Welcome to the VRA Investing Podcast! In today’s episode, host Kip Herriage dives into a jam-packed Thursday with market insights and breaking economic news. Kip Herriage kicks things off with a major announcement from President Trump—plans to buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds as part of a broader initiative to lower housing costs and make homeownership more accessible. He unpacks the ongoing "Trump economic miracle" and shares why he believes we’re on the cusp of a golden age for America, despite what the fearmongers might say.

Don’t look back because the market is closed. Good Thursday after everyone. Kip Herriage here with the daily VRA investing podcast. Hope you had a good day today. We’ve got some things to talk about today that are fun. Look, today just announced just a few minutes ago, really, Trump just announced he’s. Let me, let me read this to you. I’ll read his quote to you because this is a president that gets it.

Look, we’ve been telling you pretty consistently that we are in the Trump economic miracle and that that’ll become very clear to people as we move forward. The golden age of America. And again, these fear mongers and pessimists out there that want you thinking the next crash is right around the corner are trying to keep you out of the markets. Trust me when I tell you that when all of these publications like Zero Hedge and all of these others, when they start saying the bull market is here, you got to get in. We’re going to 100 our target on the Dow. A hundred thousand, right? When they start saying it, we will start thinking about taking profits. That is the contrarian nature of this game. Trust me when I tell you the elite want you scared.

They want you afraid. They want you living in fear. And it’s worked for so many people that are just heavy in cash and they get destroyed by inflation and, and instead of at least owning gold, where you’re, you know, crush the market and fiat currency, they don’t own anything. They own all of the wrong things. So again, I know we got a smart money crowd here. Again, thank you for listening here. So, yeah, here’s the deal with Trump. Trump posts on Truth Social and now it’s been talked about a lot in the last hour or so that his administration plans to buy $200 billion worth of mortgage bonds.

And his goal is to bring rates down, make monthly payments more affordable, make the cost of owning a home more affordable. Look, this is just the beginning. We saw yesterday, Trump announced that institutional investors can no longer buy a single family homes. Right? Because as Trump said, a company can’t live in a home. That’s not quite true. There are companies that own homes for personal use. Some of you might have taken advantage of that asset protection ploy if you don’t have homestead protection in your state. But the point being, Trump is beginning to take action here.

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We remind everybody we’ve been pounding the table in home builders. If you’re with us here at the vra, you know this, okay? We’ve done very well in this group over the years. We are now back being aggressively along the home builders. Our investment three time leverage. Jeff, housing was up 18% today. This is just the beginning, folks, because in two weeks, as we’ve learned, in two weeks, Trump is speaking at Davos and apparently he’s going to start making all of his home builder and mortgage policy changes public at Davos, right in front of all the elites. Okay? So again, the guy’s got, he’s got nerves of steel. He’s got, he’s got big brass ones and he care, he does care about America and he cares about the average person.

I just think it’s been an amazing run for this president, certainly an incredible two weeks and I’ll just say it’s out there. Again, if you are anti Trump, there are issues I don’t agree with them on. I get it. But how fortunate are we to live in a period with Donald Trump and Elon Musk? I think the two most important people of the last hundred years and maybe longer. And we’re able to live this day by day and experience and watch these two men work. We’re watching genius here, folks. Again, it doesn’t mean you have to Trump on everything, but if you can’t give the man credit for the good that he’s doing, then I think you may have a problem on your hands. And maybe you want Democrats to win.

I don’t know. They’re calling it being black pilled, I guess Republicans, right, that are just negative, negative, negative, negative. I’m starting to see some truth in that. But look, it’s all about the midterms. Got to win the midterms so that Trump’s policies can continue forward. Because we know it’s gonna happen yesterday if Democrats win, it’s impeached Trump and then it’s a 24,7 media negative. It’s going to impact the markets to some degree and this turnaround that’s taking place in this country will be slowed down. So we got to find a way to get past our problems with the President.

