In this episode of the VRA Podcast, Tyler Herriage explains why investor sentiment is still fearful even as economic data, earnings, and GDP estimates point to a strong U.S. economy. He breaks down what today’s market action means for long‑term investors, how the VRA Investing System helps identify buying opportunities, and why disciplined dollar‑cost averaging and “buying the dip” remain central to taking advantage of this ongoing bull market.

Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Thursday afternoon, everyone. Tyler Herriage here with you for today’s VRA Investing Podcast. Hope you all had a fantastic day out there today. If you’re watching the markets today, you saw some green on the screen today. Not a massive move higher as we’ve seen from the March 30 lows to today, but a solid day across the board here and a few all time highs in there as well for some individual names and some other areas that we like watching in this market that we talk about here a lot. So we’ll discuss some of those today.

We’ve got a lot of great stuff to cover on kind of what felt like a little bit of a quieter day compared to recently. I’ll cover it all, but maybe that might be a little bit because of some conversations that I had today, some really interesting ones across the board from a lot of people, but financial industry related about what we’re seeing in this market, about how people are positioned right now and so much more. But those are the kinds of conversations if you’ve been here with us for a while, you know, Kip and I talk often about the great conversations we have with our members and listeners, subscribers from all over the world. And you know, we do say it often, but it can’t be said enough how grateful we are with for all of those conversations and feedback from my ribs on Tuesday.

Thank you for everybody on the feedback there. They did turn out pretty good. Pretty good, Pretty, pretty, pretty good for any curb your enthusiasm fans, but I’ll let everybody who tried them speak for themselves. I thought they turned out pretty good.

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And hey, there were none left. So that, that was a good one. So again, thanks. That’s always kind of fun to share stuff like that. But not just fun conversations like that, whether it’s a hard conversation about the market. One of those conversations today, just on a bigger picture, it wasn’t a bad conversation by any means. But talking about that, speaking about finances, it’s a sensitive topic for a lot of people and rightfully so. Right? There are for so many people.

You know, your, your pocketbook is very closely tied to your heartstrings. You worked hard for that money and it should be in so many ways, but we never want to be a slave to it. Of course, I don’t know if that’s a topic that we cover here enough at the vra because a lot of people like to say, especially on the left, you know, that you don’t hear it as much Lately. But money’s the root of all evil. That’s not the case. Close but important distinction here is the love of money is the root of all evil. And probably even there’s probably another five layers I know there are that can go through on that. But point being that it is a sensitive topic.

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And so we appreciate your trust here. And as fifth and sixth generation Texans, we take that trust very seriously and we feel honored every day to be able to do this. It really is. And we want to do a good job and work hard to be able to do that. And there are a lot of people in this industry, finance as a whole. Right. Who are just in it for the money, not in it to help others. We’ve always seen that as a very shallow way of looking at the markets, of approaching the way that we have these discussions on the podcast.

And I know that Kip has it so much in his writing. If you’re a member here with us, you know just how, how much content Kim could put out in writing and he could say so much of it in it, in very few words. If you’re not with us already, now’s a great time to join us. Come on in. Read the last couple of updates here and you really get a feel for what we do here at the V. Just a, you know, my dad Kip here, I always say it just an incredible rider, but these are always, this is always fantastic. I’m, I’m stumbling over my words here. I don’t talk about this too much on the podcast, but again, come and join us.

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We have 14 day free trial going on right now. You got nothing to lose. We got access to all of the updates, so not just those two, all of them going back. Full access to the portfolio, our special reports, a digital copy of our book the Big Bribe as well that Kip and I published in 2022 that lays out his way of thinking about the market, how he built the VRA investing system with his mentors on Wall street and where it is today. The VRA investing system, for those who are new, is our 12 screen system. Eight fundamental screens, four technical. It shapes everything that we do about the markets. We talk about it here often, so keep tuning in.

Even if you don’t join us now, we’ll have more conversations about it. But those conversations of really taking care of your people, it doesn’t matter what business you’re in, from mowing lawns to, you know, working in the oil patch to writing a newsletter to working on Wall street, if you’re a Software engineer, you know, work on a farm, cattle ranch, fisher, you know, at the end of the day, taking care of your customer is the most important thing that you can do. There’s are so many people in the specifically financial newsletter space that just want to build a big list, then they can go sell that list and sell ads to them and that’s how they build their business. Kid talked about it yesterday on the podcast as well. The Perma Bears, how quickly they’ve come out after just a couple of down sessions after a massive V shaped recovery in which they also said on March 30, I was on Schwab Network and said how bullish we still were. Right. We’d taken a little bit of profits earlier in the year. We are now buying and adding two positions March 30.

