In today's episode, Tyler wraps up the week's market action, sharing insights on what drove stocks higher despite a flurry of major headlines, including the Supreme Court’s long-awaited ruling on Trump’s tariffs, fresh GDP and inflation data, and ongoing global tensions. Tyler breaks down why it’s not just the headlines but the market’s reaction that matters. Tune into today's podcast to learn more.

Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Friday afternoon, everyone. Tyler Herriage here with you for today’s VRA Investing Podcast. Hope you all had a fantastic day out there today. Hope your week was great as well. It was a good end to the week for our markets this week, uh, despite, you know, a world— a whirlwind of competing narratives and stories, uh, many of that we’ll cover here on today’s podcast. Uh, some of it— we got economic data back this morning, GDP data, some inflation data as well that we’ll cover. Um, and probably the biggest news of the day, which is— it’s tough to say, like I said, a lot of competing headlines today.

The Supreme Court finally issued their, their much anticipated ruling on Trump’s tariffs. Uh, we’ll break that down here today, but I’ll give you a little hint. You know, it’s always really good to see— well, I’ll take a step back. You know, it’s not the news that matters, it’s the market’s reaction to that news. Uh, so have you heard anywhere that it’s really negative, the the Supreme Court has done this, look at what our markets are telling us. We finished higher, uh, for our major indexes, right? Really, people talk about, uh, our three main— major indexes: Dow, NASDAQ, S&P 500. We usually include, uh, the Russell 2000 in that conversation as well, but not everybody does. The Russell 2000 essentially finished flat on the day today.

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Um, but even beyond the headline numbers, got a lot of great stuff to to cover here for you today, uh, some additional bullish information under the hood of this market, uh, that I think that many people are missing here, uh, and you’ll— Kip covered this, uh, yesterday as well, uh, as far as sentiment goes. We continue to get signs that this is early bull market action, uh, until we get a pullback like we’ve seen over the last few weeks and we remain, you know, in greed mode, essentially— not just to quote the Fear and Greed, but, you know, in our other sentiment indicators as well— that’s when we’ll start to see the real warning signs, uh, for a market that’s looking to put in a top. For now, uh, and I’ll cover it way more on today’s podcast, we don’t see this as anywhere near those levels. Uh, right now we remain at 10 out of 12 VRA Investing System screens bullish here. And we’ve got 10 out of 12 screens bullish. You’ve got to be long this market. And when you see a market finishing higher when you’ve got bad news a day like today, that’s certainly not a market that you want to be short. Uh, so before I dive in, I’ll go ahead and quickly say here, if you want more information on our VRA investing system, the screens that we’re looking at and how we read them, which is, you know, really a crucial part of the system, uh, that Kip has built here, uh, you know, over his 40-year career.

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Uh, it’s our proprietary system, uh, and we break it down every day with our VRA updates. So if you’re not already a member here, um, come and join us. We’ve got a 14-day free trial going on right now at vraletter.com. We’d love to have you with us. And as always, send any questions in too. We love your feedback. Uh, you know, thank you everybody out there for listening and being here with us. We’ve got a great audience here.

Uh, we’re very grateful to get, uh, to have this opportunity to do that, do what we do day in and day out. It really is what Kip and I love doing, uh, and Sam as well, and Josh, you know, Danielle, everybody on our team. Uh, we love the research side of this, uh, and so to be able to provide value while doing something that we love is really, uh, you know, pretty ideal situation. So thank you for being here with us. Uh, but yeah, again, if you want a further breakdown of the VRA Investing System, come and join us at vraletter.com. Also here, quickly before I dive into the podcast today, if you’ve got some time this weekend, uh, that you’re looking to kill, uh, you’d like to do some research of your own, uh, maybe get a little bit of, uh, you know, financial education during that time, uh, you’ve got to watch, uh, Kip’s latest podcast interview with Grant Stinchfield. A fantastic podcast interview just came out this morning. Uh, you can find it— probably the easiest way to do it would be on Kip’s Twitter feed.

