In today's episode, Tyler breaks down a wildly eventful start to the week in the markets, picking up where Kip left off with yesterday’s big reversal day. From the latest on the ongoing conflict in Iran and the impact of geopoli ...
Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Tuesday afternoon, everyone. Tyler Herriage here with you for today’s VRA Investing Podcast. Hope you all had a fantastic day out there today. We got a bit of a continuation of Kip’s big reversal day that he got yesterday. What an eventful start to the week. What an eventful day. We’ve got a lot to cover here on today’s podcast.
Excited to be here with you today as always. But speaking of Kip’s podcast yesterday, yesterday, uh, I’ll just spend a second here and we’ll recap what we’ll cover today and the day’s market action here. But if you haven’t had a chance yet to listen to his podcast yesterday, I highly encourage you to do so after this podcast today, especially the beginning of it there. Uh, you know, if you were afraid of what you saw you saw in yesterday’s market action, then you especially need to go give it a listen. I can’t tell you probably how many times I’ve heard this story from Kip, but each time I hear it, especially as my experience grows in the market and what we do here day in and day out, I always pick up something new from it. So it’s a fantastic listen. I highly encourage you to go listen to it. But really, The gist of it is why we never sell on a Monday.
[00:01:36]:
One of the old adages that I may have heard it from Kip, uh, you know, for years now, you know, uh, you don’t want to be a buyer on a Friday going into the weekend, a lot of uncertainty, and you don’t want to be a seller on a Monday. That’s when a lot of panics happen, including, you know, the big 1987 panic, uh, when Kip was just a few years in the business. You know, again, uh, Growing up with them as Kip’s son, I heard so this story so many times, but it really does take on a new meaning, especially when you’re in the moment like we were yesterday watching it happen. Uh, you know, I’ll get into a lot of this here today, uh, and kind of put a cap on these original thoughts right here from Kip’s podcast yesterday. Um, but really what we saw here was in so many ways kind of the inverse of Tariff mania just not that long ago— or sorry, coronavirus insanity not that long ago, where we had oil going negative during that time frame. If you were watching it at the time, I mean, no one could believe what was happening then. Now a big swing in the very much so the opposite direction here, and what these big moves can mean for the market longer term, medium term and especially in the short term. We’ll cover a little bit of that today and some signs that we’re seeing strength in some areas you may not expect here.
[00:03:04]:
And I’ll give you a quick hint, it is one of our big 3 themes that we’ve talked a lot about here, and that is liquidity. Uh, so stay tuned for that. I’ll get to that one here in a little bit. Of course, I’ll touch on the latest news from Iran. You know, as I said, Kip did a great job of kind of covering the weekend themes yesterday. We’ve got a little bit more that, you know, some breaking here shortly after the close today, uh, and some that did hit the market a little bit today were released during market hours, um, and took some of the wind out of the sails from this market. So we’ll cover all of that and much more, uh, similar to the action we saw from the internals. We’ll get to that here in just a minute.
Our sector watch and of course our VRA Commodity Watch. You won’t want to miss it, especially at a time like this when we have oil ripping and, uh, declining drastically as we’ve seen. Um, all right, so where to begin? Uh, like I said, very busy day out there today. We’ve gotten a lot of those recently since, you know, the attacks, uh, and the conflict with Iran really began. But today Those did continue in a different way. Just before the close, maybe an hour and a half or so before— I might mess that timeline up just a hair— CNN released a report that Iran was dropping mines into the Strait of Hormuz. You know, a lot of misinformation, disinformation, conflicting stories going on, period, in the middle of this conflict, right? As always, they talk about the fog of war where, you know, you may not necessarily know where everything is going, um, or which, which areas to be paying attention to the most. You might miss something along the way, of course, and that’s why we’ve always got our head on a swivel.
