AI Leads Broad Weekly Rally To Highs. Nvidia, GE Vernova, Rocket Lab In Focus.

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0:40hello and welcome to another episode of the stock market today video it is friday september 12th 2025 and we've got a big week to kind of wrap up for you in terms of the stock market and what was happening joining me today instead of our usual mike webster we've got a special treat we've got ed carson news editor investors Investor's Business Daily, helping us out with the commentary today. What you got for us, Ed? Yeah, it was a long week, but then I'm not used to working a full week, it seems like. Yeah, you usually take your Mondays off. But for anyone that thinks he's a lazy bum, when he takes a day off, that means he only works like four to six hours instead of his usual.

1:17I can skip the meetings. I can skip the meetings. And that gives you most of your day back, right? I think it does. It really does sometimes. I want to take a look at NVIDIA, GE Vernova, Rocket Lab and a few other names. Obviously, we're going to look at a lot of stuff today. Yes, absolutely. And before we get there, we'll just go ahead and do a quick recap of the markets themselves. I'm going to share my screen for our market search charts. And we have the NASDAQ composite looking like it finished up about 0.44 percent. The S &P 500 basically flat. It was up, you know, or down, I guess, 0.05 percent.

1:57So not much there for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. That one was up for, you know, 0.59 percent, about six tenths of a percent. I'm sorry, down. Yes. And the Russell 2000, which was the big winner yesterday, that one was hit the hardest down a full percent by the close today and falling back below that 2400 level. Now, it's important to kind of note that you have to put some of these in the perspective of the week. You know, it was pretty much up weeks across the board. Some of those very strong. And for the Nasdaq Composite and the S &P 500, that was, you know, new high territory and crossing some significant levels for the NASDAQ composite up above 22 ,000.

2:45And for the S &P 500, we finally got above that 6 ,500 level this week and cleared it with some gusto. So, Ed, what is your take on the market today? Yeah, it's looking pretty strong. Is it like the week everybody was up, the NASDAQ led, it was sort of an AI led rally, but there was more than just AI. So I also think it's really interesting. The major indexes all have now clearly cleared sort of the ranges they were in. I mean, there was, you know, it wasn't like this clean basis necessarily. The NASDAQ was close to it. But, you know, they had these ranges for several weeks and maybe even, you know, and now they're clearly above that, but they're not extended.

3:24If you look at them, you know, by various measures, they don't look extended, whether it's by the 50-day line or by some other measures. So, I mean, there was the, and the Oracle news was positive. I think the market's feeling confident about what the Fed is going to be doing. And it's a pretty healthy situation. It's not, I mean, this is a reason not to buy extended stocks, but it's like, you still got to follow your rules. But this is, I think, a time to be heavily invested, maybe even looking to add exposure or at least to replace some laggard with hotter things, just as long as you're following the rules.

3:59So this, you know, you know, until until something comes in the way and you hit the brakes. I also wanted to kind of address the breadth issue, because as we've been looking at the market, we've had a keen eye on, for instance, the Invesco S &P 500 equal weighted ETF, RSP. And that was something that had a very strong day yesterday. But, you know, before that, it was kind of not participating as much. So it almost seemed like, OK, are we back to the the FANG plus the mags, the mag seven and so on? That was certainly showing a very different look and much more in line with, again, you know, what what kind of drives the index strength is usually coming from these most heavily weighted.

4:44But what's your take on the RSP? Certainly it finished the week, you know, in the positive territory. But it seems like it's been a little bit of fits and starts here. Yeah, RRSP is like, and you can say RRSP, even with Thursday, was just starting to poke above this range. And really this range, it's a long range for RRSP in a way. But even just in the short run, there were several weeks of trading that it was sort of moving sideways in. And it hadn't really moved out of that. Did on Thursday pull back. So it hasn't cleared the way the major indexes have. But still, it's a close at high. I mean, it's nice when your laggards are still doing, are basically moving higher.

5:22That was – so it is clear that there was an AI tilt, a tech tilt. You know, you definitely – you can't stock pickers market. But there was a broad advance. I'd say QQEW is the real laggard out there. I mean, that's sort of surprising. It's still been sort of surprising that it's been a tech-led rally, and this area has been so weak. It finally got over the 50-day line. It did hold that. But this is one that has not been then moving into the new I territory. But at least this laggard part of the market, you know, is is at least above that key level. I mean, it would only take one good day and you're right there at record highs.

