In today's episode, Kip dives into the current state of the markets, where seasonality is driving strong bullish momentum and small caps are leading the charge. He shares insights from money manager Bryan, noting that short sellers are getting burned, and institutional investors still aren’t bullish enough. Kip highlights standout moves in sectors like semiconductors and reveals how the VRA portfolio is capitalizing on trends with leveraged ETFs and options, especially in nuclear stocks like SMR. This episode also covers major economic policy news, including anticipated changes at the Federal Reserve and the massive potential impact of Trump’s proposed economic bills from slashed corporate taxes to big incentives for manufacturing. Kip outlines investment strategies in housing, small caps, gold, and disruptive innovators like Tesla, offering his forecasts for end-of-year rallies and bold predictions for the coming year.

Don’t look back for the market is closed. Good Wednesday afternoon everyone. Kip Herriage here with the daily VRA Investing podcast. Hope you had a good day today. Seasonality is really strong right now. We saw it again today. As a very successful money manager that listens to this podcast on daily basis, I’ll just say Ryan.

Told me today via email the shorts are getting their butts handed to him and he’s exactly right. The short term are went wrong short at the wrong time. Institutional investors are not nearly bullish enough. We also see retail again I hate to even say that because the retail has been the smart money really for the entirety of this bull market. However, if you judge it by the fear and greed index which really isn’t retail anyway, but the Fear Green index and AII which I think you probably could say is retail or at least some sliver of it, maybe maybe older retail, both are still extreme fear which kind of crazy. We’ve had you know a non stop move higher essentially yesterday was a little ugly but other than that it’s been, it’s been non stop move higher for for some time now. Today carried that theme along a good again Dow Jones today up 9/10 of a percent but the leader Russ 2000 up 1 excuse me up 1.9%. Look at it’s that time of year for the small caps to do their thing and right there with it.

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Semiconductors up 1.3% today just a freight train move higher here taking place down the semis and they’re doing just what they supposed to do. They’re leading. They begin leading at the on Thursday, Thursday week last at the very bottom when the markets reverse higher and the continual lead, you know we five and a half days ago I’ve got the numbers are somewhere.

Six and a half days ago we added as Tyler talked to me yesterday we added a leveraged semiconductor ETF to the VRA portfolio. That was six and a half days ago. We’re up 42%. Trust me, I’ve been around long enough. I’m not bragging the the stock market, the investing gods do not care for that. I’ve learned the hard way. I’m just stating that’s the kind of move this has been in the semis and the semis do lead now they’re also hitting extreme oversold levels but only on stochastics. There are other momentum oscillators have a ways to go.

So look we that’s a trading approach for us with the leverage ETFs. It’s very quite different than what we use in our very portfolio. As most of you know, just pointing out, it’s been a great move. We think the move continues this seasonally speaking. This is a great week to be long. Next week, not so much. Does it mean history’s got to play out? It doesn’t mean we’re going to have any big drops. I don’t think we’re going to have any big drop.

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I think the lows are in. We’re still in a melt. It move higher. Just something to be aware of. Would I be putting new money to work here?

Depends. It depends. There. There are some stocks that will defy gravity here and one of those is our nuclear stocks. We today in our, in our parabolic options program added call options on one of our long positions in the viewer portfolio. SMR new scale power. The all of these, all of these nuclear stocks have been just obliterated. It started with the sell off in all momentum stocks and because they’re one of the groups that led the way, they also led the way the lay down.

Way down. That’s just how it happens. But this, the sell off is overdone. It’s way overdone. I’ll tell you because even we’d love it if, if everybody on this podcast was with us here as a member. But we also love that so many of you listen that aren’t. And so look, we like, we like letting you know how we make money in the markets and this is how we do it. SMR has fallen from over 50 to a low of 18 now.

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We, we bought call options today in SMR going out three months, going out to February, December, January, excuse me, January, December, January, February. Basically three months for expiration. And because the story’s just, it’s been overcooked Also there’s now 27% short interest in SMR. The shorts have piled onto this. One of the reasons is Fluor, which was one of the first companies to really back smr. The company itself announced here, what was it three weeks ago or so four weeks ago that they were going to sell most of their equity interest. But that’s of the common stock. But, but they still have a lot of the B preferred.