I could share that interview as well. Well, at the same time those Perma Bears are saying we’ve got so much lower to go. You know, if you’re buying this little rally on, on you know, April 3rd, 4th, 5th, if you’re buying this rally, you know you’re going to end up being a bag holder. Those kinds of comments. And now here we are two months later, right in the range of all time highs and they still want to come out and get very loud. If you haven’t seen it out there, there’s proof for it right here in the market in the conversations back to that point one more time of today. And Kip talked about this yesterday too. There’s so much fear that we’re hearing all over and those aren’t the kinds of conversations that we have at market tops.

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It just isn’t. The conversations we’re having at market tops are when people are telling us what socks they bought, right? It’s hey, Tyler, I just bought this stock. What do you think? And you know, at market lows, it’s usually I just sold everything I had to get out. Right. And usually those are not always, but a good indicator of the, of the crowd. And so here’s one of our sentiment indicators that we look at. A key one comes in every Thursday is the AAII Investors Sentiment Survey. Just I’ll take a quick step back here.

Well, I’ll show you the chart because this has historical data on it. So here we go. We’re going to focus on this one real quick. So ignore that. I just shared the whole thing. But May 20, look at this. Last week we had 3% more bulls than bears after just a brief pullback here, right? Bulls dropped nearly 8% on the week this week bears above 43%. I mean, look at that.

Between neutral and bearish. That’s amazing. 69 of investors are either neutral or bearish. And we’re one day away from hitting fresh all time highs. The Dow Jones closed at an all time high today. Dow Jones closed above 50,000. And yet there are more bearish investors than bullish. This is what we’re talking about, the perma bears out there.

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They sound so smart on the surface. I mean, because many times the perma bears are very smart. These are intelligent people and they make compelling arguments. But so often they overweight the bad potential and they underweight the good potential. So it can sound great when you’re laying out all of these points and key sources inside the Iran conflict. Okay. If you can name every fact about it ever, but you miss on your conclusion, then it’s not really worth a whole lot to to me as an investor right now, educationally speaking. Absolutely.

I appreciate your work. But if it’s affecting the way that you look at the market and it’s affecting your own sentiment, then you need to take a step back and ask if there’s an agenda being served by, by what you’re reading. Right. It’s not always intentional. But again, so many of these arguments sound so smart. Oh, you. Yields are on the rise. It’s going to destroy the market.

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Okay, well, we could do a whole podcast about why that’s not the case. Number one. First and foremost, the 1995-2000.com melt up yields averaged on the ten year 6.1%. Today we’re at four and a half percent. Right. We’re not even in the same ballpark of where we were in the 90s. Again, average 6.1. There’s long periods above that.

So no, we’re not concerned with yields at these levels. Maybe it’s just more broadly speaking a geopolitical event that you’re afraid of. Completely legitimate fear as well. But to the way they sold it earlier this year is World War Three. Hopefully not right. But how many times have we heard, oh, this is World War 3. If you had sold every single time that the news headlines ran, it’s World War iii, you’d never be in the market at all. So, and now here we are again.

It isn’t over yet, Right? The street is still blocked. But to that point, if you’re worried about energy prices and inflation. Kip discussed this yesterday as well. Almost the entire increase in inflation was because of the Iran conflict. If we get oil prices back down and we get interest rates lower, which are actually hurting, bringing, bringing down inflation because of cost of living. But that’s a topic for another day as well. So, again, if you’re worried about inflation, they make a lot of great points about the data that we just saw. There’s the other side as well.

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I want to wrap on oil there, though. As soon as this conflict is solved, oil prices will plummet from there. And the key point, if you’re here in the U.S. if you’re abroad, forgive me for sounding unempathetic, but if you are here in the US you really don’t have much to worry about other than the cost. Yes, of course, making ends meet, of course, huge concern. I’m not downplaying that at all. But we are energy independent. We have options here, you know, versus what the other world, Europe in particular, is looking at.

Right. So at the end of the day, the bearish arguments are important to stay on top of so you can defend yourself against overweighting them. Again, not to say that you just ignore them altogether. Avoid overweighting the negative and, for lack of a better phrase, coming online, trust that things are going to work out better than you thought. Possibly. Right. And really getting your own emotions out of the way is the key here. That’s why we have the VRA investing system that we look at every single day to remove our own emotion from investing.

