VRA Investment Update: J Powell, the Embarrassment. Is The Bear Market Over? R's Are Surging!

Good Thursday morning all. If you were as confused as 99% of Wall Street and the English speaking people of the world were by Fed Chair J Powells presser yesterday, where he reverted to previous form and crushed the stock market, I encourage you to listen to Tylers podcast from yesterday afternoon: https://anchor.fm/podcast-c2cff90/episodes/VRA-Investing-Podcast---Tyler-Herriage---November-02--2022-e1q55gc

No J Powell, you are not Paul Volcker. You are instead an embarrassment to the office that you hold. 

The Fed statement held important clues and once the markets saw this in the Fed’s written statement, a near immediate 400 point rally in the Dow Jones kicked in; “we will take into account the affects of cumulative rate hikes and the lag effects of our inflationary indicators”. That sounded very much like a “pivot” to a data dependent, common sense approach to Fed policy. 

But then the money printer in-chief started talking and to this observer it sounded very much like someone that deliberately wanted to take the air out of the room and indicate that the Fed was going to be anything but data dependent. Powell’s hawkish stance screamed “we don’t care what we break…and we’re just getting started”. 

But know this; I’ve done this too long to believe the Fed about much of anything. They are deceivers, liars and frauds. Ron Paul nailed it 30 years ago….”we must end the Fed”. 

Here’s What The Bank of England Just Said…. 

“If the market's expectations are right (about much higher rates) we are going to have a two-year recession”. The BOE is saying that the market's expectations are wrong. J Powell, are you listening??

Here’s what I expect; just over 1 year ago the Fed told us “inflation was transitory”. They were adamant about it…and they could not have been more wrong. How embarrassing. 

They’re going to be wrong again. That’s my call. And here’s how we’ll know. 

The Fed never leads….they always follow. Always.

And here’s what the Fed will be following; the 10 year yield. As can be seen in this 30 year chart, each time the 10 year has hit its upper trend line it has then reversed lower. Frankly, this chart is even more powerful when you zoom back to 1980, but I doubt that it will matter much. Rates will soon head lower…and the Fed will follow the 10 year yield lower.

To be clear, the Fed’s future interest rate decisions MUST be data-dependent, as even Powell has insisted in the past. Monetary policy is hard to predict merely because the future is so uncertain. The trouble is, Powell seems to forget his uncertainty once he gets in front of a microphone. The truth is, he is more confused than just about anyone in the room. Watch. 

Final point about Powell’s presser; does this guy detest Joe Biden and the Dems or what?! Just 6 days before the midterms the Fed chair destroys the markets and kills what was shaping up to be one-helluva melt up into the midterms, a rally that would have almost certainly helped the left get more votes. I find this very interesting…the Uniparty and elite ruling class typically protects their own.

A Chart That Matters

Wall street insiders (that we respect) are pointing to this chart of the S&P 500, compared to the massive bear market rally of 1962 (I also like this comp because its the year of my birth).
You can see the chart has matched up fairly well this year and if it continues to play out it will mark a further move higher in the SPX to 4500–4600, or an approximate 18% higher from here.

Is The Bear Market Over??

Our forecast remains unchanged…a sharp “bear market rally” move higher (featuring short covering) into the midterms (at minimum) which will likely extend into year end and into Q1 2023. With the combination of deeply bearish sentiment (contrarian buy signal), seasonality (the calendar says “BUY”) and overwhelmingly bullish analytics (post-midterm data and more), this should be a good time to own stocks.

We believe we have 4 “tells” that point to the near-term lows being in place. Signs that point to a sharp rally into midterms/year end (and into 2023):

1) Analytics: the most compelling data of my career; “Since 1950, in midterm years, the S&P 500 has had an avg gain of 32% from the midterm lows over the following 12 months (with the markets higher 18 of 18 times). Add that with a divided congress and lame duck Biden, the markets should soon get their wish for gridlock in DC. There’s little more that the markets love than DC gridlock.

2) Seasonality: November is the best month of the year in the midterm cycle and Q4 is the best quarter in the midterm cycle.