[00:05:02]:
Um, so after that short story was announced, uh, it was about the time where our markets peaked on the day today. Um, Trump was quick to be out with a post, and I figured rather than describe it all, I just go ahead and share some of the posts really quickly here. All right, so we’ll take a quick look. The first one, in response to the CNN story, uh, you know, if Iran has been doing this, we want them removed immediately, stop doing so. Uh, I’ll give you all a second to kind of get it, give it a little bit of a read here. But essentially, if this is happening, you’re going to be handled like the drug traffickers were handled at that time, essentially saying that it would be taken care of. I think, you know, there was actually an original version of this tweet as well. I think it said more specifically, you know, we’ve heard no resp— yeah, basically, you know, if they’ve put out any, right? Uh, I think the first one might have even been more unsure of it than that.
Then not too long later, I think, let’s see here, 30 minutes, 13 minutes later, uh, got an update on it right away. Pleased to report that within the last few hours we’ve hit and destroyed 10 inactive mine-laying boats, ships, and the ships laying them. You have more to follow here. So You know, Kip talked about this yesterday as well. Lord willing, and very much hopefully so, the most of this conflict, uh, will be behind us from here. Who knows what that leads next to in terms of the regime in Iran, what that means for China’s oil supply. We talked about this last week as well. Who does this affect the most? If you really follow the money here, you know, if China is getting buying 70% of Iran’s oil, was buying 90% of Venezuela’s oil.
[00:06:50]:
That’s a big impact to the energy supply of their country. You see why they’ve, they’ve been wanting to shift so quickly to alternative forms of energy. Uh, you know, they’ll sell solar and wind, and they do have a lot of solar farms out there, but some might just be mostly for display. You know, over the years they’ve massively built out their energy infrastructure for things like coal as well. And they’re fastly, you know, fast-tracking a lot of major projects there as well. Um, you know, for all the problems with a top-down system like that, that I completely do disagree with, you know, they have produced some pretty incredible feats of engineering, you know. And it’s something that I wish we’d look at more as a country and say, why aren’t we doing that anymore? Right, like we’ve talked about, and the mindset that we want to have going forward in this country, and what we think the golden age really means for this country that Trump has talked so much about, that we’ve talked so much about, from the Trump economic miracle 2.0, the innovation revolution, you know, getting back to a point where we’re making things that the rest of the world is jealous of, getting the government out of the way and letting the American people go to work for these incredible feats of engineering to solve these hard problems, right? Rather than going into it with a pessimistic mindset that we should accept less, you know, no, we should question what the limits are and try to go above them. You know, the Elon Musk quote that we’ve said— talked so much about here over the last few months: I’d much rather be an optimist wrong than a pessimist and right.
[00:08:33]:
You know, it’s time to start asking the questions of why can’t we build these things today? Why can’t we take this to the next level? I think you’re seeing more and more of it every day, all kinds of new companies attacking old problems from different ways than you might expect. There’s so many different examples of that far beyond just AI as well. Um, really, the optimistic side of this story, in our view, is way, way undersold at this point. And you see it in conversations, you see it in the media, just the constant negativity out there. Fear sells at the end of the day. I get it, right? There’s a whole lot of newsletter writers, mainstream reporters that have bought into that. They know that, uh, that’s why, you know, the, the big headlines go and, you know, research firms you very rarely ever hear of like Citrini have those huge headlines from time to time. Then they miss a few calls, fall out of favor, and they kind of bring them back up.
[00:09:35]:
Kip talked about this yesterday as well. Zero Hedge, you know, so many times they promoted articles from there that, uh, really oversell the negativity of it. And we’re seeing that show up in sentiment reports right now too, which of course with the market action you would expect sentiment to be rough, especially after yesterday’s action. You know, the massive swing that we saw in our markets from the lows of the day. You know, uh, Kip talked about this yesterday too. The Fear and Greed Index does live update during the day, and it doesn’t give you the, you know, like, like a stock with the highs and low reading. But I did get a, uh, a refresh yesterday, uh, a couple hours into the trading day, and it was in extreme fear mode for the Fear and Greed Index. You know, as Contrarians, again, it’s exactly what we want to see.
It’s going to be really interesting to see what we get from AAII on Thursday of this week. We’ll be watching that one closely. Last week, you know, still really pretty much unchanged from the week before that. The big increase was for neutral investors. Bears fell 4%, bulls stayed almost exactly the same, neutral investors went up. Still more bears than bulls in this market. I would not be surprised for that to come in in a big way to the bearish side when we get that back on Thursday. We also, just a brief one here, got the put-call ratio hit a full 1 on the day today.
