Welcome to the VRA Investing Podcast! On this Monday edition, Speaker A dives into an action-packed market recap, highlighting a powerful rally for the bulls and sharing key technical "tells" that signal further upside momentum. Drawing on decades of experience and the wisdom of mentors, Speaker A explains why recent market turmoil — whether driven by geopolitical events, economic fears, or political shifts — have ultimately proven to be short-lived corrections and buying opportunities.

Kip Herriage [00:00:05]:
Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Monday after everyone. Kip Herriage here with the daily VRA investing podcast. Hope you had a good day today. If you are bullish, you had a good day. It’s been a very good run. Has it not got some good stuff for you today. There are some tells.

You know, we’re big on tells here. When you do something 44 decades, you know, you start to pick up patterns. Remember, patterns are the. That is technical analysis. That’s the basis of technical, technical analysis analysis. So it’s kind of ingrained in us and you start seeing things that just go, oh, that’s interesting. That may mean this. So let’s, we’ll cover some of those today.

I think we got some good things. It’s a bad time. If you’re an investor and a Trump hater, this is not your kind of market. I’m going to walk you through these four cases this has happened in. This is the fourth. I think the end result is going to be the same. We’re talking melt up, move higher into the year end. The loads are in.

Like we, we said that two weeks ago. We’ve got a lot of data to back that up now. I mean, I’m talking about evidence, right? Evidentiary data to back that up. I believe that confident call, high confidence call here. We’ll look back in the near future. Within 30 days, we’ll look back and go, okay, the war was a bull market reset. That’s, that’s what it was. Again, no different than the previous four, three instances we had before it.

How about our oldie but a goodie from my first mentor, Ted Parsons. Thank you again, Ted, from the great above. Never sell on a Monday. Never sell on a Monday. Ted will walk around the office, just say his favorite, you know, catchphrases. On a down Monday, he literally walk around the office. We had a few, we had a big, big floor walk around the office, just saying, hey, guys, as a reminder, never sell on a Monday. You know, the market be down big.

And invariably by the close, he would be proven right. And of course, this morning when I woke up, futures are down. Dow Jones futures down 450. So it felt like, here we go again. Right. Of course, books is of the war. We’ll talk about that a little bit too. Some really interesting things happening here where frankly, even if you’re a lifelong independent, that’s me.

You have to look at this and go, does this son of a bitch Trump does this son of a. Really? Is he really 4D chess guy. Because there are things happening now that, that make it quite like I say, possible or quite likely even that we’re looking at some genius level stuff here that, that he’s pulled off. Right. Talk about that a little bit. This, this is gonna be a fun podcast today. While we’re on the subject of Trump. I mean I hate to himself on the back, but look, if again pattern recognition, right? What have we been talking about when Trump pivots? When Trump pivots, he pivots.

He’s ready to get rid of the past. He’s ready to move on to something better. He’s pivoted from this war, has he not with a brilliant strategy with this Iranian blockade. I mean this is, this is the stuff of true genius. Now look at the super tankers that are headed to the Gulf coast to pick up. What, what is the number? I, I think Trump also said Today something like 40 ships have passed through state or moves. I mean this thing is opening. I mean again it’s no wonder that you know oil, oil opened this morning at 1.

[00:03:25]:
Oh basically 106. Just below 106. Last trade now is 97.93. Still up a bit on the day, but this could have been one of those mornings where oil opens at 106 and goes to 120. And again the tell, it just started selling off as did futures. December futures. Now it’s 76 and change, I think. So again we’ll come back to it.

One of our favorite topics here, it has been for some time, if you, if you know us at all, we’ve been talking about the, the country that is America, that is a frickin miracle. And the moats that we have, the moats that we have that make us unbeatable. The moats that we have that make us the only country, the only country that is highly investable. The only country that as I see it, is a slam dunk for success because of all of these economic modes that we have. And energy is certainly one of those. It’s only getting stronger, right? I, I don’t honestly, if this war is over, and that’s been our call for two weeks, three for, for all intensive purposes, the war is over. All right? We stand by that. Even more so today Iran is completely trapped.

They use their one, their one get out of jail free card, right? It was a straight of Hormuz and they found a way to screw that up. That’s that, that, that, that plays over with unless they do something really stupid. That plays over with. That means this War is over with. And I think if you’re bearish here, you’re going to get absolutely crushed. You’re going to get. This is, this is not only a V shape recovery, clearly it’s that this is a melt up, move higher. And we’re still early in the early innings because we’ve been talking about CTA’s commodity trading advisors and hedge funds, how short they are.

