Equal-Weighted Benchmarks Outperform In Mixed Day; Broadcom, Argenx, Franco-Nevada In Focus

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0:40hello and welcome to another episode of the stock market today video it's justin nielsen here i'm going to be hosting for you today lexus garcia is actually in the background helping us get where we need to go and it's december 15th 2025 and joining me is david sito chung he is a long-term friend and colleague, deputy markets editor here at IBD, and a big, big manager of the leaderboard product for IBD as well. Welcome to the show, Dave. Hey, Justin. Didn't I just see you earlier this morning? It seems like, yeah, it seems like we've spent a few hours to, even though we're not in the same place, we've spent a few hours looking at each other's ugly mugs today.

1:24Well, hopefully we improved as the day wore on, and great to be with you, Justin. Yeah. So, of course, we're going to talk about the market and how things ended up today, but you also have a few stocks that you're going to cover. What do you got on tap? I sure do. As usual, you asked me to give you three names, and so we're going to go with AVGO, Broadcom, which I still like to call Abago. And we also have a biotech that was in the news today, ARGX Argenics. And finally, we'll top it off with a metals play, Franco Nevada FNV. Yeah, a lot of folks in the YouTube comments are talking about silver and gold.

2:06They're not just singing a Burl Ives song. There is a lot to be looking at in that area. But first, let's go ahead and do a breakdown of the indexes. I am sharing my screen and you can see the NASDAQ here. We were down about six tenths of a percent on the NASDAQ, closing not only below our 21-day moving average line, but just below the 50-day moving average line. The S &P 500 fared a little bit better. That was only down two tenths of a percent. Still hanging in there right at the 21-day moving average line. Dow Jones Industrial average, that was only down about a tenth of a percent, maybe even less, and just looks very different from the other indexes.

2:47There still has quite a bit of distance above its 21-day moving average line, even its 10-day moving average line. The Russell 2000 small cap index, that took a little bit more of a hit. But again, this has got a lot of space above its 21-day moving average line, coming right down to the 10-day moving average line, and still right around this area, the top of the base that it broke out of just recently. So I'm going to go back to the, oh, you know what, I'm going to also throw in just for you, Dave, RSP, which is the equal weighted S &P 500. Again, a very different look from the market cap weighted indexes lately.

3:25That was up about tenth to two tenths of a percent. And then I know you like to go with the QQQE, which is the equal weighted NASDAQ 100. That was only down two tenths of a percent as opposed to the six tenths of a percent of NASDAQ. So let's go ahead and start with the NASDAQ and get your take here, Dave. Yeah, that was definitely the sore spot of Monday's market, right? And the fallout from... Not just Monday. Well, for sure, for sure. And we can see that in this new test of the 50-day moving average, your red line on that daily chart. And so we're also noticing the relative strength line on your chart there dipping below two of the Webby moving averages.

4:13So that's something we need to monitor. And you highlighted the QQQE, as I like to look at, but also QQEW highlighted just the fact that the average NASDAQ 100 stock was also down. So I think Monday represented in a quiet way another march toward a broadening rally or hopes that some of these non-megacap tech sectors will continue to lead, you know, I guess, bear the torch of the bull run. No, absolutely. And what's your take on the Russell, the RSP, and just the very different look that these have? You know, this is the Russell 2000. Actually, I'm going to go with the IWM, the iShares ETF. And yeah, I mean, this is exactly where you'd like to get support, at the top of this base that it's formed here.

5:11And again, it still has some distance above its moving average lines. Spot on. And, you know, today's drop doesn't really concern me much. We often see indexes in addition to growth stocks turning a level of resistance, which was at around that 252 level, into a potential floor of support. And keep in mind, too, I mean, just two days of drops in a row is not that bad, given that you rallied 14 to 15 percent from that November low. So, of course, we're not going to predict what the Russell is going to do in the next coming days. But right now, this pullback looks OK. And, of course, one of the issues that a lot of investors are pointing to as, you know, just weighing down on the indexes is the cryptocurrency.

6:02You know, whether you're looking at Bitto, Ibit, Ethereum, there's some ugliness there. There is. And I think for chart readers and people who like to sell short, I wouldn't be shorting these instruments at this point because the weakness is so obvious. But if you have another failed rally attempt to the 50-day or even perhaps a 21-day exponential moving average for a shorter-term trader, there still might be some short opportunities. And on the other hand, Justin, we definitely do not at all advise against trying to buy these dips. That can really cut your hands here. Yeah, it's a little bit of a different methodology than what we talk about on a regular basis.