And so I think investors don’t understand this. They’re still maintaining like a 40% interest in SMR. And so I think this has been way overdone. SMRs now pull back to a phenomenal support level while also hitting what we call extreme oversold on steroids, meaning all four of our momentum oscillators have hit as oversold levels as they can get or exactly there that. That lowest line that they can hit when they’re all there. We call it extreme over solar steroids. Now I don’t like the fact that SMR is below the 208. Neither is Tyler.

But it’s only been there for a couple of weeks, I think. Again, it was up six and a half percent today. Obviously the word got out that we recommended it, right? But I think that the move continues from here. It’s way oversold. This is not the time to be short stock. Momentum stocks. That time was that sliver of three weeks we had to short stocks. This is not a good time to be short the market.

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So we may get a bit of a lull next week. But then folks, it’s. It’s melt up fill again. We’re back to parabolic move higher time into year end. We think this year seasonality end of the year here. The Santa Claus rally and the.

The. The. What do they call the. I just wrote this up. My goodness, you have to forgive me. I had a minor surgical procedure yesterday. I’m a little goofy today. I had a sinus procedure done.

If you ever have any problems. Your sinus. I had polyp. I won’t give you too much information here. Had polyp that had to be removed. And I had. They did a. Something called a balloon sinoplasty from Dr.

[00:06:09]:
Kaplan here in Houston. You may have seen his ads. He’s. He’s pretty famous around the world, but he invented this, this, this, this treatment. So if you have any sinus issues, hit me up and I’ll give you his contact info. Michael Kaplan’s his name. But my memory is not great today because I had to be on some pain medication yesterday for it. It was fairly painful at the time, but anyway, let’s move on before I get us all sickened here.

But again, we got the year in rally for December is quite strong. It’s a very good month to be in the markets. I think most of us know that by now. In addition housing, you know, look, we got a. Maybe we may be getting that early Christmas present we’ve been waiting for from. From Jay Powell this morning. I’m sitting there watching Bloomberg and Thomas Koenig, former Kansas City Fed governor, was on and he said these exact words. I’ll be surprised if when Hassett is announced as the Fed chair that Jay Powell doesn’t resign.

That’s what we’ve been calling for here as an early Christmas present to all of us. And I’m certain, I’m certain that. I think that’s exactly right. I think Kony’s exactly right. What we know is that every day Trump gets closer to announcing Kevin Hassett as fetch here. He basically let it slip yesterday. Right. And the markets love it.

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I think he’s, you know, he’s a close confidant, has been for some time to the president and he believes in everything we believe in. Rates are way too high. Rates are way too high. They should be down. Look at the two year. Two year. The two year typically gives you a pretty good idea of where, you know, a rate should be. And we’re talking about we need at least a percent percent and a half move lower in the fed funds rate to even get us there.

So I think that’s what’s going to happen. I think the markets know it. Housing is going to be, of course, a major beneficiary of this. Housing was up big today. We’re invested there as I don’t talk about anything. We don’t. I talk my book all the time. If you hear me talk about in this podcast, that means we own it.

And I think that’s the kind of transparency that’s needed. I see too many people that use their public audience as an opportunity to.

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Offlay their positions to people that are unsuspecting and don’t know any better. We don’t do that here. So housing is going to be, I think, a big beneficiary of lower rates, as are small caps. And again, we’re in a very bullish time for small caps as well. So that’s how we’re positioned there. Again, the semis leading the way is exactly what you want to see. Nuclear, we think again, oversold momentum stocks. You can make a lot of money in these names over the next three to four weeks.

And I think the thing that I’ll wrap with before we get into the internals, I think the thing that most people aren’t focused on enough. Right. Is everything that’s in the one big beautiful. Bill Tyler talked about this yesterday. I was researching this weekend. Frankly, I’d forgotten some of these. Let me run through these quickly. I don’t think we’re talking about this nearly enough.

Corporate taxes have slashed at 15%. That’s going to unlock corporate taxes. Unlock. Reduce corporate, reduce corporate taxes by 129 billion through the next 18 to 24 months. That money is going to go right back into probably manufacturing because you now have full expensing of all manufacturing through 2029. The minute you build something, the minute you produce something, everything it required to produce or build that you can expense 100% off your income taxes. Folks, manufacturing is back. The US economy is back.