It took them five weeks to build up these short positions, right? Five weeks. And now it’s going to take them probably at least another couple of weeks to, to, to finish covering because they don’t, they don’t cover in a day. Right. These are, these are algorithmic traders, computerized traders. They have a system and it never goes from oh, we’re short, the market’s rallying to we must cover tomorrow. That’s not way it works. So they’re going to be spending at least a couple of weeks shorting. Again, we’re looking at an extended move higher with a lot of energy behind it.

[00:05:48]:
So again we’ve been at, as you know here, if you’re with us, we’ve been adding to positions I think in the very near future that’s going to look very good for us in our portfolio. Because look, I’ll be the first to admit it, look, we all know it. You know, the first four weeks of this war were brutal. Actually even before that it started. Remember bitcoin started going down last October, right? First in, first out. Bitcoin now surging higher, you know, got it, got it, got hit overnight and then boom, just like it was shot out of a can. And we’re back over 73,000 again. So first in, first outs, powerful semis leading higher again, up another 1.5% today.

The semis. Check this out. This is from three weeks ago. Semis are up 25%. Bitcoin up 23%. That actually Bitcoin is from the, the night that the missiles first dropped in Iran. Okay, but, but again these are all essentially in within, within four or five weeks. All of our liquidity tells, our primary market direction indicators are pointing to higher prices.

J.C. perez, who’s a interesting guy, he does really good work by the way. Not everybody’s favorite guy, he’s very opinionated. Well, some people might say that I am as well, but I think some. Well, look, it doesn’t matter. He’s not my favorite guy, but he does good work. All right, he put this out over the weekend. I’ll share it again now.

Here, I wrote it up this morning. Check this out. On Friday the equal weighted tech index closes highest level in history all time high. Also on Friday the SPF 100, the SP 600 small cap tech index closed an all time high as did the SPF SP 400 mid cap tech tech index all time high. I’m not done yet. As did both the market weighted and equal weighted semiconductor indexes all at all times high on Friday. This does not happen in a bear market, this happens in runaway bull markets. And if you’ve been with us here and if you’re not, welcome to if you’re brand new love have you with us.

Thanks for being here. Our primary theme during this correction, that was painful, right? A lot of things went down for quite some time. This is, this is the way these have been taking place over the last, let’s call it since 2018. They’re short term and they’re painful. This one actually lasts a little bit longer. Remember the software stocks started getting clobbered last October. Bitcoin did as well. It caught up to everything eventually.

Not the semis but most everything it caught up with. But our primary theme for us has been in a generational bull market, which this is, that’s been our call for four years. In a generational bull market correction should be viewed as gifts. We’ve just been given another gift. And for those wondering, you know, maybe you’re, maybe you’re sitting there going I got caught up in the mania, I got caught up in the propaganda of the mainstream financial, mainstream media. Is it too late to buy? No, I’ll show these charts in the morning because yes, on stochastics we have hit extreme reboot levels. Okay, they just have. But on everything else, all of our other momentum oscillators we have forever to run before we get there.

So I think it stays like today again we open up sharply lower. This, this is how it’s going to take place. These dips are going to be short lived and they’re going to be bought. And remember another of our themes, we now have Q and earnings coming out. Remember Delta reported last week they crushed top bottom line, hit an all time high that day. Transport index, all time high the trainees. And today we had Goldman Sachs again. I couldn’t, I couldn’t give two shits about Goldman Sachs.

[00:09:42]:
They are the vampire squid of the investing world as the great Matt Taibi named them in his. If you haven’t read this piece from him, Taibbi in 2010 about the financial crisis where he outlined the criminality that takes place on Wall street that took place on Wall Street. Goldman Sachs leading the way, right? He called him the vampire squid of the investing community. Sticking their, sticking their blood sucking tentacles in anything that moves. That’s a great quote right there. One of the best ever. And again, phenomenal piece from Taibi. One of, one of the best journalists certainly of my lifetime.

He is just a joy to read. He really is. And he’s, he’s, he’s an independent by the way. He, he points out criminality on both sides, but he does, he’s right down the middle and the, the left tapes in for it and the right hasten for it. I love guys like that. Just call it, like, call it balls and strikes right down the middle. That’s Matt, Matt Taibi. But I don’t care about Goldman Sachs.

I, you know, I wouldn’t, I would. We don’t, we don’t. We have a policy. I have a policy. I can’t speak for Tyler, for Sam, for Josh and Danny. I can’t speak for them. I have a policy that I don’t invest in cartels. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t want to go to bed owning a cartel stock.

