, the semis and transports, AKA trannies. The semis and trannies are now back to back days of all time highs. The semis have been leading from the April 7th tariff media lows of last year.
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If you’re with us here, you’ve heard that ad nauseam. You’ve seen me share that chart with you, the semi SPF 100 all the time. I share it at least once a week. Because again, it’s the tell. It’s the tell for stock market direction. There is no better tell for stock market direction. Not, not at least since quantitative easing started. Not that I know of.
Anyway, we key off it. It’s in the VR investing system. Now, the transports aren’t the most important economic indicator, but their second was first housing. Housing has been a real concern of ours because rates. We know why. It’s one reason. It’s Jay Powell. Hey.
And the Fed, they. This is the. This is, this is the banking cartel, right? Who runs it? Central banks. They hate Trump. This is how they control them, right? They’re not about to cut rates. But again, the economy has continued to motor along. But the housing market, another story. The good news there.
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And again, apologies for repeating this so many times, but Tyler and I discovered this when we were doing the big bribe. We were like, what? That can’t be right. What? 40% of Americans have no mortgage. What? Why aren’t we hearing this anywhere? Average home equity is 71%. Are you kidding me? These are all time highs. Now, what is it? Total 37, $38 trillion. It’s one of those two. I remember the one.
I’ll call it 38 Roundup. $38 trillion in total home equity. Again, all time high. Without question, without question. There is no doubt about this. The housing market has never been stronger. Now when I hear people go, here comes the next 2008, I know that I’m listening to an idiot, a complete moron, because it’s a near impossibility to have another 2008 when 40% of Americans own their home. Average home equity is 71% and total equity is 38 trillion.
Man, this is, this is cash for the system. This is support, major support. And that’s why once rates start coming. And this is why Powell, Powell has to go. Trump has to drop his lawsuit against this. By the way, I’ve shared this story with Grant Stitchfield, who’s the, you know, the number one guy in real America’s voice at night. Great, great guy. We’ve gotten known real well.
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Do his podcast once a week now. Tyler does as well. Smart guy, by the way too. I shared this with Grant Stitchfield and he told me he was, he was at Mar a Lago last week and he said, by the way, I won’t Mention names. He goes, I was sitting at a table with some fairly well connected, got Trump friends, fairly well connected Trump friends. And I told him about the point that you’ve been making that Trump is doj, doj, not, must, not, not should. They must drop this lawsuit against Jay Powell because he’s not going anywhere. He’s already told us as long as this lawsuit against the Fed and Jay Powell for the two and a half billion dollar renovation, as long as that’s going on, Jay Powell doesn’t have to leave.
His time as a Fed governor is not up until 2018. 2028. Sorry, 2028. And he said in the last presser, I’m not going anywhere until that’s, I can’t, I can’t leave the Federal Reserve without a chairman in place. I kind of get that point. Thom Tillis has already said he’s not even going to give the new guy, Kevin Warsh a hearing unless this is resolved. So Trump has to do this again. Once that happens.
And this is why we added, by the way, to our housing position this morning. Housing stocks are going to go ballistic. We see this next major move in the markets being almost completely interest rate driven. That’s why we’re investing in what we’re invested in. Technology, semis, precious metals, miners, bitcoin, Tao housing, small caps. These are the exact sectors and investments that do the best. Wind rates are coming down and so I think, I think that we’re getting that again. The new Kevin was supposed to be in in May.
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Let’s just hope that, that the Trump can let this lawsuit go so we can get Kevin Wash in place and some common sense can return to the Federal Reserve. But again, semis and trannies back to back days, all time highs. Transports are second most important financial asset that we follow. Sector housing number one. Transports are number two. A lot of people think transports are more important and they’ve just been rolling. We’ve been sharing that with you about what’s happening in rail and in flatbed and in just trucking. I mean the, the, the, the, the charts are going parabolic.
That’s strength. Where’s that coming from? Manufacturing and a strong economy. That’s going to start showing up in the economy here very soon. You’ll see it in GDP numbers when we start getting into. Now that we’ve got the, the, the, the government shut down behind us, now that the war is hopefully soon behind us, we can start to see what the Trump economic miracle can really do with the one big beautiful building place, et cetera. So that’s what, that’s what the semis are telling us or what the transports are telling us. You have the market and economic leaders hitting all time highs together during a correction that is significant. It’s supremely bullish.
So this, we’re seeing textbook bull market action now. Again, up, up seven straight days. Eight straight days. A strong smart money hour. It’s all very good. I had a couple of things this morning I wanted to cover for my letter before I move on here. I kind of did sta, I covered that again. They’re now bullish again.
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The midterm election year cycle is bullish and I kind of COVID the rest of it. So I told you what sectors were involved in. So there you go. What else today? Oh, bitcoin. We’ve shared this with you a few times. Today we took action the parabolic port options program by putting on an option strategy for bitcoin. And I think this is, I think this is significant and I think we’re about to see a major move higher in bitcoin. Last trade now 72,400, right? At the highs of the day, 70,400 up 1.3%.