3) Market Internals and Technical Buy Signals; 10/13 “CPI Capitulation”, featured a bullish engulfing candle for S&P 500 and two breadth thrusts (>90% up volume in both NYSE and Nasdaq…rare!)

4) The semis are leading. When the semis are leading the way higher it pays to be aggressively long stocks.

Portfolio Note: While we remain in a bear market (and below the 200 day moving averages) we will continue to look for trading opportunities in our selected ETF’s (using the VRA Investing System for timing) while using market weakness to dollar cost average each month into VRA 10-Baggers, our top ranked growth stocks with the potential/promise to produce gains of more than 1000%.

And yes…now is the time to be adding to your holdings in physical gold and silver.

Midterm Update: The Betting Sites Are ALWAYS The Most Accurate

PredictIt has R’s with their highest lead yet in the race for the Senate

Just So We Stay on Track and Keep Our Eyes on the Prize (immediately after midterms). Go ‘Merica!
#Nuremberg2

Until next time, thanks again for reading….

Kip

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VRA Investment Update: The Rubber Band, Stretched Too Far. Semis; Extreme Oversold on Steroids.

Good Thursday morning all. 

Following last Friday's jobs report the markets moved sharply higher, only to give up all of its gains and then close lower by 1% across the board on concerns that Russia would cut off European gas supplies (which happened). However, its my view that this news is baked in the “fear cake”….another “buy the rumor sell the news” event that we believe will send this market higher from here.

Folks, everyone is SO bearish on Europe…and frankly the US as well…that I’ll be surprised if we see much more downside from here.

Did you see the massive rallies throughout Europe over the weekend, protesting high gas prices, giving more money to Ukraine and the war itself? Major support is building for Russia. The people of Europe have seen enough. Let’s see if it makes a difference. This was all over social media throughout the UK over the weekend. We feel your pain, UK.

Two points on US Markets

1) no, the US is not in recession. Just not possible with unemployment rate of 3.7% and more than 300k jobs being produced.

2) yes, we can absolutely expect unemployment to rise, but not by as much as the permabears expect. The Trump Economic Miracle is still in place. It was constructed to power the US economy for more than a decade, and with Trumps tax cuts and deregulation still in place (yes, most of Trumps economic policies are still intact) and his anti-China, America First policies still bringing China to their knees and the “reshoring” of US jobs a VERY real thing, the gloom and doomers still have it wrong on the US economy. 

Caveat; yes, we have an America-hating President that was installed in 2020. God knows hes doing everything possible to tear down the economic miracle that Trump built, but if his address to the nation last week is any indication, no one is listening. When even your besties in MSM refuse to carry your prime time address, you know your reign is ending. Imagine that; when you call half the country domestic terrorists and threaten the use of F-15’s against them, that message actually turns people off. What an absolute loser.

Let’s Go Brandon. The midterms are just 2 months away. Get ready for a red-pilled America to make their presence felt and for absolute gridlock in DC (the markets love DC gridlock). My wish remains; make Trump Speaker of the House. PPV the House hearings and pay off the national debt.

VRA Market Update

Roughly 3 weeks ago we began advising that the VRA Investing System had reached the broad market designation we refer to as “extreme overbought on steroids”, our most overbought readings and when bad things tend to happen in the market. Because we expected the pause/pullback to be just that, and not the resumption of a major new move lower, we only recommended pausing any new purchases of our broad based market ETF buy recs (we always use monthly dollar cost averaging to add to our VRA 10-baggers). 

But today, the script has flipped. We have reached the same level of extreme oversold (Short term) that we hit just before the markets bottomed in June. We are buyers here.

Take a look at our market leader, the semiconductors (SMH)….because we are essentially there…a hair away from extreme oversold on steroids. Each of our VRA momentum oscillators (RSI, MACD, Stochasics and MFI) are red-lining extreme oversold (only RSI has a bit of daylight left). 

The SMH rubber band has stretched about as far as it can go. We are right at the point where significant moves in the other direction take place. In addition, the descending blue trend line that’s been in place since late March and has acted as resistance should now act as support. SMH remains some 8% above its bear market lows of early July. 

We look for this “higher low” to hold and for SMH to reverse higher from here.