6:00Of course, it would just take a couple of days that are on the downside and it would be at like three month lows. So but yeah, there's the breadth isn't as great there, but it was a broad advance, but it was definitely concentrated in AI. And that's sort of how it's been. AI and these giants. You know, we've had Google and then NVIDIA came on. Oracle's a big cap. Obviously, Tesla had a huge move this week. So a lot of things, some of these mega caps really, really leading the way once again. And we're going to get into kind of our overall sector kind of look. But before we do, maybe we can kind of talk a little bit about the 10-year treasury, Because certainly a lot of eyes were on the jobs report last week and then this week, some of those inflation measures to kind of get a gauge on what we can expect for the upcoming Fed meeting next week.

6:56Yeah, the inflation measures were generally OK. I mean, there was some like the PPI had some unusual weakness. The CPI was mostly in line, maybe some some just unpleasant signs. Then there were some other weak economic data. Jobless claims spiked that there were some unusual things. It was Labor Day week and most of the gain was in one state. So the 10-year treasury briefly got under 4%, a five-month low. It did pop again today. It still fell for the week. Clearly, it's fallen a lot the past couple of weeks and really trended lower, honestly, since almost the start of the year. I mean, and so mortgage rates have been coming down.

7:31That's been a catalyst. I will note that the two-year Treasury yield actually rose this week. Not a lot, but it actually rose. And that's more closely tied to Fed policy. I don't think the Fed – I don't think the week's economic data really had much impact at all. We're locked into a quarter-point cut. There's a tiny chance of a bigger cut. There's a high likelihood we'll get another 50 basis points of cuts this year after that. Then it's sort of unknown. Not only do we not know what the economy will be like, but we don't have any idea what the Fed FOMC will look like because there could be radical changes in, you know, by February, March of next year.

8:15It's worth noting that, you know, last week what we were talking about is the big shift. Again, it was it was already pretty much a quarter point was was widely anticipated. But after the jobs report last week, it seemed like the 50 basis point cut was coming on strong. It was, what, 10 percent chance or 15 percent, maybe more. But as you noted, that has shrunk quite a bit this week down to 3.5 is what I'm showing right now for the 50 basis point cut versus, again, 96.5 for the quarter. So, and what about the kind of the rest of the year look? I know that it was kind of looking at like a 75 basis point cut, which looks like that is still potentially where a lot of folks are gravitating right now.

9:07There's basically an 80 percent chance or so of a total of 75 basis points by year. And I think and obviously a lot can change just over from not much is going to change by next week. But then there's plenty of time for the economy to get better, to get worse, et cetera. But that's where it's locked in now. I think there'll be questions about next year. Will the Fed continue to cut rates again? There's just there is just a slew of uncertainty with that. But Fed will just take what happens next week with the rate cut and maybe some slightly dovish comments from Powell. That's what the market wants to hear.

9:41Yeah, makes sense. Let's kind of shift gears a little bit. And I am going to pull up the, let me just move some stuff over here. So I've got things where they need to be and sized appropriately. But if we go ahead and take a look at the major players in the sectors, I want to start with ITB. And I do have exposure to housing. but this has been one of those areas that has been kind of tricky lately. You know, it seems like it's going to go and then it fades a little bit. So a little bit tougher. What's your take on the home builders? I mean, there's obviously tailwinds. Mortgage rates have been coming down for most of the year.

10:25I mean, they have, and they've really come down the last several weeks. So that's the tailwind. The numbers usually look pretty crummy. Look at the fundamentals right now, and we're going to get Lennar earnings next week. They're not going to be good. They're not going to be good because people are looking ahead to next week, you know, next several quarters ahead. But so we'll see there. Yeah, there was some negative news. CNM, Corn, Maine had a disastrous outlook, and they blamed basically the residential market for that. And so homebuilders only fell a little bit. But, yeah, there's a little bit of two steps up, one step back.