Bitcoin was the very first asset to top out last October at the all time highs of 121,000. Tech started following it. Eventually everything felt, followed it. It’s like they knew a war was coming. I mean I, I think, I think frankly, let’s be honest, that that is what happened here. Okay. You know they always say the markets are smarter than all of us and the markets are smarter than all of us. But there are people in the markets or the, the shadow government that are just trading like crazy because they know what’s about to happen in three months and six months.
And that word leaks out to all their rich elite, you know, 1/10 of 1, 1/10 of 1/10, 10%. The, the real leaders of the world that you never know their name. But the word filters out, it filters down and that’s why technical analysis is important. You see this? We saw it last October, like well look, bitcoin had a big run, 121,000. Okay, different times of profit taking. But you know, who knew it was going to fall to 59, 7, 50, whatever. It fell to 57,000. But Bitcoin led lower.
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And then on the night the war started, Bitcoin bottom at 59,7 and hasn’t seen that number again. Call that first in, first out. Remember bitcoin? For a stretch of several years, bitcoin was the market leader even more than the semis. Bitcoin led in both directions up and down. So my question I’ll post you is what if we’re getting back into that cycle again? What if bitcoin is leading again? Because if it is a bottom at 59. 7 on night of the war and now it’s 72. 3 and it’s leading the market higher. So far so good.
I think that’s a real opportunity there. So that would mean we now have two directional tells to follow. The semis and bitcoin gold as well. But that’s a more of a liquidity trade. It’s not so, so much a directional trade. But at the end of the day this is all about like these are all about liquidity anyway. So yeah, I think I’d put gold in there too because these are, these are, at the end of the day, these are liquidity trades because if there’s ample liquidity in the system, your leaders are going to lead. So I think, yeah, I, but I put them in that order.
Semis, bitcoin gold, those. That’s what we want to watch as our directional tell. And maybe now the trannies, I mean, again, we’ll keep an eye on that. Love the factor. In all time highs, it means the Dow 30 buy signal from last year which Tyler talked about a lot then that means Dow 3 buy signals is still of course intact. Richard Russell, thank you for that great work all as many years ago. All right, let’s take a look on the hood today again. We closed the highs right just off the highs of the day today.
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A Dow Jones up half percent. NASDAQ up eight tenths. SBF hundred up six ten. Small caps higher again today. Lost a little bit of steam but still closed up six tenths of a percent. Again semi today up 1.7, up 5.8 yesterday. Up 1.7 today. I mean it’s just powering ahead and that’s what we want to see.
All right, who today the internals were funky. These, these are weird. Internal not great by the way. Again, we’ve been up seven straight days. Maybe people are anticipating, you know, a reversal here of a day or two, I don’t know. But today nasdaq was fine. 1.5 to 1 up volume NYC was 2 to 1. That’s good.
It was the volume that was weird. New YC volume only 50% upside volume. Nasdaq was 61.1. So really it’s just the NYC volume that kind of threw me. I don’t know why that I don’t know why that was as weak as it was. The rest was actually good. We had more than 200 more stocks at 5550 low. So again it was a trifecta positive across the board.
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No problem there. Confirmed in the sector watch. 9 of 11 sectors finished higher. Really it’s, it’s 10 of 11. Health care was down to minuscule number but 9 of 11 higher. Consumer discretionary industrials, communication services all up 1% or better. The only downside with energy which continues to languish here, energy stocks. Because again we shared that with you.
All the reasons, all the things that point to oil prices going lower. Energy stocks by the way will reach a point here pretty soon where the VRA portfolio will be adding an energy stock etf. We’re tracking it closely. Once we get to oversold levels we’ll let you know. We’re not, we’re not giving up an energy stocks. We’re just telling you that the, the high for oil is in that, that, that, that, that, that, that plays over with. Again that’s just our call. Commodity watch today gold was lower at the open and then it got rallying at one point up 70 bucks gave that back again.
People are watching oil prices intraday but gold finished up 14 bucks announced at 4790. Silver up just a fraction. 78, 75, 56 an ounce. Copper today. Flat on the day. Seven $5.75 a pound. Crude oil today up, what is that? 4% up 387 a barrel. 98.28.
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But it had been one of one. Almost 103 as a high of the day. Now gas continues to get hit down another 2% today. 267 MCF. We do have a lot of that. Making a lot of money from that, aren’t we? That’s a, that’s a moat. Energy is a big, big moat for the United States. And that is, that is we, we have moats all over the place.
No country can match us. I have no interest. I have zero interest. And investing in any other country except this country, this is the safe play, it’s the momentum play. We are in a golden age of America now again the markets have been, you know, again we’ve seen it every couple of years we have a 10% correction or worse. But those are shakeouts. It’s just setting up the big move generational bull market well into the2030s. This is, this is a bull market.
Every correction should be looked at as a gift. If it changes, we’ll, we will. We will let you know. But that’s how we see it. Finally the day big already covered it. Bitcoin 72 for now. Last trade and as you know, we like it quite a bit. All right folks, that’s it for the day.
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Hope you had a great day and even better night. We’ll see back here again tomorrow after the close it.
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