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I think we probably got a lot of Kip followers for, uh, from X there, but you can also find it on YouTube, on Rumble, uh, through Grant’s pages. Um, I don’t have the title right in front of me today, but it was a fantastic interview going over a lot of the stuff that we’ll cover here today as well. Um, in a fantastic way. I mean, you can’t beat 40 years of experience. Kib breaks it down like nobody else can, that’s for sure. Very grateful to have such a phenomenal mentor out there. Um, and, uh, we also did get to meet Grant, uh, this week as well. Kib talked about that briefly yesterday.

We were in Dallas earlier this week. That’s why we missed you for, uh, Tuesday and Wednesday’s podcast. Uh, great to wrap up the, the week here with you though. Um, but for Grant fans out there, which we are here as well at Absolutely. And, and only more so now, you know, after getting to meet him in person and have some conversations with him, you know, just an absolutely phenomenal guy. Fantastic to talk to, easy to talk to, um, you know, exactly who he comes off as being in his show as well as— it’s authentic who he is, you know, the views that he talks about is what he believes in with conviction. Um, you always appreciate meeting somebody like that, especially in today’s day and age, um, and a politically charged climate as a whole. People always feel like they’re stepping on toes or walking on eggshells, um, and so it’s great to meet somebody who’s authentically themselves and it had— doesn’t have fear of talking about some of these issues that may be, uh, a little unpopular at a cocktail party, right? Uh, but we’ve got to have these hard conversations, um, As, as many of you know, we get so much great feedback from y’all and, uh, about topics like this, or, you know, challenging our stance on views as well.

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That’s how we get better at doing this. Iron sharpens iron, right? So, uh, yeah, very grateful to be working with Grant. Um, you know, looking forward to doing some more with him in the future, uh, since he is just right up the road in Dallas, Texas here as well. So, uh, without further ado Let’s start jumping into some of today’s action. Uh, like I said, I’ll try to, try to keep it relatively brief here for you on this Friday evening, get you out the door, uh, for your weekend here as the days are getting a little longer, right? That’s been a little nice if you’ve been paying attention. Sun’s setting a little bit later, a little bit later here. We’re just a couple weeks away from daylight savings time. Uh, fantastic time of the year, right? I love the, the late evenings, the sunny evenings.

Um, we got to get rid of that, right? Um, we’ll see if, uh, not exactly high on Trump’s priority list at the moment. And hey, I get it, we’ll talk about tariffs here in just a minute. All right, so this morning ahead of the open, we got some, uh, economic data back here. Let’s go ahead and start off with, uh, GDP. You know, we’ve talked about this so much here from the end of last year into the beginning of this year, where we saw the Atlanta Fed had phenomenal GDP forecasts for the fourth quarter, you know, 5% plus forecasts, um, which we would love seeing here coming in earlier than we expected, which we, you know, originally called the first half of this year and even moved up our timeline, uh, to the first quarter of this year. We’ve also upped our GDP projections, um, by the end of Trump’s first term, we expect to see 8% GDP growth. Uh, you know, I’ve talked to, to Kip about this a lot, um, over the last few weeks and months and what we’re seeing from this market. And, uh, you know, some reasons, some compelling reasons out there why we might even be on the low side.

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Uh, why couldn’t we see double-digit GDP growth, right? Absolutely. And I think it goes back to a topic, uh, I won’t get too off tangent here with this one, but a topic that Kip and I cover hear a lot. Sam covers it, uh, a lot in our conversations, Josh as well, of, uh, we’ll start off with Elon’s quote from Davos, right? And much rather be an optimist and wrong than a pessimist and right. Um, but going back to what we’ve seen over the last few decades in U.S. history, uh, a big reason why we wrote The Big Bribe was that we had just come out of, you know, arguably from some points of view, okay, not just saying this is definitively the case, but the 20 years of— 25 years of American history, you know, have been, um, you know, in a lot of ways some of the toughest, right? I’m not saying I’m comparing it to the World Wars and those generations or anything like that, but you look at 2001, you know, obviously 9/11, and then the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Trillions of dollars spent over there, thousands of U.S. lives lost. Um, and to— for what, right? Uh, we also saw the end of, uh, um, our healthcare system as it, as it was previously known with Obamacare.

