Welcome to the VRA Investing Podcast with Speaker A, bringing you the latest market insights on this Good Friday afternoon. As we head into a long Memorial Day weekend, Speaker A recaps a remarkable week on Wall Street, with the S&P 500 achieving its eighth consecutive weekly gain and the NASDAQ not far behind. In this episode, you'll hear about the strong fundamentals powering the market, including surging earnings growth, record GDP projections, and the momentum behind small caps and semiconductors.

Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Friday afternoon, everyone. Kip Herriage here with the daily VRA Investing podcast. Hope you had a good week this week. Certainly a good week in the markets. And we have a long weekend coming up. So in advance, in case I forget to say at the end of the podcast, hope you have a great long Memorial Day weekend.

Yeah, a good, good day today. We’re seeing a lot of signs that this, nothing, this market’s not going to slow down. All right. Doesn’t mean we won’t have shakeouts. Doesn’t mean we want to have another event like Friday, Monday, Tuesday. Look, here’s bottom line. We just finished up for the eighth straight week in the SB 500. Seven straight weeks for NASDAQ, right.

It just so happens we’ve got some data on this. This has only happened six times where we’ve, we’ve had eight straight weeks of gains in NASDAQ six times. That’s going back to 1954. In all six of those cases, the move higher continued with a median gain of 20.1% over the next year. Over the next year, the market’s never been lower after accomplishing what it’s just accomplished. Right. And it’s impressive. We also today got all time highs again from Dow Jones.

That’s back to back all time highs for the Dow first all time high yesterday since early early mid February in the Dow Jones. So good to see that happen. Of course, also and I think this is just as significant frankly as eight straight weeks up, we got another all time high in the semis. I shared this chart again this morning with our, with our readers, our members, folks, when the semis are leading the market higher and they clearly continue to do that. Again, we share this chart often semi is going parabolic when the semis are leading the market higher. I think, I’ll be honest with you, I think only a fool would be short this market. I wouldn’t be. There’s just no way I’d be.

[00:01:58]:
This market is building a level of steam and momentum that I think is going to make this one of the best. Even, even after the the shakeout from the war. This is going to wind up being one of the best years on record. Mark my words. That’s my call, right? High confidence call. That’s been our forecast for the beginning of the year. This is the year that the innovation revolution makes its presence felt on Wall Street. The first year of many that that’s going to happen.

Well, we did sell off a bit from the Highs today with about an hour and a half to go in trading. The Dow Jones was up 450 points, it finished up 294. Nasdaq was up 130, it finished up 51. So a semiscumi by a semi study by the way Forget up another 1.5% today. Nasdaq up 2/10 of a percent. Small caps again this is a market, this is actually one of the market leaders. It’s the leading index of the four major index. The small cat throws 2000 is the leading index up another nine tenths percent today.

That puts it up fourteen and a half percent for the, for the full year so far. I think the semi, excuse me, the Small caps rose 2000. I think they finished up the year 35%. This is, this is one of those years and it’s, and it’s for the reasons we talk about all the time. This is not a funny money market. This is not a manipulated move higher. This is not even necessarily a short covering move higher that, that most of that’s already taken place now following the war. You know we get the big four, four initial four week melt up move higher.

And so the shorts frankly have covered right at least to some degree. This is all based in fundamentals and I think it’s the most important people thing that people need to know. Look at the VR investing system which has helped us beat the market in 19 to 22 years. I’m, I’m like, I’m fairly certain it’ll be 20th, 23 after this year. But one of the reasons that we’ve been able to beat the markets is because the VR investing system and along with my mentors we constructed in, constructed it in a way that would allow us to make the most sense of what was actually happening. And that’s why 70% of the VR system is based on fundamentals and 30% based on technicals. The technicals matter. We use them a great deal.

They matter matter for, for, for, for swing trading which is essentially, you know, what we tend to do is we’re, we’re trend followers and then we’re counterpunchers, right? So we use the primary trend and then when we get a sell off that’s a counter trend sell off in an otherwise primary trend bull market, right. And so when that happens we use the technicals, the, the moving averages and the momentum oscillators to give us good re entry points and times to put on new positions. So the technicals absolutely matter but they matter very little compared to the fundamentals. And again, not to be a dead horse here, but Tyler and I have been covering this every day for some time. But it’s because really nobody else is. And this is the kind of thing that drives me crazy. Everyone’s saying that earnings are good, but where are you hearing, where are you hearing that earnings are up 27%? Right? That’s blended. That’s full S P 500 earnings.