11:02If you go back to ITB, there's a situation, it seems like it makes a big jump, pulls back. It sort of keeps on forming these handles. You know, it's sort of done that again and again and again. And so it's been tricky if you buy what, you know, the so quote unquote breakout from these handles. I mean, there's only not all of these handles are legitimate, obviously, but it just makes it a little tricky. But I mean, the trend seems to be there. But, yeah, obviously, the homebuilders and financials are two of the areas that could be most affected by the Fed meeting, especially if there's some kind of disappointment there.

11:42And ITB taking nearly a 2 % haircut today after being up, you know, pretty nicely yesterday with a two and three quarter for the week. This was finishing down for the week. But kind of like mid-range for the prior week. So looking at our 11 sector spiders, one of the more difficult positions was the XLV, which, you know, looking at the weekly chart here, this hasn't really done much. It's been underperforming for quite a while here in terms of its relative strength. And, I mean, it's typically looked at as a defensive sector. Certainly, this has been weighed down by some of the heavyweights like a UNH and things like that.

12:28It was getting above its 200-day, but that doesn't seem like it's holding. Yeah, and there's a lot of things like the insurers seem to be coming back. There's hopes for higher premiums and some other things, but they are really beaten down, like you were saying. Some of the medical device makers, I mean, it seems like there's a push to more speculative names right now. And so it just doesn't seem like there's that time. And there's some tariff concerns with some of those companies. It gets a little – some biotechs are working, but there's always some biotechs that are working. XBI, I think, is doing a little better.

12:58Yeah, that one is done all right. So you can find areas that are working well, and there's some AI type of plays that are out there, you know, with health care. So there are places you can take advantage of things. But yeah, the overall things, it just seems like there's some specific issues to some of these companies and sectors within medical. And on the defensive growth side, it just doesn't seem like that. People want growth or even speculative growth right now. It just seems like that's what's in favor. Yeah, makes sense. And then I also wanted to make sure that we also took a look at the next one in there is XLB, which is the materials.

13:38Not much to see here. Overall, you know, still in a downtrend. This recently got above its 200-day moving average line, its 40-week moving average line. Has been trading tight, but not much to see there right now. It looks like XLI kind of in a similar situation, a little bit of a flat base. This does look stronger in terms of its distance above its 200-day moving average line. Anything to note on either the materials or the industrials? Yeah, I mean, both of them could make some moves, but are they really going to be leading? I mean, especially the materials. This one, aerospace within industrials is doing pretty well, though Boeing is, for some maybe company-specific reasons, is struggling.

14:17But otherwise, there's a lot of names in XLI that are doing pretty well, including GEV. GEV is a big name in that, and we'll be looking at GEV later on. So that's doing well. Very good. And continuing on, looks like one of the ones that we already talked about, RSP, just to kind of get a gauge of where that was falling today. But also, you mentioned growth and FFTY this week was pretty good, a pretty strong week here, up 4.2 % for the week. For the day, it consolidated a little bit, but really held the gains from yesterday and most of the week. Yeah, and that was sort of leaving the station even before this week.

15:03It hadn't really quite, quite fully, fully done it, but you could see there was more of an upward trend to the sideways nature. Yeah, there's a lot of AI plays. There's some, you know, there's some other things in there. There's some more, even more speculants, like some Bitcoin crypto plays that are doing well. There's some big movers in the IBD50 and the gold plays have done pretty well, too. I mean, you know, there's actually a number of gold. So it's gold in AI and that's ended on Bitcoin and stuff. And so that's all done pretty well for the IBD-50. Yeah, I'm going to skip ahead just because you mentioned gold.

15:42I wanted to make sure we covered this. It's very rare that you kind of see gold in line with your chips. You know, so here's SMH, the VanEck semiconductor. And, you know, gold is right there with it. It certainly had this long consolidation here. GDX, the gold miners were a little bit quicker to come out of its consolidation, and those are well extended, whereas GLD, the spot price of gold, is a little bit more recent in its move. Yeah, it does feel like gold is reading a different script than the tech sector. I mean, gold is rallying in part because of the weaker dollar, worries about things.