Of course, the 2008 financial crisis took place. We had currency crisis in the early 2010s. Um, and then going to 2016, you get Trump elected. Um, uh, we see The establishment, the deep state, attack him with everything that they’ve got and continued polarization of our political parties. Then you’ve got COVID in 2020 and, and the subsequent stock market crash that took place from there. We also saw during that time multiple sell-offs, Federal Reserve-induced sell-offs, uh, from, uh, Trump’s first term and into COVID. You know, direct mistakes by Jay Powell, um, during that time. Um, there’s one more I just thought of that, um, pre-COVID.

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Anyway, I mean, there’s— the list goes on and on. The inflation, uh, that we saw after COVID, right? The highest inflation we’ve seen in 4 decades here in America. So in so many ways, you just see the destruction of the U.S. middle class, uh, you see the destruction of our way of life, you know. Unfettered immigration here into the U.S. is demoralizing, which if you’ve read Rules for Radicals, you know That is one of the first agenda items on the communist playbook, on the left-wing radical agenda. Uh, like I said, they’ve written whole books about it. They want to demoralize the population to a point where they’ll just be begging for help, right? That’s when the government really steps in, right? Oh well, we’ve got a solution for you.

They make it incredibly bad, uh, so that they can force their solution that they want down everybody’s throat. Um, so aren’t we due for a time of prosperity here? And we think that’s exactly what we’re due for with the innovation revolution, uh, the roaring 2020s meets the Trump, Trump economic miracle 2.0. Uh, so from an administration like Obama and then future Biden administration, when so many people were just told to expect less. Okay, that’s where I’m going with this about the optimism part. For so long— I love this topic, uh, because I don’t hear anybody else talking about it really. And, and you know, I got another shout out to Kip there for continuously bringing this up. And it is so important to remember that for years we were told just to expect less. Okay, my generation was just told, you know, you’re gonna have less than your parents’ generation.

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And my parents were told, and You know, many of you out there were told your kids are gonna have— for the first time in a few generations of US history, your kids are gonna have less than you did, right? That was what we were told to expect. It’s just the best we can do. 1% GDP growth is humming, okay? That’s a roaring economy, uh, when you have the largest economy in the world. And it’s, you know, we’re at the end of, of an innovation cycle, just missing the, the point completely about the opportunity here for Americans. I think that’s what we’re unleashing here and seeing, uh, from the Trump economic miracle is that unleashing of animal spirits in America, the empowerment of business owners over the bureaucratic class, which I’ve got some points on here in a minute. But back to GDP, did come in with a disappointment this morning. Again, Atlanta Fed GDP estimates, really up until I think about a month ago, it was like January 10th, so maybe just over a month ago, We’re still looking at 5% GDP, uh, growth from their estimates. Um, but much like the jobs numbers recently here— they’ll show you a chart here in a second— much like the jobs numbers, okay, you know, we’re seeing job growth still, right? We’re not losing job— not a net loss of jobs, but a big part of the losers in the jobs reports has been government jobs, okay? For us here No problem with that.

We want a smaller government. We want to get rid of a lot of these bureaucrats that are just spending taxpayer dollars at the end of the day. Uh, so same thing we’re seeing here from GDP because of the government shutdown is what they’re, they’re citing as the main problem here. The government, uh, obviously, uh, on the negative side, you know, they’re saying it took up to as much as 1.2 percentage points off of GDP growth. But again, consumer spending going up, investment going up, imports going up. Here, okay? I mean, this is again an economy that is broadening, uh, certainly not a bearish sign here for this economy. Um, I do want to pull this up really quick as well. I’ll show you because we also got today, um, the first look, the very first look at Q1 GDP, okay? Before I get to that though, I do want to make this point.