[00:05:21]:
Right? That’s not just the big, big, big tech, big cap tech stock, mega cap tech stocks. This IS S&P 527% for first quarter based on Wall street analyst and their estimates for rest of the year. Even if they’re right, we’ll end the year up with 25% earnings per share growth for this 500 that analysts are always low. Right. Remember we started the year, analysts believe that first quarter is going to come in at 10 to 11%. We’re at 18 to 20 and we were on the low side by a lot. So if the analysts are saying 25% full year earnings per share growth, S500, it’s going to come in 30% plus because the economy is rocking and rolling within the next quarter. Now look, I first said this in the fourth quarter of last year where I, I forecast that we’d have our first 5% GDP growth quarter.

I called it in the first quarter of this year. Well then we had the, the government shutdown that destroyed the fourth quarter and then we had the Iran war which destroyed some of this first quarter. So um, but that’s kind of delayed us otherwise. I, I’m again, I’m certain of this. We would have had 5% GDP growth in the first quarter. So now it’s going to be second quarter again unless something, you know, a different or odd happens. Right. And some kind of outside indicate, outside, some outside influence like a war, something happens.

But I believe we’ll see 5, 5% GDP growth in this quarter in the second quarter and then it will only rise from there. So this is a multi year Melta move higher based on pure economic strength. Now as I said a minute ago, we did finish off the highs and, and here are the reasons for that. Two things happened that made people kind of major, their ears perk up a little bit. Certainly for the Bears. Number one, Tulsi Gabbard resigned as the head of the dni. She was the Director of National Intelligence. She gave a resignation today.

[00:07:38]:
And everyone knows that she’s, she’s a peace love, she’s a peace and love person. She’s not a war person. And she’s the only person in the administration, at least, that has vocally been against the war with Iran. Now, she’s, she’s kept reviews to herself during the war, but she’s not been included in the inner circle of the war either. So it’s like, you know, both sides are like, you know what, you don’t like this, we don’t like that, you don’t like this. So why don’t you just go hang out with those people and we’ll get our war, we’ll get our war war hats on over here. So when you see that, you know, and you know, we don’t have a, any kind of a resolution, a final peace agreement with Iran, well, your head starts, you know, spinning a little bit like, okay, is she, is she resigning just before the weekend so we can get, get our war, war moves back on again. But that wasn’t it.

We had another piece of news that you may have seen. Don Jr. Is getting married this weekend. Trump is not going to attend that wedding, I believe, I’m almost certain it’s in Florida. Trump is not going to attend that wedding. Now, when asked about it, Trump said, you know, I’d want to be there for my son’s wedding, but we got some big things going on. Everyone knows what that big thing is. Everyone’s assuming it’s Iran, just like the Tulsi Gabbard resignation.

Everyone’s assuming it’s Iran. Again. That took some of the air out of the balloon today. However, oil prices, right? What are our war tells? War prices, energy prices and interest rates, those are our primary war tells because they, they both rise, at least during this instance of war. I, I’ve never seen the US Be in a war before or a military, you know, conflict where interest rates went up. This has been, this has been the outlier for sure. But again, energy prices, oil prices rose just fractionally like 40, 50 cents a barrel. And interest rates finished sharply lower again today.

Same thing happened yesterday. 10 year yield now down to a 4.45, 4.55% yield. I think it’s more likely that something’s going to happen in Cuba this weekend which won’t affect the markets at all for the obvious reasons. It’s Cuba. This is going to be probably easier than it was to take down Maduro of Venezuela, which we also accomplished in just a matter of a few hours. So, yeah, that’s, that’s what I would think. And it makes sense Trump would want to be there. Maybe Tulsi Gabbard’s against that too, I don’t know.

[00:10:22]:
But again, to close that loop on Tulsi Gabbard, who’s a lot of speculation out there, she’s really hated. Who isn’t by this, by the media, right? You’re the Trump administration, you’re hated. It’s just my wife and I have this debate on a regular, regular basis because my wife watches mainstream media like she’ll watch the, the Today show and NBC in the morning. Right. And you know, and she’s got friends, of course, they all talk about this. So I hear if it’s a, if it’s a Democrat or a far left talking point, you know, I’m going to be, I’m going to be hearing it from a wife. It’s not that she believes it, but she wants to let me know what she’s hearing. And frankly, I think there’s a part of her that does.

My wife is still affected by the propaganda machine. And again, we’ve had this conversation very often, but she is, she’s the first to admit it. She’s not proud of it, but when she hears something on tv, it registers as being, oh my God, that may be true instead of they’re lying again. But again, it works out well for me because I get to hear all this stuff. Otherwise I wouldn’t know much of this because I don’t watch any mainstream news. Why would I have Twitter? I have key people that I follow that are trustworthy and I’ve got it all dialed in. I’ve got about 20 key people that are good about getting timely news out. And again, I’m going to hear from them.