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I know there are a lot of doubters, a lot of people that have a problem with Trump. I get it. There are things about him I don’t like either. But he was right on tariffs, he’s right on the economy, he’s right on what makes businesses go. And as I’ve said before, it’s been a while since I’ve said this but we’ve entered the free markets, the, the, we’ve entered the wild west of free market capitalism. Companies are figuring this out. It’s go, go, go time and again. The guilty, those that are going too far, crossing the line too far will be found out eventually.

Look, I’m from Texas. As I told another of our subscribers today, you know in Texas if you, if you like to brag about yourself, you find out pretty quick you don’t have any friends. We don’t do that here. We don’t, we don’t care for that here. Also in Texas, if you’re a scam artist, we find you out pretty quick and you’re no longer welcome. And so I think that that’s really the approach that’s going to be taking in a red, a very red pilled America going forward. I already see good signs in the social media has really helped us, has it not? You know there are some people that have some pretty big names out there but they’re not as big as they used to be because of large degree social media. Can I name a couple of names? How about Jim Cramer, right? Extremely bright guy that lost his way.

He frankly lost his way. He got divorced, his wife was afraid to the outfit. This is not me making it up, this is well known. He sold out to the deep state. We know this because we saw him on television during.

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The green energy boom under Obama and Biden. We saw him say that energy companies are no longer investable, that they won’t be able to get loans from banks and, and that we always like what he want us to abandon oil and gas drilling essentially is what he’s saying. And then of course the biggie for me, why I haven’t watched CNBC since April, about April of 2020 now over five years, feels like it, feels like it should be longer.

When he said that we should force use the U. S military to forcibly vaccinate all Americans. That’s what Jim Kramer said on live TV and so Again, people like that are being exposed. How about Paul Krugman? Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize winning economist from the New York Times. I wish I had Rush Limbaugh’s voice because the way he said it, you can still hear it ringing in my head. Right? But Krugman said things like the fax machine in just a few years will be more valuable than the Internet. Right. Than the World Wide Web made a lot of other strange calls like that as well.

But again, when you’re, when you’re, when the, when the left is in power and the deep state picks their favorite people, they stay, they stay in place until that apparatus is no longer in place. Well, take a look around things. They are changing times, they are changing. It’s all very, very good. This is really one of our themes from the, from the big bribe of down three years ago. And so we said the country is going to be red pilled. It’s going to be fantastic for all of us and it’s going to be wildly bullish. We haven’t even gotten to Trump’s second year yet, folks.

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Again, just to repeat, we’re looking for 30 moves higher next year. That’s 500 and up to 50, maybe more. 50 or more returns in Nasdaq. And a lot of it is due to this one big beautiful bill. So tax cuts, Social Security benefits. Now this, this won’t affect everybody. But the people it doesn’t affect, they’re not hurting. Right? But the people that need this won’t pay taxes on Social Security.

You want to really help the second America, that’s how you do it, right? Getting rates down. Jay Powell, just resign the day that if it is going to be hassit, just resign. Do us all a favor, give us a Merry Christmas or New Year’s present. It sounds like we’re going to get that announcement before the end of the year. Get rates down these ta, no tax on Social Security, overtime pay. Let’s face it there, unfortunately there are a lot of, a lot of people that have to work at places like Walmart as greeters because all of the damage that’s been done to the second America from people like Jay Powell and people like name anybody on the left that’s in power, they just, they just don’t care. They absolutely don’t care. To their credit though, to the left credit, they are going to have their salt cap raised.

That’s, that’s going to help many blue states. That’s being raised to 40,400. But again, full expensing of all on all manufacturing corporate tax rate of 15%. Our tax rates, human beings tax rates locked in now until what is that through permanent, that’s, that is now permanent tax cut of the 2017 tax cuts. These are going to be immediate liquidity injections for the consumer and the American company. What we should expect going forward and we’ll see this really beginning in next year, a flood of repatriated capital, broad based manufacturing gains and a clear infrastructure boom. We’re already seeing this. We already had a trillion dollars in capex just so far this year now.

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So that’s more than just technology companies. That’s total S&P 500 capex is now more than $1 trillion. And let’s not forget Trump’s got $18 trillion committed to come at, to be invested in the US and that’s what’s happening. Whether or not he’ll get the 18 trillion I don’t think is the point. The point is the previous administration got 1 trillion over its entire four years. Joe Biden, it’s amazing he got that. But let’s say Trump only gets half of that. That’s $9 trillion invested into the United States economy in the next three years.