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Just like with jobs data, you know, this GDP data, just like with inflation data, okay? There’s much better sources out there than government data. Um, so we’ll probably get 4 or 5 different revisions to this over the next few months. But here, back to the Atlanta Fed, uh, looking at, you know, first look here for Q1 GDP, 3.1% growth. Not bad. You know, we still want to continue to see that ramp up, and we do expect that to be the case. I’m not sure I had a chart here, um, earlier in the day. I think I might have, uh, gone away from it here. I don’t want to spend a ton of time on it because Kip talked about this as well— the earnings growth that we’re seeing.

You know, not only have we gotten, um, beats on expectations, but the year-over-year beats are incredible. Double-digit growth for, for earnings per share, for revenue, for a lot of companies here. Double-digit earnings growth. Okay, for large companies, massive, massive, and definitely has flown under the radar of the headlines here. Also today, as you may have seen, um, we got inflation data back with PCE, which is what they say is the Fed’s favorite gauge of inflation, uh, you know, coming in above expectations of 2.8%. So of course, you know, the inflation, uh, crowd out there who says it’s coming back, okay? Uh, they were, you know, out in full force today, put it that way. Um, when really most of the voices that we trust here and the work that we’ve done, you know, continues to point to the signs of disinflation for this market. Innovation is inherently deflationary, okay? Uh, that’s going to be a fact that’s going to affect this market.

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And I think the Trump admin knows this, the Treasury knows this, and knows that, you know, in a lot of ways they need the money printer to come back on here to, you know, fend off a deflationary cycle. Still a little bit down the road, you know. I don’t think anything as far as the Fed policy goes in the here and now is enough that it’s going to send something spiraling out of control. Like we continue to hear with like the Blue Owl story, which Kip discusses in his interview with Grant. But just like that story, you’ve got to look at actual facts, stats, data. And one great piece of, of data here that I was going to wait for our sectors to get to, but I’ll just touch on it briefly. You know, even without hearing, um, the reaction to Blue Owl, I knew immediately, you know, it was going to be— this is, uh, you know, the next big blowup, uh, is going to lead to chain reaction of events here. And then you go check something like the regional banks.

Um, you expect to see— when financial institutions are blowing up, you’d expect to see stress, stress in these financial ETFs, uh, because it would bleed over to more— to the whole sector, not just an individual name, right? When we’re talking about like JP— JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon from JP Morgan said last year that there’s cockroaches, you know, in our financial system just hiding out waiting to cause massive problems. Well, yes, the financials have pulled back, okay? They finished higher on the day today, okay? But really, the key point here is KRE is the regional bank ETF. This is really where you see early warning signs for the economy, and we just aren’t seeing that right now. KRE remains near an, uh, you know, a 52-week high, uh, let me just double-check. I don’t want to misquote that. Yes, right near an all time high. Um, again here, so no concerns for us really from these GDP numbers. Again, we’ll probably get a lot of revisions.

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Uh, as you know, inflation for here— for some time for us here has been a rearview mirror issue in our view. Um, but again, back— final points here for GDP: fantastic to see an economy growing with actual businesses generating that growth, okay? Not government growth, not government jobs and programs, and, you know, which really don’t add to the productivity at all, right? That’s just taxpayer-funded growth, really, is what— is what it should be called, right? They didn’t do anything to contribute to it. That’s taxpayer funds, uh, that’s paying for that. It’s not real growth. That’s shuffling around the funds, okay? It’s giving— or it’s taking from the most productive people in our society, those who work for a living. It punishes them. They got to give that money to the government. The government says, we can— we need it because we can spend it better than you can, right? That’s a farce if I ever heard one.