It’ll be on the news in a day or two. I’m going to hear from them today. So again, if you’re in the markets, you almost have to be. If you’re not on Twitter and if you’re in the markets, you’re probably going to struggle. If you’re, if you’re a shorter term trader, you have to be on to follow your, or I get maybe other social media to keep up with what’s, what’s happening on a timely basis. That’s just a requirement. In today’s world, information travels too damn fast. So, yeah, I think if anything’s gonna happen this weekend, it will not be Iran.

[00:12:28]:
I think it’ll be Cuba. I’m going to reiterate as I wrote again this morning for I don’t know, well, it must have been the hundredth time of the last three weeks that the war is over. That’s my call. It Remains my call. Trump has pivoted. When he pivots, he pivots. The past is behind him. The future is all that matters.

And the reasons are common sense. And Trump is a common sense guy. So this makes sense from every point of view. We’re not going to have boots on the ground. He’s just not going to do it. Several hundred or possibly more than a thousand body bags coming back to the U.S. that’s just not, that’s not something Trump is going to allow to happen. It’s just not.

And we’re not going to have. There’s zero chance in my opinion of regime change without an invasion. Zero percent chance. And clearly we’re not going to get their leftover nuclear material, the dust or whatever they call it. I don’t, I really don’t know much about that specifically. I just know it’s just something that we want and they don’t want to give it up. That’s also not going to be able to be acquired without a lot of the risk of a lot of loss of life. So we bombed them for what, four or five straight weeks? It did what it did, but this is not going to be a mission accomplished situation.

So for all those reasons, and also Trump doesn’t want to kill 100,000 plus civilians in Iran. So again, for all those reasons, my call stands that the, the war is over. It doesn’t mean, it doesn’t mean all conflicts over. It doesn’t mean the straits open. I think that’s coming soon, though. Talk about these supply, talk about the supply glut that’s going to take place when the Straight reopens. What is it, a thousand ships? I don’t know if they’re all carrying oil, but a lot of ships carrying a lot of oil are going to be going through the straight very quickly and oil prices will sink. On that news, I think oil will be under, under 80, under 80 in three weeks, three, four weeks in the mid-90s today.

[00:14:50]:
So the pivots happened, war’s over. That means interest rates and oil prices. I’ll call my call. At least I think Todd agrees to this. My call is that oil and interest rates have, have peaked for the year. This is extraordinarily bullish for the market and for industry sensitive names. Again, we remain aggressively long those names. It’s going to pay us big dividends, right? It hasn’t so far because of the war, but semis tech, small caps, housing, energy, precious metals, miners and bitcoin.

Tao that without giving away our specific names, that essentially that’s 85% of our portfolio right there. So we’ve made a big bet on this. Hey, if we’re wrong, we’ll admit it and we’ll change course. But until that day, this is how we’re going to remain positioned. You may have seen the news today. I want to cover this too. I think it’s important. By the way, final point of the war.

The move we’ve seen so far has been the war ending, right? Hopes, hopes for the war ending. The next big leg up. And yes, I do think we’ve got another big leg up. The next big leg up could be a parabolic melt up. Move higher. That’ll happen when the media starts saying, hey, this war may be over because right now the public doesn’t think it. The public’s still believing the propaganda. So when the messaging changes from the mainstream media, that’s when everybody gets out of this market because they’re still afraid, right? They’ve missed this entire move higher.

That’s when they’ll come in. We’ll probably have a two, three week melt and move higher. Then, then we might have a breather. But yeah, I do think the move higher continues. 25% earnings growth, 5% GDP is again, Atlanta Fed right now is at 4.3%. Okay, they just raised it 4.3 from 3.77. An economy that’s growing this well, this fast and yet there are bears everywhere you look. Frankly, again, we call it a world a wall of worry.

Move higher, which is what you want to see. You want a lot of people afraid. That’s why they call it a wall of worry. Move higher. We want the bricks of this wall with the, we want the bricks to keep stacking up. We want as much fear out there as possible. And with these kind of, this kind of macro economic backdrop that will mean this much move higher continues essentially unabated. Again, semis primary tell.

Now gold today was lower, not a lot, but that surprised me because rates are going down. Oil prices have been going down. I think it’s a risk of war. Also we found out Turkey, you may have seen this. Turkey is selling a, an extreme amount of gold to support their dollar. They’re selling u. S Treasuries and gold to support their currency. Their currency is being hit hard.