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All right? So if you got any questions about that, please feel free to reach out anytime, because there are a lot of tools that we discuss in our daily updates that can help you navigate those waters of understanding your investor profile. Now, I’m not saying we’re going to hold your hand through this, okay? That’s not what I’m saying here. But you have to understand your own risk profile, how risky you want to be. Right. Decide dollar amounts that you want to put in, and that’s what you do it. You put it on repeat, you set it and forget it. In a lot of ways, not everything, right? That’s what we’re here for. But monthly dollar cost averaging is one of the greatest ways of thinking about investing possible.

That every single month, whether it’s the market, if you’re really conservative, just put it into an index fund, you know, an ETF for the S&P, 500, the Q’s, and put a hundred dollars a month into it every month and forget you even ever owned it. That’s what we do here at the vra, except in the positions that we like. We never own more than 12 to 15 positions at one time. And those I will say are more aggressive, but they’re not ultra aggressive. And we’ve beaten the market 19 out of 22 years. We have a great track record. And from the 2022 bear market lows, we’ve way outperformed the market with average returns per year of over 35%. We love what we do here.

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We want to help you beat Mr. Market Year in and year out. There’s never been a better time to be an individual investor. So again, come and join us. This isn’t just all about vra, though. It is about your success at the end of the day, having a fully funded retirement account and taking control of your own financial future. There’s never been more tools at your disposal to do so. Now it’s about figuring out which of those tools which is important to you.

There’s a lot of noise out there as well, so you have to have a filter for it or else it’s easy to get lost again. That’s what we’re here for. And love answering questions anytime. I don’t do this that often, but it wouldn’t be hard to find either way. Reach out to me anytime. My email is very simple. Tylerrainsider.com I know our website is VRA letter. VRA Insider is where you can find a discounted version.

It’s for Wayne root listeners, but I just said it. So There you go. TylerInsider.com Go check us out there as well. All right, Quickly here. Well, well, let me see this because I do want to wrap on sentiment because it is again, incredible. Sorry, I do, I know I’ve jumped around a little bit there, but bulls dropped 8% week over week. We’re right in the range of all time highs. Last week we hit all time highs.

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It’s been a record move higher from those March 30 lows. But all year we’ve seen this. The highest we’ve gotten on Bulls was 46%. I’ll go and share this again. Was 46% for one week in April. And I was just kind of checking out some charts. So no problem there. Just for the Nasdaq, for example.

All right. So yeah, that big move. Yes. AI going to be big there. Look at the rest of this move. And we just continued to move lower. Little 1% move higher. Last week, down 8%.

All because of that. When you zoom down on a yearly chart, you could barely even. I mean, when you look back, obviously outside of that little move right there, every single one of these, you wish you would have bought it. In hindsight you would have wish you bought every single one of these two. That’s the advantage of monthly dollar cost averaging. And now when you zoom out and you realize, oh I’ve been dollar cost averaging for 10 years, that means you bought every single one of these dips along the way. And that’s where you are today, right? Look, you can’t even see this little dip anymore when you zoom out like that. It’s the power here of dollar cost averaging.

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I’m doing that on the fly here. There’s a million more examples. So again, don’t listen to the perma bears out there. One other point that I wanted to make here is look at this as well. For all the fear of economic shrink, this just came out today. The Atlanta Fed had to raise again their GDP. Now estimates for Q2 now at 4.3%. Working our way up to 5, which is what we’ve said we’d see in the first half of this year.

So we’re pretty close. A little shy on it there. Can’t really predict a war in Iran, but it was a fantastic buying opportunity. And hey, we’ll react to new data and we’ll take advantage of it. The biggest part, a huge part, not the biggest in the market, is really having a game plan. And again back to the VRA investing system. So you’re not just reacting off of every headline, you know. No, you’re taking it in, putting it through your system and making an informed decision and not getting emotional about it again.

All right, want to make sure I don’t miss anything. I do want to check one more thing on sentiment for you here. Nothing crazy on fear and greed. We’re still in greed mode but almost back to neutral. And again I am going to share this one more time. This is the pullback that we’re talking about. You can’t see it on a 10 year chart but again to this point. So we’ll cover our markets.

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NASDAQ was just slightly higher on the day. Managed finished positive though. But the Dow Jones to the one year chart here, that is a closing all time high today 50,285. Good to see, good to see from the Dow Jones. Let’s see if we can get some continuation on that tomorrow. Next up here, just because I’m going out of order. But small caps were our leadership on the day to day. A very good sign to see.