But, uh, again, it comes— it comes out of the pockets from the most productive, uh, people in our society. And after all that shuffling just somehow continues to find its way into the pockets of, uh, you know, kind of the bureaucratic, uh, class of our political establishment. Um, all right, so looking forward, again, we do expect great GDP numbers, and those earnings numbers I mentioned earlier of double-digit growth, we expect to continue. So again, a flurry of headlines ahead of the market open. Our major indexes opened lower on the day today. Um, you know, in that— in a lot of ways, for a lot of our— I believe all of our major indexes marked the lows of the day. We’re starting to rally, uh, after this morning’s trading. And just as the rally’s starting to begin, the Supreme Court tariff ruling comes out.

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Now, we’ve been waiting for this for weeks. It’s just been kind of looming over the head of the market. So part of this certainly Certainly is getting rid of the uncertainty here. Um, so the market’s like that, absolutely getting some clarification on what that means. But essentially, the court held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, AEPA, which Trump has been using, does not— they’re saying does not authorize the president to impose tariffs here. So the question, of course, is, you know, what happens to these funds that were collected. A lot of people are saying it’s going to be returned to those companies, which means, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars in liquidity possibly for this market. Um, you know, but Trump pointed this out in his press conference, which he gave shortly after, that the Supreme Court didn’t rule on that part of it.

So we’ll see what happens there. Uh, but so far, you know, uh, just with maybe an hour after this ruling, uh, Trump was out with comments of his backup plan and then announced, you know, an address, uh, to the nation from Trump, which he probably gave like a 30-minute, you know, press conference and Q&A, uh, and about exactly what you would hear. You know, Trump, full confidence, you know, doesn’t hesitate at all, full steam ahead. You know, he said he was surprised by the decision, but that it’s not going to derail them in any way. Uh, he said in some ways it actually gives him more power in terms of tariffs by using other methods. Um, so again, importantly here though, I think what the market liked is no more waiting to see what’s going to happen. You get that clarity. The market— if there’s one thing that the market hates, it’s uncertainty.

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Absolutely. So this is some much-needed clarity here. Um, and you could tell just from Trump’s speech, it was business as usual. You’re not surprised for it, prepared for these things. As they’ve talked about here a lot. I think, uh, Kip nailed it, uh, in a tweet right at the close here today that I wanted to share with you. Uh, you know, nailing this, uh, topic, you know, SCOTUS ruling down Trump’s tariffs barely matters. You know, Trump has already wielded the strategy, okay? The, the damage is done from this sledgehammer, okay? Sledgehammer— like a sledgehammer threatening massive levies to force countries to the table, and it works spectacularly.

Remarkable trade deals poured in, absolutely true. Trillions of dollars invested here in the US that weren’t going to come, you know, better terms than any other president, uh, huge US goods purchases. And again, like I said, the trillions in investment coming back to America, um, you know, manufacturing boom here in America, um, and, you know, really righting the wrongs of the last few decades of trade policy where other countries have manipulated their, their currency against ours to their advantage. You know, a lot of this isn’t even revenge, it’s just, you know, setting, uh, uh, you know, righting a few wrongs, really. Uh, if you’re looking at this objectively, if you could take out, uh, the orange man bad, you know, Trump derangement syndrome from the financial media, I think that they would see this absolutely. Uh, but Kib’s exactly right there on that point. You know, it’s already been done, right? A lot of these trade deals have already been struck. Um, that money has now been committed to coming into the US, has made its way into the US.

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Um, so the important things that he wanted to happen have already happened. So it almost makes this a not— a non-event in a lot of ways. Uh, and to echo Kip’s point here, um, I had already written this part actually before I saw his tweet. I just thought it went perfectly in line You know, if you’re going to watch anybody in the Trump administration when it comes to financial matters, you watch Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant. He’s the guy to watch. And, you know, in December— okay, a few months ago, uh, he’s been way ahead of this. He did an interview on stage with the New York Times, interviewed by Andrew Ross Sorkin. You know, not usually an interview that I would watch, if I’m being totally honest.