[00:18:07]:
Oil revenue, oil prices. Also Russia has been in the market selling gold, but not as much as the, as the media is making it sound like. Again, net net, China, Russia, essentially every government and central bank on the planet is, is buying gold hand over fist again. This, this group’s going a lot higher. Really like the setup here. The chart for GDX looks very, very good as a, as a, as a, as a resolution to this counter trend move that we’ve seen gets worked out and the primary trend for gold, silver and the miners kicks back in as being ultra bullish. But if you do watch the media or if you’re, you no doubt saw this today, right? Consumer sentiment, right. The University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey, it came in today with a record low reading of 44.8.

44.8. That’s down from the estimate of 48.2 and last month it was over 50%. So again that’s an all time low. That sounds horrible, doesn’t it? Consumers are afraid, think the economy is weak, obviously high gas prices, fears about the Iran war. But I’ll just say this about that. If you believe, if you want to get, if you want to get a lot of market calls wrong, if that’s what your goal is to lose a lot of money, then listen to soft data. Listen to the soft data. That’s what the consumer sentiment survey is.

It’s soft data meaning it’s based on polls. And you should see the way these polls are constructed. I don’t know, they rotate every month essentially who votes in these polls but it’s almost always 30 to 40% liberals. Well you know that they, they want to say the economy sucks. Just know this soft data is garbage. It’s pure garbage. It’s always lagging, it’s purely subjective and maybe most importantly, it’s dead wrong, dead wrong at major turning points. So while the, the sheep obsess over the cost of living surveys against soft data, consumer sentiment, smart money follows hard data.

[00:20:42]:
It’s what we’ve been talking about here. Corporate earnings, liquidity, again, all time high policy pivots. Look at this, look at the fiscal stimulus coming because as a result of the Trump economic miracle and the actual data, hard data again, one final time, I could be wrong about this. I don’t think so. Trump has pivoted, the war’s over, rates in oil and inflation are going lower and this bull market has a very, very long way to go. I didn’t like the fact by the way, The Bitcoin was down 2% today. Again that’s another wartail. It’s a liquidity.

Tell that that concerned me. But again that could also be based on people thinking the war is going to happen. I don’t know. I don’t know. I know that Ethereum ether down another 3% today. 2000. The number of people. Yet a lot of these were our members.

But the number of people even outside our members that tried to convince me when Ether was what was the Highest? Yeah, almost 5,000. It peaked at 49.55. The number of people that try to convince me I was making a big mistake by not recommending Ether over Bitcoin because it was going to be, you know, the, it was going to be the, the, the cryptocurrency of choice. Right. For all economic. For all, All future AI growth. Economic growth. All right.

[00:22:28]:
It was going to be the coin most used. And I just never believed it because I don’t like. The reason, the initial reason I don’t like, I didn’t like it was that it doesn’t have a, a firm supply cap. Okay, Bitcoin’s 21 million. Ether doesn’t have one. Now, fans of Ether will tell you that. Oh, yeah. But, but they have other mechanisms designed to offset that flaw.

I’ve yet to speak to a single person that understands and can explain exactly what those mechanisms are again either. Down from 4,995. 4,955 right now, trading at 2,074. Just off the lows of the day. So again, crypto’s weak today again. You know, we got the new feature today. Kevin Wash installed, right. Just went in.

He is a, he is a crypto president. And both bitcoin and Ether, again, they were all down today. But yeah, I didn’t really like seeing that again. We’re big crypto fans for as far as bitcoin. We’ve done very well in bitcoin over the years. And our new pigtow. Also today. Put call ratio.

[00:23:45]:
Been a lot of talk about the put call ratio too, because it has been very low. Everybody’s buying calls. And that, that’s not debatable. That is, that is the truth. Today was 0.85 at the close. Again, that’s bearish. I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s, it’s bullish because it’s so bearish. You know, it’s not head over heels bearish, but trying to make a point.

It’s elevated, right? Not everybody’s buying calls today. That, that didn’t happen. Even though we had a very strong day today, internals today were pretty good. Nine of 11 sectors finished higher again. Eight straight weeks is in the, is in the bag. You know, my view remains only because it’s. Because I talk to people, we talk to people. As you know, I’M on social media, I’m on Twitter.

[00:24:34]:
I get feedback from, from everyone and of course from our members here. There’s just a lot of concern out there. A lot of concern up eight straight weeks and a lot of bearishness, a lot of fear. Tyler said this yesterday and I’ll repeat it today because it’s exactly spot on in my opinion. Will we have a run in the Future with the SPF100 up eight straight weeks again? It’ll happen again probably this year when that happens again, if by that K time, if everybody is saying it’s going to keep going like we are, right? When everybody starts saying that we won’t be and we will be taking some profits and likely in our ETF positions. Folks, that’s just not the case. It’s so far from the case it’s hard to put into words. So many people are concerned about this.