So we don’t own defense stocks, military industrial complex. We don’t own banking cartels. That’s the Federal Reserve. We don’t own the banking cartel stocks. That’s Goldman Sachs. And we don’t own big pharma, you know, the, the medical cartel. I, I have no interest in, in lining their pockets having any of our subscribers buy any of those stocks. We, you know, the last time I did it was Palantir and Tyler.

Tyler, I both liked it. Tyler I think was, was really passionate on. Early on we finally bought it like 18, 19 or something and then we sold it. It like I think I woke up and I read a news story like they’re behind everything taking place in Ukraine now, all the bombing. They’re running the show, right? They’re the AI program behind the military industrial complex. I called Tyler that and I said, we’re out. I said, yeah, there’s no doubt the stock’s going higher, but we got to sell it. Tyler was like really? I mean, he was disappointed, but he understood.

Kip Herriage [00:11:58]:
Yeah, we just don’t go there. So we made like 80, 85% in Palantir, was a good trade. Would have made a lot more if we stayed in it, but had a big pullback. If you’re looking for something in that space, it’s probably goodbye here, but we don’t do the cartel stocks again. I’m old enough that I just like to sleep well at night and I don’t need to be everything to everybody. Right. I don’t fault anyone for that. Wants to own these stocks at all, by the way.

I’m not judgmental about it. It’s just. It’s just my approach. So there are just a lot of reasons to be bullish here. And I want to come back. I want to come back to the war for a second, because what Trump has done. And by the way, if you noticed over the weekend, when Trump announced, I think it was on Sunday or Saturday night, that this morning the blockade was going to start, all the same propaganda voices, all of the far left and, and right media said, so Iran blockaded the strait, and now that’s what Trump’s going to do. Oh, that sounds a lot better.

That’s not what he said. That’s not what he said. He said we’re going to block Iran from accessing the strait, both imports and exports. Everybody else is going to be able to go through it. Right. And that’s what’s already happening now. Just genius. But he had to get to this point in the whole process, negotiations included, for this to happen.

Because think about this. Iran just sent all of their apparently top delegation, including central banks, guys, you know, financial, economic, and of course military, to this get together in, in, in Pakistan, right, for negotiations. So negotiations are going on. If Iran were to bomb anybody in the straight now, primarily meaning our ships, our Navy company selling through. It’s essential, folks. It’s essentially reopened. If Iran were to bail them now, the United nations would get together and say, no, no, no, you had a ceasefire, you’re in negotiations. What are you doing? The street was open before, it’s open again now.

[00:14:05]:
Why are you bombing? We would get a UN resolution, something Trump didn’t go for and probably wouldn’t have gotten at the beginning anyway, but now he could get that. Some bitch. So Iran is stuck. They’re absolutely stuck. And it’s again, to everybody that doubted Trump. Look, I, I’ll put my, I’ll put my hand in the air, because when you’re going through this stuff, you know, God, you don’t know. I can’t say that I’m certain Trump knew. But the guy’s got a backbone.

He trusts himself inherently, and without question. The guy’s a freaking genius on steroids. Let’s just. We can. I think we can all agree to that. But there’s also. There’s nothing like. There’s nothing quite like a short squeeze when it’s the Trump haters that own the most puts and the most short.

There’s nothing like it because they’re almost guaranteed to be parabolic. How do we know that? It’s already happened three times. This is the fourth. Let’s go through it quickly. I covered this stone last week. I’m starting to dig into this now because this feels like this is an important repeating pattern here. Okay, let’s talk about it for a second. The first was in 2018.

It was the fourth quarter in December from hell. It was the worst meltdown in the markets ever, including the Great Depression. Of course. It started with, with the fed raising rate 7, 3 times. Remember Trump and Jay Powell were in a war of words and the, the banking card just said we’ll teach you. And so they hiked rates into December and melt the mark, melted the market down. But the gist of the decline, the, the most painful part took place over about a four week period. There’s number one, right.

And then you know, they, they, they kind of mended fences and then the Fed came in with liquidity and qe, remember? And so then we had our V bottom, right? That was number one. Number two, the plandemic. How long that last as far as the market was concerned? Yeah, four weeks. Another four week example. It started because of the lockdowns and fear mongering from the government and it ended with QE and a lifting of the lockdowns and then boop. Parabolic again. These weren’t short to Muzire. The lows were in and then we were going on multi, multi month, almost completely vertical parabolic move higher.