[00:11:06]:
Anything below or anything at about a 0.7 is average. You typically see more call buying than put buying, okay? Anything above a 0.7 is seen as bearish leaning. Really anything above a 1 is excessive bearishness. So we got right at a 1, uh, earlier in the morning’s trading as well. Um, I feel like I have one more sentiment aspect that I wanted to go over here. Well, if it comes to me, we’ll go over it because this one will also affect sentiment. That is that we’re now just, you know, one week away from the start of the next Fed meeting. Means, you know, 8 days now until the next FOMC press conference.
So we’ll get to hear, or more so have to hear, from Jay Powell next Wednesday, you know. And it’s really— I wouldn’t say surprising if you know who Jay Powell is— that the rate cut or no rate cut expectations have only gotten firmer since this conflict with Iran started. It was essentially already a done deal. You know, they’re not going to cut rates, they’re staying paused. But now it went up from like 99% to 99.9% certain that Jay Powell would not be cutting rates here. And if you’ve been following us for a while, you, you would expect this story. That’s about what you would expect despite the fact— and Kip has covered this a lot as well— when you have a conflict like this breaking out the Federal Reserve’s typical reaction is to cut rates. You know, the government’s going to be spending more money in times of war, potentially.
[00:12:51]:
You want to give them the ability to do so at low rates, to fund even more then, right? Would kind of be the very, you know, base level of thinking behind it. Um, and Occam’s razor— a lot of the time, the simplest solution is the correct solution. Um, But, uh, I guess I would ask a question in this way, okay? If you think that, well, the Fed’s fighting inflation and the economy is doing just fine despite, you know, continuously weaker, uh, employment data that we, that we’ve seen, right? Nothing terrifying by any means, but softer than expected data in some places, you know. If we were getting everything else that we saw right now, what do you think the Fed would be doing if Kamala Harris was in office? Everything else is exactly the same, but Kamala’s in office, right? Go back, Biden in office. Go back to Obama. You know, we’ve seen this time and time again. When conflicts start, the Fed cuts rates. It’s not what we’re getting right now.
We saw, you know, the Fed cutting rates right before the election to help out the Dem Party. There really is no other— even analysts will tell you that, mainstream analysts will tell you that in hindsight, that they couldn’t explain that rate cut for any other reason than being political, essentially, uh, if they’re honest about what they do. Uh, so, you know, Kip talked about this on Grant’s podcast last week. Another one, if you haven’t got a chance to listen to it yet, uh, that was on Grant Stinchfield’s podcast on, uh, last Thursday. Talked I did a deep dive on this. Fantastic. Um, and then he was also on Grant’s show last night, so if you hadn’t had a chance to listen to that interview yet, give it a listen. But again, what would they do if Kamala was in office, right? And there you have your answer as to why they are not doing what you would expect them to do right now.
[00:14:48]:
Another area of get Trump, regardless of how you feel about Trump and his policies. That’s clear political bias from an institution that claims to be above all that, time and time again, right? They’re impartial, they would never, you know, they scoff on people who let their politics interfere. We know it’s the case. I won’t get too much into it here, uh, any more into it, I should say. Um, one other bright spot on the day— I got a lot of bright spots, so don’t worry about that, we’re coming, coming quickly here. And we’ll start with this one. We’re coming up on the end of Q1 earnings. We’ve still got, you know, some big companies out there left to report.
We’ll touch on them, you know, as we see fit here. Um, but we are wrapping up the Q4 earnings season now, you know, really getting not far away from the point where you started to see front-running of Q1 earnings season coming up. So we’ll also be entering the share buyback blackout period which is just before— for, you know, the boards and insiders of these companies, unless they have an already set share buyback or share selling plan already in place, they’re restricted from doing so until 2 weeks after, I want to say, their earnings report, or 2 weeks before the earnings report, and then the day of earnings they’re allowed to. I’ll have to refresh on that one here for you, but it’s pretty close to there. We’ve still got about a month before we get to, you know, the first of the reporting, which is always the big banks. Um, but to wrap Q4 earnings season here, we had Oracle today, you know, kind of seen as a software name out there, is also on the data center side as well. A lot of different facets to this business, but coming in with beats for both revenue and earnings per share here. And excuse me, the market is loving it here.