GOLD: Helene Meisler, one of our long term favorite market watchers and technicians, put this chart out of gold over the weekend. 
In early March, gold had a bearish island reversal. On Thursday, gold had a bullish island reversal. We remain in the most bullish time frame of the year for gold.

Finally for today, I once again must post the most powerful set of analytics of my career.

The markets LOVE moving higher once the midterm lows are in. WOW.

Until next time, thanks again for reading….

Kip

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VRA Investment Update: FOMC Minutes, Dovish. Extreme Overbought, Patience. Housing, Still Powering the US Economy.

Good Thursday afternoon all. The Fed minutes from the July meeting are out and, surprise surprise, they show a Fed with multiple members expressing concerns about tightening rates too much. Good. That means they are actually following the data, which is exactly what they are supposed to do. The countdown is already on for early next year when the Fed starts cutting rates again, as inflation is turning into disinflation and next year will turn into full-on deflation. This of course is a bullish set up for stocks. 

Gold rallied a bit on the dovish Fed news, but the miners (GDX) still closed down 3% on the day. Not that I can make sense of this, because it makes no sense. We are in the most bullish time frame of the year (first week of August til mid-October), with sentiment flashing big buy signals and commercial players bullish. The chart of GDX still shows an early pattern of higher highs and lows over the last month and GDX remains in a rising channel. Still high probability that this group rallies hard over the next 2.5 months and into year end. Goldman Sachs target of $2500/oz gold remains in place. We are buyers of VRA 10 Baggers and physical gold and silver. 

Extreme Overbought, Patience

The markets are working off their extreme overbought readings, a process that takes time and patience. This market has been so strong that I expect any pause should be short-lived. S&P 500 futures positioning shows the largest short position since June 2020, meaning a short covering rally could continue to be a driving force for higher prices (along with underinvested fund managers).

We avoid adding to our broad market positions when we hit extreme overbought on the VRA Investing System. Again, patience and discipline the key here. But with the “melt-up into the midterms”, as Tyler covered well in his podcast yesterday, we’ll also be surprised if this overbought pause turns into a steep sell-off. 

VRA Leading Economic Indicator “Housing” Still Strong, Powering the US Economy

Housing, the most important leading economic indicator for the VRA Investing System, continues to power the US economy. Over the last 2–3 weeks I have reached out and spoken with 7 VRA Members that are leading business owners and entrepreneurs in the housing, real estate and mortgage markets across America, covering the most important economic segments of the country. Each repeated a a very similar story to me; yes, things have cooled off but the housing and real estate markets are still very vibrant, even strong. Cash buyers are still everywhere, with homes selling in near record time. I was struck by their positivity and bright outlooks. Alphas all. I love speaking with entrepreneurs.

As always, we should guard against the permabears of the myriad sites like Zero Hedge and the plethora of doom and gloom purveyors that see economic depression and housing crashes around every corner. There is a psychological operation in place in this country…the Cloward-Piven design…to demoralize and depress us. Designed to make us weak and vulnerable. We must reject this communist tactic used to take down republics/democracies. America is undefeated…and communism always loses in the end.

But yes, as quickly as mortgage rates have risen, the red-hot housing market has cooled off. The Fed’s rate hikes and hike-a-mania rate hike jaw boning has worked, along with 40 year highs in inflation, to cool off the 20% per year home price appreciation. Ed Hyman, true guru economist at Evercore notes that we now have recessionary readings in housing in the US. That means growth has gone beyond slowing…it has stalled almost completely. This was by design by the Fed. So far, so good.

All of this has people asking: Is today’s housing market in the same predicament that it was over a decade ago, when the 2007–08 crash caused the Great Recession?

The short answer is: no.

1) For the 53.5 million first lien home mortgages in America today, the average borrower FICO credit score is a record high 751. It was 699 in 2010, two years after the financial sector’s meltdown. Lenders have been much more strict about lending, much of that reflected in credit quality.

2) Home prices have soared, as well, due to pandemic-fueled demand over the past two years. That gives today’s homeowners record amounts of home equity. So-called tappable equity, which is the amount of cash a borrower can take out of their home while still leaving 20% equity on paper, hit a record high of $11 trillion collectively this year, according to Black Knight, a mortgage technology and data provider. That’s a 34% increase from a year ago.