And finally this is really why we’ve been saying by, by the way, we’re the only ones we know that are saying this, we said this starting about six months ago that GDP growth would top 5%. We first said by, by the middle of next year, right by the beginning of the third quarter we’re moving that up, we’ve moved it up to the end of the first quarter GDP growth will top 5% in the US and it’s for all of these reasons, you know Tyler also pointed out that the changes that the ftc, they now have a ruling in place internally that for every new regulation they gotta, they’ve got to get away and repeal, do away with repeal. Ten of them. Right. We know what’s happening with AI, we know what’s happening with companies like Tesla. Do you see the news today? I mean this is, this is extraordinary. Again this administration is extremely proactive in getting things done that need to get done today. Politico reported today and it’s been, it’s been reported elsewhere.

Political reports that with it, including this AI push, the Trump administration is now turning their attention to robotics. Commerce Secretary Howard Ludnick has been meeting with robotics CEOs and is all in on accelerating the sector’s development according to sources. Well, let’s talk About Tesla for a minute. I think most of you know it’s our second largest holding here, the vra. Our first largest. Our largest holding is gold, physical gold. Gold’s been our largest holding for some time. We just keep stacking.

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As a reminder, first recommended gold at 350, announced in 2003, recommended silver at $5 now also in 2003. And we also have recommended the entire time here at the VRA that don’t save in Fiat. Don’t save in Fiat, where inflation destroys your life savings. Instead, save in physical gold. If you followed that advice over the last 22 years when we first recommended in 2003, $100,000 invested would be worth more than 1.1 million today in gold. If you left that money in a Fiat money market account, even earning 2.3percent after inflation, you’re looking at a return of no return, actually a bit below $100,000. Last year I was using the level of $67,000. Interest rates have gone up a bit.

People are making a little more, little more money. But that was a little old. I used it. This is actually from a presentation one of my favorite, Mike Maloney, one of my favorite gold experts used to use. So we’ll say it’s a hundred thousand. You’ve made no money over 22 years after inflation in a money market account, versus 1.1 million invested in gold. There’s nothing that’s changed that would change our beliefs about that, about that strategy.

So Tesla, second largest position here at the vra. It’s the number one stock to own for the innovation revolution. And here’s why. By the way, our price target’s still 500 by the end of the year, although technical targets, 598. I think both of those can happen. Today, Tesla was up 4% at.

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446, up 17 bucks a share. So at this kind of a rate, it won’t take long to break 100, much less getting to 598 also is very doable. Here are the reasons for our price targets. By the way, target for next year is a thousand. Target for 2028 by 2028 is 2000. Frankly, I believe both of those estimates for next year in 2027, 2027, 8. 2028 will be low. I think they’ll be on the low side, maybe by a lot just next year.

Here are the breakthroughs that Tesla will be pulling off. FSD will be in every state. Unsupervised, folks. Unsupervised. FSD may not be.

Legal in every state. But they’ll least have unsupervised, excuse me, supervised FSD in every state. And in many states it will be unsupervised, full self driving. If you have a Tesla, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s, it’s the very rare time that it makes a mistake. It’s extraordinary. It’s gonna help a lot of people in this country now. Also next year we get the launch of the Cybercap.

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Production begins in April. It’s gonna be everywhere. And again, you must have unsupervised abilities, right, to have fsd, to have the Cybercap in effect. Tesla semis. Production also begins next year. They’re going to be everywhere. They have better than 500 mile range. Any, ask any truck driver that’s driven a Tesla semi, he’ll tell you he’d like to buy it.

It’s the best truck he’s ever driven. They have their own facility also almost completed. For that we’ll have the next gen Roadster. This is the car that apparently is going to set all kind of speed records. They’re talking about crazy kind of speed that I would, I don’t, I’m not sure I’d even want to touch, you know, 0 to 0 to 60 in under one second. Okay, my Tesla does 0 to 60 in under two seconds and that’s fast enough for me. But the Roadster apparently is going to fly and it’s got some very, very cool technology built into it, some of it taken from SpaceX. This car is going to be very expensive and it will sell out, essentially is already sold out in advance.

They also launched next year, the twenty five thousand dollar affordable EV, the megapack, their battery storage, Mega Pack 3 will be out again. All these data centers will have literally hundreds of these around the facility as well. Other countries are buying them. Look at Australia, look throughout Europe. They, they, they, they much rather have batteries if you ask them, than of course anything other than solar or wind. But they have to have these or those power sources don’t work. What else next year? Optimus. How can I figure? Optimus.