[00:16:42]:
Last I saw, Oracle up 9%. In after-hours trading. You know, not one of the Mag 7 names out there. You know, flies under the radar a little bit more, uh, than most of those, although I’m sure you often see their CEO around. Um, there’s still a half a trillion dollar company essentially at this level. Got up to just about the trillion dollar mark. I believe they got above it briefly there. So certainly still a player out there, definitely not nothing, and good to see just for the momentum of tech stocks as a whole, a big rally here in after-hours trading.
All right, that being said, let’s take a look at today’s market action here, and we’ll stick with tech stocks because tech did lead the way. Exactly what you want to see on a day like today. The NASDAQ just barely managed to hang on to some gains today, our only major index to finish positive by 1 point, a whopping 1 point there. Um, but again, to the points you want to see, we want to see semis leading tech and tech leading the market, both of which we got today. We had the semis up a nice 3/4 of 1% on the day today, led the whole way today, started off the day in the green. We’re up, uh, much better earlier in the session, but again, still finished with solid gains on the day and leading the way here. This is the, you know, the ongoing strength that we want to see. This is a chart that we share often here, is the semis to the S&P 500.
[00:18:19]:
If you’re a regular listener, you’re very familiar with this chart. But again, this is ongoing strength that we’ve seen from the tariff mania lows in April, a repeating pattern here that we’ve seen of semis leading the way higher And then when you get a sell-off, this is the trend line here to bounce right off of. It’s not always perfect, you know, but that’s exactly where we got to here. Almost just, just textbook rally from that level. Of course, we do want to see that continue for forward the semis from here, but good to see on a day like today after a day like we had yesterday as well. Of course, we did have that big turnaround that Kip covered yesterday, massive move on the oil news, and wow, what a session it was. I get, you know, the fears and the panic out there. That’s, you know, when it’s a good time to remember— I should have pulled this screen up.
Um, you know, I’m a bit of a sci-fi nerd. I love The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books, man. One of the themes of the book that is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, so in the book that they use has printed on its cover in big letters two words: Don’t Panic. Yesterday was a perfect day like that, right? Despite, uh, you know, all of the reasons to be fearful out there, this is really when it pays, you know, to keep your wits about you when everyone else has lost theirs. You know, sometimes on days like that, it’s best just to not panic. Especially in the morning, because we saw where we were by the end of the day, a big turnaround. And really, you know, despite the rest of our major indexes finishing lower on the day today, I think we’ll still look at today as a win for a continued turnaround from yesterday. There’s still some lingering fears out there that we think will be cleared up.
[00:20:13]:
Bottoms along the way, we’ve talked about this one for a while as well. Bottoms are always messy, uh, but so far This is especially given the shock of an event like this. This is, you know, I hate to say textbook bull market action, but again, when you look at this chart right here, that is textbook bull market action. Uh, of course it never feels good while it’s happening, right? But they end up in hindsight being buying opportunities. All right, our other major indexes on the day today did finished lower here. We got the Dow next up, uh, down just slightly, right, 34 points on the day today. You know, finishing off the highs, spent a lot of the session— all of our markets did spend a lot of the session in the green today. After that, we had the S&P down just under a quarter of 1%, and small caps right there with them as well.
Um, again, finished Negative on the day, yes, but I’ll get into some more points here as well of what we’re seeing right now from this market is that, you know, residual fear from yesterday. Um, and well, again, I think this is constructive action that we got today, absolutely no doubt about that here. All right, looking at our internals on the day today, similar to our markets, rallied after the open today spent a lot of the day positive, really until just about 30 minutes to an hour before the close. We were just about positive across the board on everything except for NASDAQ 52-week highs to lows. You know, we did finish slightly negative on the day today, but again, I mean, really pretty even here, barring— let’s get a last-minute refresh here, um, you know, barring any big changes here. Pretty much even on the day today, and I’ll even throw in one bright spot there. But we had more declining stocks than advancing stocks, again pretty even on the day today. 52-week highs to lows, really nothing to write home about there, did come in negative, but again, no big beats.