3) At the same time, leverage, which is how much debt the homeowner has against the home’s value, has fallen dramatically.

Total mortgage debt in the United States is now less than 43% of current home values, the lowest on record. Negative equity, which is when a borrower owes more on the loan than the home is worth, is virtually nonexistent. Compare that to the more than 1 in 4 borrowers who were under water in 2011. Just 2.5% of borrowers have less than 10% equity in their homes. All of this provides a huge cushion should home prices actually fall.

4) There are currently 2.5 million adjustable-rate mortgages, or ARMs, outstanding today, or about 8% of active mortgages. That is the lowest volume on record. In 2007, just before the housing market crash, there were 13.1 million ARMs, representing 36% of all mortgages.

5) Mortgage delinquencies are now at a record low, with just under 3% of mortgages past due. Even with the sharp jump in delinquencies during the first year of the pandemic, there are fewer past-due mortgages than there were before the pandemic.

“The mortgage market is on very historically strong footing,” said Andy Walden, vice president of enterprise research at Black Knight.

“Mortgage credit availability is well below where it was just before the pandemic”, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, suggesting still-tight standards.

The biggest problem in the housing market now is home affordability, which is at a record low in at least 44 major markets, according to Black Knight. While inventory is starting to rise, it is still about half of pre-pandemic levels.

“Rising inventory will eventually cool home price growth, but the double-digit pace has shown remarkable sticking power so far,” said Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com. “As higher housing costs begin to max out some buyers’ budgets, those who remain in the market can look forward to relatively less competitive conditions later in the year.”

VRA Bottom Line: until and unless the US housing market cracks, the US economy will remain on firm footing. Combined with our second most important leading economic indicator (transportation), which continues very near all time revenue levels in the US, the foundational strength of the US economy remains intact. If we have a “real” recession (NBER) it is unlikely until mid-late 2023 (at the earliest). As a reminder, by the time economists pronounce that an official recession has begun we are already out of it, with stock prices on average 15–20% higher. 

Combined, here’s what this bear market most likely represents; a stock market, economic and housing reset. We have been aggressive buyers of the market, and specifically VRA Portfolio holdings, since late May. Never bet against America.

9/11 Gave Birth to The Patriot Act Which Gave Birth to the Deep State. Must Read.

If you want to know how we got here, here’s the piece that makes everything clear. The Patriot Act was written long before 9/11 and then enacted just 5 weeks after the attacks. 
The Patriot Act produced the deep state and very importantly, our 4th branch of government, the Intelligence Branch. This is the branch that is our shadow government. The actual deep state. This is the branch that rigs elections and starts wars. This is the branch that decides who gets elected and how they vote. The branch that tells the Justice Dept and FBI what to do. This is the imbedded evil that Trump and patriots all across America are fighting. Everyone is talking about this piece (thanks to VRA Member David S for sending my way). Read/share. 

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/08/11/part-1-why-did-the-doj-and-fbi-execute-the-raid-on-trump-the-story-behind-the-documents/

This is What Happens When Elections Cannot Be Rigged

Liz Cheney got absolutely smoked last night by Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman, losing by 37 points, the fourth loss loss by an incumbent since 1968. 

Trump has now taken down 3 dynasties; Bush’s, Clintons and Cheneys. Trump is the closest thing to George Washington this country has had, since Washington himself (now Mr. President, please focus on staffing and avoiding deep state events, like plandemics). Cheney will of course head right to CNN/MSNBC where she will be celebrated by Deep State, Uniparty America-haters.

Until next time, thanks again for reading….

Kip

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VRA Investment Update: The PSYOP Keeping Most Investors Bearish. Buy Signals Confirming Move Higher Into Midterms.

Good Thursday morning all. In my 36 years in the business I’ve never seen this many people bearish on the markets, the economy and our future. Fear levels are extraordinarily high. And it's not that I don’t get it….I get it, believe me. 