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Optimus. The robot gen 3 will be out next year. It’ll be the first year that they’re in all their warehouse, all their facilities by the thousands. Right? And then the very wealthy I would assume will get the first optimus beginning in 2027. Individual. And then maybe you and I, we have the ability to start buying these in 2028. But the market’s already discounting the, this possibility. Robotics of course are going to be Huge.

And also next year the AI A15, A15 chips will be out as well, which apparently are 40 times faster than anything on the market today. So again that’s our stock of the, that’s our stock of the innovation revolution. And again we’re standing by a price target of 500 to 598 by year end. And 2,000 next to me. A thousand next year. 2,000 by 2028. All right, let’s get to the internals today. Again very good day today.

Internals backed it up. The internals weren’t great yesterday as Tyler covered pretty damn good today. Today we had 2 to 1 advanced decline for NYC. Nasdaq 3 to almost 3 to 1. Positive for advanced decline.

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A volume today was 72 for Nasdaq very solid a volume NYSE 69.6. Strong numbers here. We also had 3313 stocks hit a new 52 week high. Just 125 hitting a new 52 week low. Sector watch also banging 9 out of 11 sector streams higher led by energy, financials, industrials, all at better than 1%. Technology was lower today. Like tech has been leading. Right.

NASDAQ did finish positive but tech ability probably needed a couple days off. Even, even with that, it’s amazing. The semi still finished higher today. Right in our commodity watch today gold open with big gains. I say big gains of like 60 bucks an ounce and it lost those throughout the day. Let me see where Gold still held on to 13 bucks. Announced gain 4234. Gold has also been on a tear of course, as have the miners.

Look, this group is hitting extreme overbought levels. Only short term. That’s on our stochastic momentum oscillator. But look, I think, I think an opportunity to draw its breath is a good thing. It will extend the move anytime you go parabolic. The sell offs hurt. I think this is will be a healthy pause if you will because December is an incredibly bullish month, as is January and February. We’re in the best stretch for gold and the miners right now.

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They’ll continue higher. So over today. Four tenths of a percent. 58.93. So close to 60. What a move. Silver’s been on. That will continue as well into 2026.

Copper today up a big 2.8%. 15 cents, 15 cents a pound. It sounds big, doesn’t it? It is 2.8% on the day to $5.39 a pound. Copper goes in everything. Kind of like silver. Gotta, gotta have it. There’s just not enough Being produced. Great investable story there.

Finally on the day, crude oil. Excuse me, two things left to cover. Crude oil today, up 8/10 of a percent, 47 cents a barrel, back over 59. Just barely. By the way, I’ll note that natural gas, that he’s also been on a tear. Now back to $5 per MCF. Gotta love that. Lost soldier investors, right? Gas.

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It is, it is. It is likely the best investment there is today. If you, if you’re, if you’re an energy investor. It’s natural gas. Great story. Not enough of it. And again, we’re seeing major global changes now across the board because of technology, the natural gas, much more of it is needed again. Natty, Natty today up 3.4% at just over $5.

Finally today, Bitcoin want to move higher. Look at bottom. It hit extreme oversold on steroids. As we told you a couple weeks ago, that was the bottom. Now 93, 370. Excuse me, up 3.6% in the last seven days. Up 1.5% today. And the, there’s nothing stopping it here.

The fact that Vanguard announced and started taking money in. Remember, Vanguard was first, it was J.P. morgan, right. And Jamie Dimon say it’s junk, we’re never going to buy it. Right. That was what, six years ago? Now JP Morgan is one of the biggest buyers of bitcoin. A year ago, the same thing Vanguard CEO we told you on this podcast a year ago, when Vanguard CEO said no way, it’s junk, that they would bend the knee, they bent the knee. And now just yesterday, in the first 30 minutes that Vanguard’s clients could buy bitcoin, they spent over a billion dollars buying bitcoin.

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Again, I think that maybe there was something about that sell off that was a little planned to get Vanguard people excited about it and buying the dip, because that’s what they did. They bought a very nice dip. Again, we maintain our strong buy recommendation on bitcoin. All right folks, that’s it for today. Hope you had a great day and you better. Night. See you back here again tomorrow after the close.