They’ve been a rocket ship from the March 30 lows as well. But the yields were higher today 10 year yield still below that recent top. I’m just going to keep sharing screens. It’s easier to do if you’re ever following along or you’re sorry, you’re listening, no big deal. I’ll talk you through these. Oops. There we go. All right, zoom out a little bit here on yields.

This is what this, this top line we’ve been talking about. That’s three years there. There’s the peak at Trump’s inauguration just before it’s January 10th or so. And excuse me, we don’t want to see this higher high there from that period. But our call remains unchanged that this, what we’re seeing right now in yields is a counter trend move overall and will continue its move lower and the markets will move like a rocket ship. The fact that small caps moved up on a day to day where yields are at the higher end, their upper end of this channel that you see here. Right, the upper end of it. And yet small caps rallied on the day to day are right in the range of all time highs here.

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Small caps are the most interest rate sensitive of our four major, what we consider our four major indexes. So that’s very good to see, very good to see. Those are the kinds of tells that we look for in the market. And finally here, not sure if I said the S&P 500, which did also finish higher on the day today by about 210 of 1%. Just want a couple other charts here. I mean, yes, it has been seven stocks. All right, I’ll take a step back here, about to wrap it up here for you. But I do this is an important point.

For years people have said oh it’s just seven stocks. It’s just seven stocks. And then into the all time highs. Last year we got all time highs and breadth from the market, all time highs and advanced decliners, all time highs and number of stocks hitting all time highs. They still were saying if it’s not just seven stocks then oh, that was when it was the AI bubble. Excuse me. So we went from AI bubble and it was going to pop and everybody was going to lose everything to then AI is going to take your job. So you just won’t have a job anymore either.

So bubble and you’re going to lose your job. We continue to hit all time highs. Then the Iran start war started. So it was World War iii. And after that we got the, the turnaround here back to all time high. So all those narratives blown up here once again. Now they’re back onto repeat of it again. So yes, during the time we said that the generals aren’t acting the way that we want them to, but Q4 earnings were incredible and now Q1 earnings are incredible.

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But this is what we were saying in March, that this is when the generals earn their stripes and they lead us out of this pullback that we’ve seen is exactly what we’ve gotten in today. No longer the biggest kid on the block, but still one of the largest out there. Apple hit an all time high. So if you hear somebody saying it’s only seven stocks, sure they’ve led this move and the concentration is very high in those stocks. But as far as valuations go, earnings go, we’re nowhere near what we saw in the dot com peak, nowhere near the signs of even a bubble. This is going to rewrite the record books. Once we get above those levels that everybody said was, you know, peak.com insanity, that’s where the fun begins. That’s all time highs, blue sky territory.

From there, that’s how we see it at least. You know, if people are talking about what’s the one they’ve talked so, so much about, that’s it’s the Schiller ratio, I believe that’s above the.com era. They’re going to have to rework how that’s calculated after this is done. That’s the insanity that this is going to get to early innings here. And so the Mag 7 are leading the way now. Great. We think that this market is continuing to broaden not only from individual names but sectors as well. So we’ll see a rotational theme.

We had Dow Jones, you know, all time closing high. We’ll see it from materials industrials back to the gold miners which are at oversold levels here. We’re liking them a lot. That will be a ongoing theme of this bull market. Tech will lead. We want to see that. And you want to see semis leading tech. No ifs, ands or buts.

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That’s what you want to see. But a rising tide lifts all boats and they. We will see massive rallies from all of the sectors as we go. And again we, if you’re, if you’re not in this bull market yet, you’re not too late. We see this running through 2030 and beyond. Our long term call since 2022 has been Dow Jones 100,000, NASDAQ 50,000. We’re in the process of raising those targets much like our GDP targets as well. Good news about this little tiny pullback that we’ve seen is that we are now out of 10 extreme overbought on steroids levels, nowhere near oversold for our markets here.

But you know, we’re seeing, excuse me, excuse me. When we’re seeing big move higher, big moves higher and all time high. After all time high like this, you rarely get back to a level of oversold that would, you know, trigger some of those, those buys. So take on a little more risk from that perspective sometimes if you’re not in. But if you look at the stats, go watch some of my older podcasts. Buying at all time highs has historically been a fantastic decision. Far better than almost any other day of the year. Just if you’re doing it based off of random all time highs are a great day to buy.