16:27And tech is like, what? Why worry? So it is. And there's legitimate arguments for both. But it is interesting to see how strong gold has been, given that speculative growth is doing so well as well. It is strange. Yeah. I should also mention that, again, kind of getting back to our order of the worst first, I'm just going to throw IGV in here because, you know, we were talking about how ugly kind of QQEW looked. IGV, which really was, you know, kind of, you know, having this fairly deep base here, that has recovered quite well and is forming a cut. Now, granted, Oracle certainly helped with its huge move earlier this week after its earnings report.

17:12But that is looking like it's potentially setting up with a little handle. Yeah, I mean, Oracle and Palantir are the two biggest names in the group. So Palantir took off too. It was sort of, you know, sort of first it was quiet, but then it really moved and it did not slow down at all today. So that's sort of extended now from maybe some early entries. But yeah, those two names after, yeah, so there still seems to be a fair amount of weakness in software. Oracle and Palantir have done a lot of the work bringing it up and they're doing that again. So that's one concern looking at that is that if you were interested in buying it, like SMH, it's almost like so many of the good names are extended.

17:49You almost have to buy SMH, whereas IGV to get your exposure. To get your exposure. I mean, if you haven't got it yet, whereas IGV, and there's things like NVIDIA, but that's fine. But it's like IGV, you know, it does feel like there's definitely some dichotomy in there. It's not like a lot of software names are really having a tough time still. Yeah. And then we were looking, you know, pretty closely at the cybersecurity area for, you know, a while, especially after the April 22nd follow through day. And that seems like it's still consolidating in the software space. You know, honestly, that's held up pretty well, given how awful Rubrik's reaction to.

18:25I mean, that was just stunning. It beat and raised, but apparently not by enough because, wow, that was a sell-off. I know that. So that round trip, the rally, at least from the buy point from the prior base, down below the Tunity line, just a huge, huge sell-off. I think SailPoint didn't have good earnings either. So the fact that the group did okay, you know, it could have been a lot worse. I did bounce back today, but there's been some, that rubric was really, really a bad, bad, bad break. Over to oil. Now, XLE, of course, is known for having a real heavy weight in both Chevron, CVX and Exxon Mobil.

19:11That's about 40 % of the weight of XLE. But even if you look at the equal weighted RSPG, it still looks very similar. So we already talked about gold. What's your take on the black gold? You know, I mean, gold is, I mean, oil is not, is down. So it's like the oil producers are going to struggle. It seems like there's a few names. Refiners are doing relatively well. Like, you know, VLO is doing quite well. Is holding that gains. There's some other names like PBF, I think, surged and then came back. But still, that seems to be an area because there's been a wider spread. I didn't look at the data today, but a couple of days ago, gasoline was flat for the year while oil was down like 12 percent.

19:53And so the crack spread for refiners had improved. And much like homebuilders, these refiners have had terrible numbers, but are supposed to have much better numbers maybe at the end of this year and then next year. So that's been the area of strength. And just for the education component here, what is the crack spread and why is it important? Well, the crack spread is basically the gap between the cost of what the refiners are paying for crude and then what they're getting for the refined petroleum products. And so what's that spread per barrel kind of thing? Because obviously they have to cost a few dollars to do that, to convert it.

20:29But it's a little bit like gold miners. A few dollars more in gold means it can mean a huge amount in profit for gold miners. There's a few dollars gap in gasoline and gold per barrel and crude per barrel really is what it's all about for refiners. I mean, that's what it is. Well, and to your point on gold as the example, it's amazing how sometimes a few points down in gold can really change the business pretty quickly for some of those miners. So again, you know, when you're dealing with the commodities and those that benefit from them, there usually is a leveraged type situation for the individual companies.

21:09They go up more and they come down more than the typical commodity prices that they're tracking. Okay, getting back on track here with our sectors, XLRE, the real estate, again, just really flat, but at least above its 200-day moving average line. And then I want to spend a little bit of time on XLF. What's your take here? Because this has been another area that seems like a lot of the areas want to go. We've been looking at whether it's the KRE, the regional banks, or your bigger banks with either a KBE or KBWB. It seems like every time it wants to go, but it just sometimes flounders a little bit.