[00:22:22]:
That’s really a key to look for on a day like today. Lastly, NYSE volume was negative, but this was our one bright spot from the internals on the day. NASDAQ volume solidly positive on the day. So hey, we’ll take it, we’ll take it. As far as our sectors go, we did just have 2 sectors finishing higher on the session today: communication services and tech, as you might expect with the NASDAQ finishing higher on the day. I’ve got one more chart here for you that I wanted to show. You know, speaking of semis leading tech and tech leading the market, This does apply— Kip covered this yesterday as well— to other groups, whether that’s energy stocks and oil or gold and the gold miners, which I’ll get to here in just a second as well. But take a look here because I think this is interesting.
Energy stocks were lower on the day today and really gave us a bit of a tell, you know, in hindsight. And it’s tough to pick up on these things before that happens, right, when you’re still in this area. When you look at when, um, this trend of energy stocks outperforming, um, you know, the base commodity, which is what you want to see from energy stocks, right? But after this peak here, that’s when we kind of saw a double top. And that, again, keep— stay with me here— peaked on February 17th. We really didn’t see oil get above You know, $60. This is late February. We’re still right in the range they had been in there in the mid-$60s. Not until March 2nd did we get above $70 a barrel for the first time, right? So in hindsight, that would be a tough one to tell, I’ll be honest.
[00:24:07]:
But again, to the point that the stocks lead the commodity in a lot of ways. Now I know that means the commodity to the upside, right? But this is again an exogenous shock to the system, not why you want to see oil increasing in price. Very different, right, um, from let’s say post-COVID when oil went negative. Of course you want oil to head higher from here. This is not that situation. We’ve got the midterms coming up, you know, Trump wants to see energy prices low here in the U.S., right? Of course, um, Uh, keep energy prices low and see if we can get the SAVE Act passed, which is continuing to look like it might be a problem. Uh, but something’s got to change from what we’ve seen the last few days, um, specifically from the SAVE Act area and from the oil market. So that being said, we’ll cover more of our commodity market here now.
Gold having a nice day today, up to $5,200, uh, an ounce there. We didn’t get leadership from GDX today, but still solid day from the gold miners. But I want to pause here for a second to the point I mentioned earlier and bring it back to the broad market. If we were looking at an event that had much lower left to go, the move lower had legs. So to speak, we would not have seen the commodity rally that we saw today from gold, from the miners, from silver, which was up, I believe, close to 5% earlier in the day today. You know, I mean, you’re looking at a big event that’s going to continue moving lower, like a liquidity shock, which a lot of people to some extent have been worried about. These factors right here tell you this is not a liquidity event, okay? This is a specific event-caused shock, uh, and that is seeing gold heading higher, silver heading higher in a meaningful way. Um, if everything— we’re seeing like a big— get a baby getting thrown out with the bathwater kind of move, right? That’s when you really start to look for the liquidity issues in the system.
[00:26:27]:
We just aren’t seeing that yet, which is good to see. Silver, as I mentioned, up on the day, $88.61 an ounce. Copper, almost $6 a pound, $5.92 a pound. And oil, I mean, what a move the last few days. We’re slightly higher in after-hours trading here, but from the highs of yesterday, from $119 a barrel, right? You just saw the chart a second ago, you know. And I, I took some notes this morning of like, can you believe it’s fallen down to $82 a barrel? We got all the way down, to $76.82 a barrel on the day today. Now we’ve got— we’ve given back a lot of that. We’re now at $91.42 a barrel as of recording this podcast.