I’m the guy that’s gone there about 9/11, the Patriot Act, WMD’s, Iraq/Afghanistan, the housing crash and financial crisis, Obama the communist and health care destroyer, Russia/Russia/Russia, the plandemic, the poison jabs, the rigged election and 1/6 false flag. 3 bear markets in 4 years. 

I’ve been right there with you. And like you, I’ve been right. Over the last 20 years only the conspiracy theorists have been right. That’s because they’ve been conspiracy facts. We lay all of this out in “The Big Bribe”, our new book (available now on bigbribebook.com). 

But as we also lay out in our book, there’s an important distinction between everything laid out above and investing and making money in the markets. Not only is the stock market not the economy, but our imagined realities via PSYOP aren’t the stock market either. Stay with me here folks…its an important point. 

I’ve written about this since the financial crisis. Saw it playing out first hand starting in 2010. There is a coordinated psyop in place designed to demoralize the people of this country, thanks to the likes of Cloward-Piven, and its certainly in place when it comes to investing. A psyop to help insure as many Americans as possible are frazzled, negative, demoralized and that they sell their stocks and stay out of the markets. The bad news is everywhere, even as corporate earnings continue to grow by 8–12% year and as entrepreneurs continue to start amazing new companies, using innovation to make their millions/billions. 

Watch: months from now, when interest rates are markedly lower, the markets are sharply higher and when the buzzword is deflation rather than inflation, investors everywhere will be asking themselves; why did I sell my stocks right at the bottom of the 3rd bear market in 4 years?

I think that’s where we are today. On the cusp on a major, multi-year move higher in the markets. Just as most everyone believes that America's best days are behind us. I reject that. Never bet against America or Americans.
Things just aren’t that bad. Ed Hyman at Evercore sees an economy that is weakening but that is still growing. Ignore the permabears. And why is it that these permabears….who sound so smart…just disappear into nothingness when the markets ramp higher?? 

Take yesterday. Massive move higher in the markets, on the heels of some somewhat decent inflationary news. Nasdaq +2.9%. Semis +4%. 3 month highs in the markets, even as most investors want nothing to do with the market. Sentiment remains painfully bearish. 

But here’s the real attention getter. Yesterdays internals. Wow. NYSE up-volume was 92%. Full on bullish thrust buy signal. NYSE advance/decline was 5:1 positive. 

The TICK (advancing/declining stocks) at the open yesterday hit the levels that we typically see in advance of major moves higher. 

We’ve been aggressively bullish since late May as the VRA Investing System caught the turn (internals, FIFO, semis/tech, leadership, sentiment). And we remain aggressively bullish.

J Powell and his merry band of money printers have a new job. It’s no longer about stopping inflation. That mission is over. The Fed’s job today is to melt the markets up into the midterms, while making the economy look as strong as possible. As I told you over a month ago; “the economic news will miraculously start to get better….as the markets begin to melt-up into the midterms”.

And remember these two market timing points of importance:

1) the single best year to be an investor is the 12 month period following midterm elections. 

2) Going back to 1930 the worst 6 month starts of the year (we just had the worst first half since 1970), then saw an average return for the final 6 months of the year of 23%, with the markets higher 100% of the time.

The lows are in. Pullbacks should continue to be used as buying opportunities.

Quick Hitters

- JP Morgan Traders Found Guilty AGAIN of Massive fraud in Metals Markets. The criminal enterprise of JPM lives on. 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-10/jpmorgan-precious-metals-traders-found-guilty-in-spoofing-trial

- Trump Media (DWAC); if you’ve noticed, like Bitcoin, Trump Media has stopped going down on bad news. The Trump raid in MAL, the extension request for their merger…not great news one would think.
I think DWAC is about to have a major move higher. I hear good news is coming. Frankly, they want Trump to be the nominee. That’s clear. And they want Trump Media and Truth Social to exist. Loudly. Keep buying DWAC. 

Kip on Truth Social:

Until next time, thanks again for reading….

Kip

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VRA Investment Update: The Bear Market Rally We've Been Waiting For. Welcome to Unlimited QE.