21:53Yeah, I mean, look, they're benefiting from some lower rates. The yield curve narrowed a little bit, so that wasn't great for the banks. But there's still economic concerns. And so you can get hopeful or cautious, and these are very much tied to the economy. Some of the Goldman Sachs and some of those stocks are doing well. Like Goldman Sachs this week came out and said mergers and acquisitions are doing very well. And so you can see how this one has sort of been trending higher from things and just really made a solid move today. But it seems like traditional banking still just seems to be like sort of holding its place, whereas more of the Wall Street type situations that are doing better.

22:37And staples, as you would expect, you know, not doing great. I'm just going to take a step back here on the weekly. And here again, you might look at this and say, well, gosh, it's at least not losing ground. But compared to the S &P 500, which is what this relative strength does, this has been and a downtrend, which you kind of want to see that. If people are buying their canned goods, that's usually not good for the market. Not great. That's usually a hiding thing. Yeah, and it seems to be more on the good side. I'd say some of the discounters are doing better. I'm not saying entirely. Like Walmart had a strong week, but I think it's more like your product foods situations out there.

23:16Walmart doesn't beating anybody on the relative strength, really, but it's made a nice bounce back. Mm-hmm. XLK, the technology, again, this is dominated by your NVIDIAs and your Apples, but a nice breakout that we saw this week and held the gains. So a pretty good-looking weekly chart for XLK. Yeah. I mean, this is where the strength is. It sort of bounced off the 10-week line. Again, it's just like big, powerful move, new highs, but not extended, which is nice. It's a nice mix. It's not, you do another gain like this and maybe you're getting there or starting to get there, but not. But it's a very favorable chart.

24:00Let's also take a look. We already looked at our SPY, SMH and gold, but let's take a look at utilities, which, again, kind of like gold, it's a little unusual to see it going in the same direction as growth. But, you know, we've been kind of talking about how some of these utility plays are a little bit more AI adjacent because of the energy needs of your data centers and so on. Yeah, I mean, when utilities are right, this is more understandable because, yeah, because their AI plays. And so, exactly, a number of them bounce back. Honestly, we see a lot of charts like this this past week, bouncing back above the 50-day line, maybe breaking trend lines or coming up to trend lines within bases.

24:44So, a lot like this. So, yeah, this is your AI defensive sector, I guess. I'm not sure what you're talking about. I defensive XLY, which includes, you know, Amazon and Tesla and the consumer discretionary. So no big surprise that because of the move in Tesla, XLY was having a pretty good day. Amazon also set up with a base, although that breakout right now seems to be potentially in trouble, but still support at the 50 day moving average line. But XLY, not a bad look with those two doing well. Yeah, absolutely. Looking good. And then XLC was the top sector spider of the 11. And of course, this has Meta and Google.

25:32Google, I mean, Alphabet is certainly been, I think, the surprise powerhouse for the Mag 7. Really strong action there. But I should mention that XLC, as strong as that was, actually the equal weighted RSPC was even better today with a 1.34 percent gain versus versus a 0.83 percent for XLC. So I don't know if some of that has to do with like Warner Brothers Discovery, which which was coming up quite a bit. But what's your take on XLC, the communications area? Yeah, I mean, for today, and also, I mean, Meta and Google were up, you know, they were up slightly today. So that's, they lagged the overall index.

26:23So that's also one reason there. I mean, Meta, they have a big conference tomorrow, next week, a Connect conference. So that will be interesting. They'll tout their AI, maybe some augmented glasses and stuff. This one's working on a base. It doesn't have one yet. Maybe another week. Maybe the short-term highs can act as a de facto, too low handle kind of for that name. But yeah, that's what's going on there. And then we have been throwing IBIT into this crowd as well for our sectors. Bitcoin, and I'm going to throw in Ethereum as well, ETHA. I do have a position in both IBIT and ETHA, but what's your take on the crypto?

27:03I mean, you know, certainly it's worth noting that we had some, you know, crypto news in terms of the Gemini coming out today. There was the BLSH, which is bullish. So what is that doing for crypto? Well, like there just seems to be a push again. I mean, I think I don't know if it was those IPOs or if it's just a risk on kind of attitude. And that seems to be in. Ethereum really has taken the lead. That one's more harder. I mean, that one's a little bit more delicate. I like this one. You could have bought it. It's already getting up there versus a 21-day line. And this one, you know, could see some big swings up and down.