But point being, we do expect oil to move lower. Kip covered this yesterday as well. I mean, think about that, at $76 a barrel earlier today, you’re almost back to where you started compared to $119 a barrel. And this really does have Scott Bessant’s fingerprints. All over it. You know, if you’re looking at his previous actions and, you know, working with Soros, which, you know, that’s a whole nother debate for another time. But given that, knowing that this guy is a financial shark, a pro of financial engineering, uh, over the weekend there was an anonymous source that put out that Bessant was planning to short the oil market. I mean, these are the kinds of rip moves that you see when something like that is happening.
[00:27:57]:
This has his fingerprints all over it, in our view. Now let’s see if he can get it to continue from here. Again, we are back above $90 a barrel here, but from the highs of basically $120 a barrel yesterday, I mean, what— like, there’s not much to complain about, I guess, is my point. Of course we want it back to where it was before this started, but all things considered, $90 a barrel is a pretty big win at this point. Also, another factor for liquidity here— Bitcoin was higher earlier in the session, I believe got up to $72,000 of Bitcoin at one point in the day today. Let me— just, just shy of $72,000 of Bitcoin. Now has given up some of those gains, just below $70,000 of Bitcoin. Folks, that is all that we have time for here today.
Please be sure to subscribe to receive our podcast every day at the market close. You can sign up at vraletter.com, click that podcast link at the top, and we’d love to have you with us. Thanks again for being here with us today. As always, uh, we’ll see you back here tomorrow for the close.
In today's episode, Kip breaks down a volatile but promising week in the markets, highlighting the NASDAQ’s eight-day winning streak, remarkable rallies in the semiconductors and transports, and key indicators signaling continued market strength. We’ll dig into why contrarian signals are flashing, how global events and Federal Reserve policies are shaping investment opportunities, and spotlight the role of “smart money” in driving recent moves. Tune into today's podcast to learn more.
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 waning war and a shift in investor sentiment—are shaping smart money movements. Kip explores the lasting impact of retail traders pulling back, the surge in put buying, and why technical patterns and seasonality are now favoring an extended rally. We'll dive deep into the crucial role of semiconductors, transports, and housing as key market tells, as well as the latest action in bitcoin and gold. Kip also shares stories from Wall Street’s past and present, connects market patterns to past cycles, and pinpoints the sectors that stand to benefit as the next phase unfolds. Stay tuned for actionable analytics, market leadership insights, and the strategies driving the VRA approach as we navigate this new phase of the bull market. Tune into today's podcast to learn more.
In today’s episode, Kip breaks down a pivotal Wednesday for the markets, highlighting the Dow’s best single-day performance in a year and pivotal new all-time highs for both the semiconductor and transport indexes. You’ll hear about the ongoing strength of the U.S. economy, despite recent geopolitical uncertainty, including the “smart money hour” streak and blowout earnings from major companies like Delta Airlines. Kip also explores the end of the recent war, its impact on fiscal stimulus, and why corrections in this “generational bull market” are seen as buying opportunities rather than setbacks. Plus, the latest insights on sector rotations, the innovation revolution powering the U.S. recovery, forecasts for GDP growth, Federal Reserve moves, and updates on commodities, energy, and Bitcoin’s market leadership. Tune into today's podcast to learn more.
In today's episode, Tyler breaks down a dramatic start to the week following the long Easter weekend. Our major indexes reversed early losses to finish at their highs of the day, another clear signal of a strong, resilient market. Tyler also unpacks the latest headlines driving market moves, including the late-day development that sparked the sixth consecutive Smart Money Hour. Tune in to find out what it means for investors now.
Welcome to the VRA Investing Podcast. In today’s episode, Speaker A recaps a resilient market performance in the face of geopolitical turmoil, highlighting how, despite heightened tensions in the Middle East and strong rhetoric from Washington, U.S. markets closed at their highs. Speaker A explores the signals pointing to a bullish market pivot, including robust job numbers, the continued strength of semiconductors and bitcoin, and indicators suggesting the worst of the recent market correction may be behind us. The show also dives into the potential of the ongoing innovation revolution, including tokenization and the real-world application of blockchain, and shares why the coming years could bring generational investment opportunities. With sector updates, market internals, and key analysis, Speaker A provides a roadmap for navigating the current landscape and seizing growth opportunities in a rapidly evolving economy.