We got to come together and we’ve got to beat the left. This is that important of election anyway. So I think that’s great news. Again, it’s just one piece of news, but it’s an idea, along with yesterday’s news and housing of what Trump has coming. Also, you, you probably see this by now too. The Atlanta Fed just came out with their GDP now estimate for the fourth quarter, the current quarter, rent. We just finished right, a 5.4% GDP growth. Folks, we’ve been telling you 5% was coming.

We’re there. I mean it’s not official again it’s just a GDP estimate but we’re there. And they beat us by quarter. We’re saying first quarter of 2026 but we’ve been saying it for some time. So again hard to apologize for getting that call right because we missed it by an early right there. They beat it by. But again it’s not official yet so we’ll wait till that’s official. But I think our call there’s gonna be spot on.

That’s just great news. Get very good smart money hour today. Big comeback in the Nasdaq of course tech heavy NASDAQ semis as well. Dow Jones again, another good day here. Dow Jones up 270 today, a half percent. What led the way? You bet. Our favorite sector right now which is Small caps up 1.1% today. Look when this group gets going they get going hard and fast.

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This is going to be one of those runs. I think the next six months are going to be outstanding for small caps. And why is that happening? Because we have a global reflation trade taking place. This is a, this is massive level of broadening action where we have a rotating investment theme. Again this is on a global scale now. Okay. It’s synergized global growth taking place. We see an asset class after asset class.

All this is going to combine to ensure that we don’t have any big dips. I think these dips are going to be very short lived. Instead of money leaving the market it will rotate from sector to sector. That’s this textbook bull market action and we’re seeing it play out. But again right now the small caps are leading again. Housing is going to get hot again I think again housing is our other favorite sector for 2026 as you know. And again very good news coming here. Just the beginning of it.

Kip Herriage [00:06:29]:
A lot of small caps by the way in the housing space too. So again small caps should do well tomorrow. Again as Tyler just told me got another all time high today in the, in the transportation stocks. The trannies getting hot again again Yesterday it was day four Yesterday we got our first Dow theory buy signal in about 15 months. Again that is historically speaking very bullish for the markets. Again this is all under the auspices of broadening action. Broadening action means it’s not just a few stocks making the market go up. Everything is starting to play catch up.

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We see it in the internals. We saw it again today in the internals. Again a bunch of stocks hitting 2 Kais, this is, this is again, this, this is what we’ve been telling you is this 2026 was going to be an outstanding year, best year we’ve had in decades. Certainly back to the dot com melt up and it’s all coming together. I mean, it really is. But again, kudos to Trump for making an effort at least to change things here. Look, the housing market, as we’ve told you now for three years, is remarkably strong. The fact that the media doesn’t talk about this, I think is a gross, again, it’s a slope of negativity.

They’re doing a gross disservice to the. I think the average person thinks the housing market’s in trouble. I think the average person believes the housing market’s in trouble. I know the average person thinks a recession is coming or in a crash is coming. I know this. We hear it all day long. But if you don’t know, and most people don’t know this again, we talked about three years. 40% of Americans don’t have a mortgage.

40% they paid off their home average home equity, 71%. There’s $35 trillion sitting in home equity, folks. This is the ocean of liquidity again, talking about empty money supply. 22 trillion, $7 trillion sitting in money market accounts. This is not how bull markets end. This is how they begin. This has. And again, all this can take is a bit of a shakeout and all these new bulls will turn bearish.

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Wall street may say they’re bullish again. 21 out of 21 investment firms believe the markets will finish higher this year. We don’t like that. We like being, you know, in the minority. We don’t like being in the majority. But listen to me when I tell you this. Take it to the bank. The first shakeout we get and I don’t think we’re going to have one for a while.

I think we’re in the best months of the year. I think this market is really going to start to take off. It already has. Right. We think it’s really going to pick up even more speed. But the first time we get a shakeout, maybe it’s going to be April, May, whatever the case may be, I can promise you all of these new bulls are going to flip to bears. We’ll see it. All of the investor sentiment surveys, you and I both know can’t.