Um, I did watch it at the time, then happened to catch this clip, uh, today as well, where He said exactly what Kip is talking about. I don’t think Kip probably had seen this before writing this, this tweet, but it’s so true, you know, that, uh, again, these trade deals are done. They’re purchasing U.S. goods, investment dollars flooding into, uh, the U.S. here, you know, already done deals, okay? But as far as what comes next, in that same interview, he, he already acknowledged this. They have multiple ways to recreate the exact ‘Same structure’ were his words there. So, uh, again, I, I think a good reaction today. The market tells you everything you want to know about this news.

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Again, it’s not the news that matters, it’s the market’s reaction to that news. And this is the reaction you want to see. Again, we opened in the red this morning, that essentially marked the lows of the day. Um, tech started to lead to the upside first and foremost. Also, again, here, exactly what you want to see uh, semis leading tech as well. So I’ll cover all of that here. Again, our only, um, uh, major index not to finish higher on the day was the Russell 2000, essentially flat on the day. But as far as major indexes go, they’re leading the way in 2026, up over 7.4% so far on the year.

So no, no worries here today. Um, but again, with those headlines, okay, we had GDP, inflation, tariff ruling, Trump comments. Also, I haven’t even talked about yet, you know, the potential for an Iran conflict, right? That we’ve sent an armada to that region of the world that hasn’t been seen, uh, from the US really, um, very often over the last couple of decades, maybe just a couple of times. Uh, some have said it’s the biggest since 2003. Um, Now, you know, how they’re measuring that, I won’t say that’s definitively true, but it is true that these, you know, tensions are worrying the market as well. Again, the uncertainty is what spooks the market. I don’t think a big blowout kind of event is what, uh, we’re pricing in here, and certainly wouldn’t see that from today’s action. NASDAQ leading the way, up 0.9%.

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Again, semis leading on the day, up over 1%. On the day today. After that, S&P 500 up just under 0.7%, but exactly what you want to see here. You know what a year it’s been for, uh, the other 493 stocks in the S&P 500, the stocks that, you know, everybody said were unloved and, and it’s just the Mag 7, right? Well, they’re way outperforming the Mag 7 on the year, and here’s the proof. RSP is the equal weight S&P 500 ETF hit an all-time closing high today, just below its all-time intraday high, but its best close in history today. Again, another sign here of a broadening market, and as we say often, new highs beget new highs. Uh, then finally here for today, the Dow Jones also finished higher on the day, up, uh, just under half a percent on the session today. Uh, but almost across the board here in Dow specifically you know, finishing at or near the highs of the session.

Again, exactly what you want to see to close out the week on a day with bad news. So many different areas, uh, great to be here with you. It’s always great to be here with you every day, but an update to close out the week is pretty nice. Also point out internationally, uh, as well, okay, uh, we don’t have any international specifically because it’s international exposure, right? We don’t have like, oh, we’re buying this country specifically or a company because they have land holdings in this country, uh, it may just kind of line up, right? Oil and gas play, gold mining, those kinds of things. They aren’t specifically tied to the policies of those countries is my point. But to the point of new highs beget new highs, you want to see international markets participating, right? This is a global bull market is what we’ve said from the very beginning, uh, but I do want to clarify that we don’t see you know, the end of US exceptionalism as being the case for this trade, as you know, again, the talking heads would want you to believe. Very similar to the narrative we got last year, you know, oh, international markets are leading to start the year, the US trade is dead, it’s going to be global from here on out. They’ve been performing great, okay, good for them, uh, it’s fantastic, but the innovation is still going to be driven by us here in the US.