Move higher. That’s best. Just nothing but bullish. Straight up bullish. Also, you may have seen Tyler talked about this day too. The AAII investor sentiment survey came back with again, more bears and bulls. I, I don’t have it in front of me. I think the spread is like eight points or something like that up eight straight weeks, all time high after all time high.

[00:26:04]:
And there are more bears than bulls in this survey. Now, truth be told, there are other sentiment surveys that, that don’t reflect that the bank of America bull bear survey is, is frankly in a cell zone. It’s so bullish. It’s in a cell zone. Right. So there’s a bit of conflicting data on that. But again, I come back to the primary point, which is it just doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter because dips are going to remain a buying opportunity.

This is the beginning of the innovation revolution arriving on Wall Street. And no, it’s not 1999. I think it’s more like 1997. That was a parabolic year. Okay, that was a parabolic year. I think it’s more like 1997. A lot of people are focused on that chart, the chart comparison. The difference is over the next 10 years we’re gonna have like five 1997s.

[00:27:08]:
And again, I don’t know of anybody else making that call. I’m sure there, there’s somebody else out there as bullish as we’ve been the last four years. But I, I, I’m a, I’m a, I’m a plain spoken Texan. I’m going to tell you what I think without the wishy washiness that I Hear from so many other people drives me absolutely crazy. Tell me what you think. What do you see happening? Give me a forecast. If you’re wrong, then you’re wrong. And that’s why they, they don’t do it because they’re wrong.

So much market keeps going higher, dips will be buying opportunities and it’s going to continue for many years. This is a generational bull market and yet so many are missing out on it. It’s, it’s both sad and welcomed because, because of that setup, this market has so much further to run until everyone gets bullish. But it’s sad because there are people that need to be in this market. People that need so they can retire, send their kids to college, live the life of their dreams. They need to be in this market. Anyway, I’ll wrap with this before I get to the internals. I, I, let’s all hope I’m wrong.

I’m out. Let’s all hope I’m right about the Iran war because there’s one thing that will take this market just only I see one thing. I see one thing because I don’t see rates continue to go higher. I don’t see inflation being a problem. That one thing is Iran war. But again that would be short term, probably a two, three, four week. But it would hurt, it would hurt from here. I just don’t see it happening.

The action today did not give it away. And by the way, if you’ve noticed, there are people in this administration that trade on inside information all the time. I don’t think that’s a secret. It just happens. And so today they certainly didn’t leak that word out today, did they? But we are living in the, in the wild west of free market capitalism. Use that information as you wish, but it is the reality of the phase of where we are in the cycle. Cultural cycle, legal cycle, moral cycle, right. Greed cycle.

[00:29:30]:
This is, this is where we are. Okay, again, again, nine of 11 sections higher today. Book call ratio 0.85. As I said, that’s elevated. Nasdaq, NYSE, both right at one and a half to one advanced decline positive 62.7. Excuse me, 67, 62.7. Up volume for a Nasdaq 60.8% of volume in YSE and we had right at 300 more stocks hit a 52 week high than a 52 week low in a commodity. Watch.

Again, I, I think this group, I think this group is going to about to have a very, very big run again for all the reasons we talk about a lot here. It’s, it is supply and demand. Because the big, the smart money, the true smart money, right, the central banks and people attached to them, their banking buddies include Wall street, right? This is where this is the ultimate of inside information. And when these people are buying gold hand over fist, that means we must do the same. This is the true smart money. But unlike with a lot of the moves they make financially, we, we don’t, we actually see this. We see the central bank reports on gold purchases, we see the reports from governments on gold purchases. And again, it’s just never been this high.

[00:30:46]:
This will be a third year in a row we’ve had record levels of gold purchases from central banks and governments around the world. Again, there’s your tell. The, the, the, the money, the, the funny money printing machine, the fiat pretty money sheet money printing machine is not going anywhere. And yes, that means that’s why you must own inflationary assets. Gold today down 32 at the 45, 10 an ounce. Silver down 81 cents an ounce at 70, 75, 91. Oil today up six cents a barrel at 97 on the nose. And again, finally, Bitcoin now trading at 76,000 on the nose.

That’s down just over 2% on the day. All right folks, that’s it for the day again. Hope you had a great day, hope you have a great long weekend. See back here again Tuesday after the close.