They just probably can’t wait to turn bearish again because this is the personality, this is the characteristic of a young bull market, of a new bull market. When we finally see a, you know, 5% drawdown. And the market, the investor sentiment surveys don’t flip, they don’t go negative. They will start telling you, okay, the personality of this bull market has changed. People now expect dips to be bought. People now expect the market to recover from these, from these downdrafts. When that becomes the case, we’ll start becoming concerned folks. But this is very important as a contrarian to understand the nature and characteristics and personalities of both bull and bear markets.

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I think if you understand that, you are one step ahead of the game. So again, very good news today. I would expect to have good follow through reaction tomorrow again and again. For those worried about the semis were down today. Nasdaq down today. This is that rotational theme we’ve been talking about. All right, semi today down 1.4%. But they’ve been going parabolic, right? This is the way the semis, everybody’s now turned bullish on semis.

Well, guess what, that’s when they have a shakeout, you know. But I do think again, I think these rotational themes are going to be short lived. I think that tech and semis will continue to lead higher and but again the money’s not going to leave the market. It’s going to rotate to another area. That’s what we’re seeing. That’s what we believe. We will continue to see. What else today? I’m going to keep this actually a little brief.

So let’s get to the internals. Atlanta fed 5.4% GDP growth. Who saw that coming? We did. Yeah, that’s right. Hands in the air. We did. But very good news, very good news for America again. Golden age of America here we come.

[00:10:58]:
Internals today were good but not great. Remember Nasdaq down 100 still Nasdaq eventually climb was positive by 500 stocks. NYSE events decline was 2 to 1. Positive again. Nasdaq lower by 100. Guess what? We had more advancing stocks than declining stocks as far as excuse volume as well. Advancing volume was higher than declining volume. Not by a lot but still positive.

We also had 68% advancing volume for NYSA and we had like 400 stocks in 52 week high to just 100 hitting a 52 week low again. Broadening action is clearly taking place here. And our sector watch today also extremely good. Nine sectors higher, two finished lower. Upside energy at 3.2%. Consumer staples up 2.3%. Consumer discretionary of 1.7% to downside. Tech again taking a little bit of breather down 1.5% in our commodity watch today again, this group’s been so red hot.

Right. Guess what, it’s time for a breather. Too many people getting bullish on it. That’s what we saw today, but not by much. Gold rallied from the lows today. Low of 44.15, now 44. 84,487. Big reversal there.

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Higher finishing up 25 bucks an ounce. Silver again hit a low of 73.54. Now 77. Right. These dips are short lived here as well. This group looks very good technically and I think, I think this bull market will march on in precious met, certainly in the miners as well. Cop copper today down to 910 of percent at 580 a pound again just off all time highs. Bitcoin today.

Crude oil West Tex Intermediate up 4% today. Up 241 a barrel. 5840 again. Remember we are talking about a global reflation trade. That too will make oil run higher. I think. Not yet. Trump doesn’t want that yet.

Right? Trump knows the significance of oil and energy when it comes to inflation. He wants to make sure inflation is not just battered but destroyed. Trump wants disinflation. He’s going to get his wish this year. And oil prices will then begin to recover. It’s a timing thing with energy and these energy stocks are going to be great investments at some point. We happen to own a couple of them and we’re certainly rooting for that. Bitcoin today up, excuse me.

[00:13:12]:
Really flat on the day. 91,000, 194. I think it’s important we have that 89,000, 90,000 level, which is exactly what I believe is going to happen. There’s so much more to talk about but I’m a little winded today. I did a long podcast earlier. We’ll tell you about that tomorrow. And again, great having Tyler, Sam and Josh back. They went to an investment conference in Orlando.

They got back in late last night. So I’ve been kind of carrying, carrying the action here. Great to have everybody back. I might even take the night off tonight and just relax a little bit. My wife have a nice meal and rest up a little bit so we can rock and roll again tomorrow on Friday. And by the way, tomorrow you’re going to get Tyler for the podcast tomorrow. So you’re. Congratulations everybody.

It’s getting tired of me. Tyler will be holding down the fort tomorrow after the close. Again, appreciate you everyone. Again, thanks for your great feedback. Thank you for listening. Love all of you. Have a great night. We’ll see you back here again tomorrow after the close.