That’s number two. Number three last year, Tariff Mania. How long that last? Four weeks again, give or take. These are three, four, five weeks. We’re talking about 30 days essentially, right? Round up and down. Tariff mania. I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again. Had Trump not paused the more aggressive terrorists, you know it was done in when he was given his deal with the Rose Garden, right.

[00:17:13]:
The market celebrated when he said oh it’s going to be across the board. 10 tariff market screamed higher down zones, futures up 1500 points, right. I mean everybody was woohoo. Yeah. And then the very next bulletin board, a thing, you know, the big board he put up, show the other terrorists that were going to be in place like 30, 40, 60% China 70. I mean it was just like, and then we went from right to plus 1500, minus 2000. That happened in like 30 minutes. It was horrible.

Must tell you, horrible. Just a real swing of emotions. I hate that shit. I know you do too, unless you’re a better short term trader than I am. So now we have number four. All right, and here it is, the war. How long has it lasted? For the market damage point of view, four weeks, maybe even three. I mean, most of the damage was done in about three weeks.

And again two weeks ago we had a two weeks ago from today, right, that was our bottom. So we have four examples now. And the reason I talk about Trump haters, okay, is because all of these four examples are cookie cutter. The people that got most short and bought the most puts detest Trump, believed that they were going to make a fortune of the downside because he’s lost his way. Get the 25th amendment, he’s gone impeach, get him out. He’s lost his mind. He’s completely insane. Now that’s code for Wall street, code for load up on puts and load up on your shorts because this thing’s about to break down.

[00:18:52]:
In all four of these cases, the bottom was about four weeks. But again, the common thread, it wasn’t just a recovery to new highs. This thing keeps going and it’s going to keep going and I think we have a good reason why. Did you see the 10 year yield today? Tyler just pointed this out in our pre podcast meeting. 10 year yield today opened higher 4.35% and now close at a 4.297%. Our call has been and remains that rates are going to go substantially lower. Plummeting lower. This is a more normal feeling because rates should already be lower.

We know this well, folks, we’re, we’re like a month out, month and a half out from Kevin worshipping the new Fed chair because he. I’m not going through this again, but Trump’s got, in my opinion, right, who am I? In my opinion, Trump’s gotta drop this lawsuit against the Fed and Jay Powell. I’m not going to go through it all again. You’ve heard me tell the story. But I think he’s got to drop this suit to get Kevin Warsh in there because look, somebody put this out on Twitter this morning and I had to reply to it on Twitter, which of course I did, because I can’t help myself. I’ll just go over with quickly with you. Bar chart, who does really good work by the way, put out a chart on the U.S. housing market.

Said Home sellers now outnumber buyers by 630,000, the largest gap ever Recorded with the big O oh my God face. Right eyeballs. And the chart just shows you. I mean it looks like death warmed over. Right. And so I had to reply to it to make sure the scaremongers and the crash callers at least heard a different voice than they’re hearing. And here’s what I said. I see the scaremongers are using this as crash porn for US housing market with another quote.

2008 sure to follow. Ignore these fools. With 40% of Americans having no mortgage, average home equity is 71%. And with total home equity of $37 trillion, these are all, all time highs. The US housing market has literally never been more structurally sound and it never has been. I challenge anybody that doubts this. Show me another example where the US housing market was on more structurally sound footing. And you can’t because we’ve never had 40% of Americans having no mortgage.

That’s what I’m saying. It’s like, I think, I really think it’s almost like a mathematical possibility that we could have another 2008 years. So the people saying it just haven’t thought it through are not aware of the facts. And again, the housing market needs one thing. It needs lower rates. That’s all it needs. And we’re going to go melt Upville in the housing market which is why we added to our housing position last week. I got to tell you, I think that, I think we’re really well positioned for the rest of this year.

I think it’s. I think we are talking about Meltonville and it’s going to happen in the areas that we have money in. So by the way, I’m a little biased. Interest rate sensitive groups are going to continue to charge higher. That’s really the only place I want to stay positioned. And that’s. That is what we own. Right.

[00:22:10]:
Also today. Today mark nine straight days with a strong smart money hour. This is a tell. This is a smart money tell. To follow is the final hour of trading semis again, we covered that earlier. All time high. Just keep charging ahead. Bitcoin, first in, first out.

We’ve talked about that a lot. All right. I think that’s most of what uncovered. Oh, internals today. Let’s get to that. Really good. Remember we open up sharply lowers some of these numbers, you know, should they should be showing up in the final and they’re not. That tells you how strong today was that I.

That tells you how. This is good. This is good stuff folks. Nyse better than 2 to 1 advanced decline. Nasdaq 2.8 to 1 NYSE 73.9% up volume. Very good day. Again, we open sharply lower. Some of these numbers accumulative, they’re hard to work out off.