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It really is We’ve talked about this as well, a head-to-head matchup for AI here and who’s gonna, you know, control how— AI can be weaponized or weaponized at all. It’s either between the US and China. That’s really what it’s come down to. Uh, but we did see emerging markets, uh, the ETF there, EEM, hitting an all-time high today. We also, uh, got 52-week highs and all-time highs from a number of country ETFs, or they’re right in the range as well. So again, Not the end of US exceptionalism, but a rising tide lifts all boats. Um, you know, important to, uh, to, uh, remember now as well seasonality. We’re entering, you know, we are in currently a weak month, traditionally speaking of the year, the weakest month of the most bullish time frame though, at least.

So we’ve got this followed by two very good, historically speaking, months, uh, in March and April coming up. The end of February, you know, can be a little bit more of a shakeout time. Uh, we will continue you to use, uh, um, pullbacks as an opportunity to buy the dip. Uh, we think the lows are in here, but bottoms are messy along the way. They look scary, uh, when it’s going on. That’s also all— often one of the best times to be a buyer. And a key point here You know, with so many areas in the range of all-time highs and we’re nowhere near overbought on the VRA investing system. So we’re really setting up pretty perfectly to enter this bullish time frame.

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All right, quickly here, we’ll wrap up for the day. The internals coming in good, also finishing near their highs of the day like our major indexes. You know, no big beats here. I’ll just go ahead and wrap with— we finish positive across the board. Advance decline, 52-week highs to lows. And volume. So very good to see that today as well. Looking at our sectors, we finished with 9 out of our 11 sectors higher on the day today.

Fantastic reading from our sectors, uh, led by communication services followed by consumer discretionary. A lot of tech in those two sectors there, really, especially communication services. After that, real estate, which is, you know, XLRE. We typically look at the home builders, but XLE, the S&P real estate, uh, sector, not far away from a 52-week high here. Again, new highs beget new highs, uh, which we got today from the industrials, hit an all-time high here as well. I mean, what a run both industrials and materials have been on here. Materials not far from their all-time high. Our two laggards on the day, energy and healthcare.

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We did just get out of a few energy meetings in Dallas. We got NAPE going on in Houston right now. Um, the key point here about energy stocks, which is really over the last year been phenomenal to see despite sideways action in oil specifically, really, uh, for energy companies to hit high after high after high in the sector, hitting all-time highs as well, similar to gold miners leading gold.. You want to see the energy producers, you know, leading the commodity, um, and producing more, right, at the end of the day. Because there’s one thing here that’s so crucial, I think a lot of people are realizing specifically in the last couple of months, is that you don’t have an AI revolution without energy abundance, right? It’s absolutely critical, uh, to this process— powering data centers, um, you know, keeping the lights on here at home, uh, just for a growing economy, more energy usage as a whole. Um, so very good to see this kind of action. Uh, we want to see more of this, not less. Finally here for today, our VRA commodity watch.

Uh, after the tariff news this morning, gold hit its highs of the day and did not look back. I mean, just before I recorded this podcast in after-hours trading Gold a little bit off of it now, but I mean, just before it was at its highs of the day just 30 minutes ago, above $5,100 an ounce again. Now slightly below it, but up 1.67% at $5,080 an ounce. Um, again, just like you want to see semis leading tech, you want to see the miners leading gold. We got that today. GDX almost up 2% on the day today. Next up here, silver. Uh, up 6% on the day now at $82.34 a pound.

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Copper up big as well, $5.83 a pound. I think— sorry, I think I said silver in pounds. $80.34 an ounce. Copper $5.83 a pound. Oil, um, you know, consistently back to the mid-60s here at $66.24 a barrel. And finally here for today, Bitcoin, you know, still trying to find its footing here. You know, it’s been kind of stuck, uh, you know, below $70K, uh, today, now at $68,000 of Bitcoin, actually approaching its highs of the session here today, uh, as well. But folks, that is all that we have time for here today.

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