Good Friday morning all. Another big market comeback yesterday, featuring a Dow Jones that rallied from -350 to close +162, led once again by Nasdaq (+1.4%) and Semis (1.7%) and our new repeating pattern of MUCH better internals. This bear market rally looks and feels like it has the potential to be the first big one that we’ve had to date. The kind of move higher that makes even the permabears start questioning whether the final market lows are in place. 

Our view, over the last month, has been:

-Inflation is peaking (looking definite now, but we’re still left with stagflation)
-Interest rates have peaked (almost certainly now)
-The dollar should reverse lower (underway but not a lock)
-Still no (definite) signs of impending recession (that’s a 2023 story)
-Analytics tell us to expect a strong move higher for stocks, into year end (likely the most convincing data of my career).
-Investors are (much) too bearish (still the case, especially among fund/money managers)
-the next big move in the semiconductors will be the tell (up 22% from 7/5)
-gold, silver, miners & energy are buys (explosive moves higher nearing)

Our VRA Strategy Update from June 23rd:

“VRA Strategy Update.

The economy is slowing, inflation is peaking, yields are topping and investors are too bearish. These are my views. If we are going to have the bear market rally that Tyler and I expect, the action of the last two days is pretty much exactly what you’d want to see. A solid day on Tuesday (Dow +640) followed by yesterdays sharply lower open and then sizable rebound. Nothing makes the shorts more nervous than this kind of action.

And each day we get closer to the end of June is a good day. Soon, beginning of month and quarter equity inflows begin. Sizable buying.
At the same time, share buybacks are occurring at record levels and insider buying has flipped to aggressive. 

This market should move higher into July. And we have some fresh (and powerful) analytics to back it up.”

* And this was the single piece of analytics that we’ve been most focused on (also from 6/23)…it points to a move higher into year end that could be a rocket-ship:

The S&P 500 is down 21% for the year, which would be the worst first half to any year since 1970. The good news is that in previous years we were down at least 15% through June (going back to 1932) we then saw the final six months of the year higher 100% of the time (5/5) with an average return of 23.7% (h/t LPL).

However, trees don’t grow to the sky overnight. This happened a couple of days sooner than expected but as Tyler covered in great detail on his podcast yesterday, each of our broad market indexes (Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq and Russell 2000) have now reached extreme overbought on our short term VRA Momentum Oscillators. Over the last 18 months +, each time we’ve reached this level of overbought the end result has been a near term reversal lower. 

Below we see it in market leader, SMH (Semi ETF), which is at extreme overbought on stochastics and is also hitting a downtrend line that has served as solid resistance going back to the beginning of the 40% collapse in the semis (January). The vertical blue lines show what has happened the last two times that the semis hit this level of ST overbought…near immediate reversals lower. 

VRA Bottom Line: what happens next, to both our broad markets (and especially the semis) is most important. Because we have yet to hit “extreme overbought on steroids”, our VRA designation for extreme overbought on all of our momentum oscillators, if the market/semis can continue to move higher…in essence breaking this repeating pattern of the last 18 months…nothing could be more bullish. I’m thinking that this time is going to be different. I think this is the bear market rally that has staying power. The one that makes permabears extra nervous…and forces the shorts to get squeezed. That’s how we are playing it. 

More on the TPI (Transmission Protection Instrument) from the ECB:

Tyler also covered the TPI in detail. Yesterday the ECB launched another central bank tool of financial engineering, via the introduction of the TPI. Unlimited QE. Zero transparency. This move from central bankers gave the middle finger to the world, reminding us all exactly who our financial masters of the universe are. We reiterate our forecasts of the last year; by approx 2025, interest rates in the US will be negative. QE will only ramp higher from here. We’re already seeing a collapse in rates in the US, with 10 year yields falling from 3.48% on 6/14 to 2.8% this morning. 

And look what’s taking place in Germany, Europes most important bellwether country. Inside of a month 10 year yields have fallen from 1.66% to 1% this morning. The ECB hiked rates to zero percent yesterday but as always, central banks follow, they never lead. Next up, likely by Q1 2023, the ECB will be cutting rates once again. We’re all turning Japanese…just as we have been since 2001, when Japan was the first country to launch QE.

Until next time, thanks again for reading….

Kip

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