Here’s the one that got, really, got mine and Tyler’s attention. Up volume for NASDAQ, 83.3%. We get another one of these today and it’s a, it’s a, it’s a breadth thrust. Right? Either get back to back 80% days or one day with 90% in the volume reading and that’s a breath thrust. A lot of technicians pay attention to these. I, I think they’ve come in handy. I don’t know that I, I can’t ever say that they’ve been, you know, as, as powerful as, as powerful as some people think they are. But, but, but they are, they are powerful.

I’m sorry, I’m so glad I didn’t say what I was about to say. We have a lot of women here that would, may not have gone over well, by the way. I, I just love the fact that we have so many women that are with us here at the vra. You send me your emails and I’ve, I’ll. For the new listener hadn’t heard this over my career and this is not a close second. The smartest investment minds that I work with outside of my mentors, Ted Parsons, Michael Mess have been women. They, they, they are more emotionally well founded. They’re, they’re, they have a base.

[00:24:18]:
Right. They don’t get caught up in the emotion of the moment. They’re much more disciplined and they make great investment decisions. Tyler just, Tyler and Sam just got back from a due diligence trip to North Carolina. This might be something we can all talk about here pretty soon. We just, again doing our homework on this. It’s a really interesting looking young company here, great management team, etc. And one of the guys there knew Jim Cramer from the day and Tyler and Sam said hey, my dad, our dad’s told us a story that Jim Cramer’s success, of course, CNBC fame, Jim Cramer, wrong way Kramer, that he, he made his name because his wife was his CFO and she actually made all the calls for him.

Jim Cramer’s actually admitted this by the way. He, I, I give him credit for that. You know what, she’s a smarter half of us. And I mean so many. It’s in his books and everything, right? So he gives her credit for it. The problem is they got a divorce and that’s when everything he touched turned to shit that plus he sold out to the globalist. It’s just. No, I was watching.

I don’t watch CNBC anymore. As many of you know have it since the pandemic about April, May time frame when Kramer came on and said this may have been a little bit later by the way, the jabs were out. He was talking about, you know, we had a use the military to forcibly jab all American going house to house if we have to. That’s what this guy said. And so at that point I was done. So whenever that was. But I remember watching Kramer, this is much earlier. This is probably 2014.

Obama’s in office. He completely sold out. I’m talking about Kramer. Kramer said on air that if you’re an oil and gas company, you should prepare to go bankrupt because banks will no longer fund your operations. We’re going into a new era of clean energy. And I knew right away he had sold out because you’re a complete moron to believe that even in the best of world, how many decades would it take us to wean off of energy? That’s just suicide. You want to kill a whole lot of people do that. Right? So anyway, great take from Tyler Sam on the trip because the guy said no, that’s absolutely true.

We know it’s true. You know, he was horrible once his, he and his wife divorced. So there you go again. Thanks to all the, the, the, the, the, the gentler sex that are here with this kinder and gentler sex. They’re with us. We love you and thank you again for your feedback. Thanks for being here again. Great internals.

[00:27:01]:
We had about 120 more. 52 highs, 52 week lows. Sector watch today also very good. Nine of 11 sectors finished higher, led by financials, technology both up 1.7%. And downside, utilities down 1%. That’s really about all that happened there. No damage, no foul. Really strong day across the board.

And our commodity watch again, not much happened here today. Gold opened lower this morning. Gold was down about, about 60, 70 bucks. You know, with the higher oil prices in the war, again, it’s a liquidity, you know, it’s a liquidity tell now, right. But rallied back down 21. Last trade 4766. If you noticed our gold miners today, by the way, our junior gold miners both had good days. One in particular, I think, I think we started pounding the table on these, what was a week and a half ago.

And they’re both up about 20 from there. Again, keep buying these, right? Keep buying our two junior gold miners there’s not a lot of slam dunks that I know about these two are a slam dunk Silver today down what is this 1% essentially 75, 65 copper today up 2% to 6,000 excuse me $6 and $0.01 back over 6 bucks a pound Good to say and crude oil again we covered it earlier high of 106 essentially on the day right now last trade 97.93 I’ll repeat I could be wrong about this because Will disagrees with me Mark Bruner disagrees with me I think oil could go. You know what? I don’t. I don’t know I. What do I know about oil? I think it’s at least going back into the 70s I’ll say that so we can compromise a little bit there Will alright folks I think that’s it for today Hope you had a great day and even better night we’ll see you back here again tomorrow after the close.