Think about it, it means strength overall. So not to go back to the perma bears here, but it really is incredible that we still are at these highs earnings. Incredible. And this little dip already sucks so much oxygen out of the room and we’re seeing those numbers in AI like that. I mean it’s incredible. All right, we’ll wrap it up here, folks. The internals on the day to day were good, positive across the board here some good beats nothing incredible, no 70, 80% upside volume that we always love to see something like that. But good numbers positive across the board after we did see that stretch of weakness from the internals.

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Now individual names have worked off not only our major indexes, but individual names especially have worked off those overbought extreme overbought on steroids readings. And now should be. This should be the pause that refreshes. Not to say that there won’t be more dips along the way. There most certainly will be, but we’ll continue to use those as opportunities to buy them. We’re buying the dips. All right, next up here are sectors on the day to day. We finished with 8 out of our 11 sectors higher on the day today we were led by utilities, which funny enough is is less shocking every time I see it now, especially when you think about the AI build out and what we’re seeing there.

Working on some comments there as well as Trump did not sign the AI security bill today. I don’t have all the details on that, but hopefully it was deregulatory, of course. But if it was more in the way of regulation, the market should like some stalemate on stuff like that. Although clarity, like we’ve seen bitcoin clarity does help. Not not mentioning there’s not a pun for the clarity act. All right, so for our sectors again, utilities led the way higher for us today, followed by consumer discretionary and materials. I do just want to run a couple of these really fast because I know the tech sector, much like our major indexes, is very close to all time highs right now. Trying to make sure I’m not missing any here for you.

That about covers it. Our laggards on the day today, consumer staples, energy and industrials. Finally here, our VRA commodity watch. I did see a headline just a moment ago that does is hinting at some progress in the Iran conflict. If that’s the case, then tomorrow should be a good day for our market. Should be a good day for gold and silver. Gold now at 4, 500 an ounce. Oh, I did want to share this chart because I’ve heard a lot of people say, oh, gold’s pulled back so much.

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Is it really still a good time to buy gold? Well, it kind of just told me you haven’t been watching it very long because just a year ago you were barely at 3,000. And I’ll zoom back in in just a second. Two years ago almost at $2,000 an ounce. That’s where we are today. So when you come back to today. Yeah, we went up to 5,600. So $1,000 an ounce doesn’t feel good. Look what we were just the beginning of the year.

I mean we’re right still in the range of what was an all time high just six months ago. Right. So perspective helps so much still on the year here up over 5% on gold. So yes, we remain extremely bullish on gold here. We may extremely bullish on the miners as well, which have now actually hit extreme oversold readings. Pulling back right to a trend line that we like to see here as well. We think there’s so much opportunity left in this space. If you’re still new with this year, if you’re still hanging in toward the end of this podcast, this is literally a golden nugget.

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The market is not factored in this moving gold for the gold miners. Most of these companies have break even rates below $2,000 an ounce. Think about that. With gold at 4, $500 an ounce, the market is missing this completely. The mining industry just had the highest profit margin of every sector in the earnings that just came out in Q1. Right. This is only just beginning this. These companies are going to be ramping up.

We’re going to see mergers and acquisitions. We’re going to see all kinds of moves. So buckle up, make sure you’re positioned here. And we’ve got 2 of our favorite in the VRA portfolio. It’s not too late for those. So next up here, silver. Now it’s 77 an ounce. Copper $6.35 a pound.

I know that a lot of people are worried about commodities inflation and I, I could see that. And I will change my way of thinking if I see data to the otherwise here for copper. But copper goes into so much of tech that when it’s doing well means there’s a lot of demand, which means a lot of product is being sold. They call it Dr. Copper for a reason and it shows economic health when it’s doing well. Finally here, oil below a hundred dollars a barrel here. Very good to see. Let’s see if you can stay there for a little while for us.

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Now, I do have one chart I want to run in this group. All right, we’ll look at some of the more some some details here for this group later. But finally here for today, we’ll look at bitcoin. Now essentially flat on the day, $77,600 a Bitcoin. Another group, the chart is improving here on a lot, but you know that we like it as well, folks. That’s all that we have time for here today. Please be sure to subscribe to receive our podcasts every day at the market close. You can sign up@vraletter.com, click the podcast link at the top and we’d love to have you with us.

Thanks again for tuning in. Until next time, we’ll see you back here tomorrow for the close. Have a great long weekend, everyone.