6:52You know, before we get too far, and I know you're going to cover a metal stock, a gold stock a little bit later, But one of the one of the shiny spots, if you will, was silver here. Here's the Silver Trust SLV. You know, this got hit a little bit on Friday, but still overall in a very strong uptrend. And that's kind of the case, whether you look at SLV to a lesser degree, GLD. So back to that, you know, Burl Live song. uh platinum also having uh a day uh you know that had come in uh sharply uh a few days ago but has really rallied strongly lately so um what's uh what's your take on the metals here well if we go go if we stick with pltm right that platinum tracker uh i would i would tip my proverbial hat over to Scott St.

7:50Clair, our senior manager of premium products, who is a very popular guest on the IBD live show. And I think he was perhaps the first to maybe make the case for these precious metals, ETFs in particular, PLTM. We've been looking at GLD and SLV for a long time. Justin, it feels like, well, first of all, PLTM, I wouldn't chase here. If you're going to stick to some discipline rules regarding a breakout point. Don't buy more than 5 % above that breakout point, but also be ready for a potential second chance entry here if it does cool off, just like what the Russell 2000 is doing. If we go to SLV again, it's really interesting to see whether part of the trade is looking at silver being still relatively undervalued versus gold.

8:42A lot of people like to use that gold-silver ratio, and when that gets out of sync, silver oftentimes plays catch up and goes really sharply. But also, I want to say that I found it interesting someone had noted, Justin, that even though we've hit new highs in silver, on a on a inflation adjusted basis we'd actually have to get up near i think 180 190 dollars per ounce for silver just to get back to those hunt brothers trying to corner the market 1980 rally yeah yeah so does that mean that there's more upside very possibly right uh right now you can't You can't argue with the strong trend of these precious metals right now.

9:30A couple other areas to just on the downside, worth mentioning that, again, you're going to talk about a chip here with Broadcom. But, you know, chips, a lot of technology, XLK, very, very hard hit lately. and again, is this a rotation or is this just a break for this to potentially set up for another run? It really could be all three of the above, right? I'm not going to wager on my prediction because I could just be as easily wrong in saying, oh, this is just a break or this could be the end of the era of Big Cap Tech leading this whole run. And all we have right now is, for now, just the action in the daily chart.

10:21And we do know that when you fall below the 50-day moving average, you do have to be prepared for a possibly larger correction. The latest correction in November wasn't as deep as what we saw in April. So what would it take for a bigger drop to ensue? Clearly, some kind of news that the market didn't see coming. Yeah. A couple other areas of strength that I just wanted to cover briefly, XLV, very strong move here after a little handle formed on this large cup with handle, you know, going back a few years. And, you know, so that has been rallying sharply lately. And a lot of the, you know, healthcare stocks, I know Lilly is a stock on leaderboard.

11:15I do have a position in this as well. Or I guess it's on the watch list, if I'm not mistaken. Still on the watch list for now, right? Not on the main list, but really watching every day. I'm glad you brought this one up. I don't know how much of XLV is comprised of Lilly and related names, but you can't ignore Eli Lilly at all because of its such a strong position and not only GLP, weight loss drugs, but other treatments for serious diseases. And for now, I think if you own this stock and you were patient to see whether it would get support at key levels, you're being rewarded right now. Because it didn't really fall much below the 21-day.

11:57And Justin, if you don't mind just drawing a line across the volume on the down days, there was only one day where it even approached the 50-day average in terms of volume. So that looked like a very normal, natural, someone likes to say that, normal, natural pullback. And look at those fundamentals. Earnings are incredible. And so I think the medical sector, indeed, I agree with you, Justin, that this is an area to be watching for closely in the weeks and months to come. Yeah. And Eli Lilly represents a 14.6 % weight of XLV, followed number one holding there and followed by Johnson & Johnson, which has also been looking strong lately.

12:50That has a 9 % weight and number two spot for XLV. I'm Laura Thurow, Managing Director with Baird Private Wealth Management. For so many of us, life is busy. Between balancing family, career, and community, finding the time and focus to keep your financial plans on track can be a challenge. At Baird, we understand. Our financial advisors will partner with you to create a plan that's uniquely yours. One that gives you peace of mind and confidence so you can focus on what matters most. Discover the Baird difference at rwbaird.com slash wsj. Let's go ahead and shift over to some stocks. And you wanted to start with our old friend Broadcom with the ticker symbol of Avago.

13:35Yes, Avago. Right. I would venture to say that most people, if not everyone tuning in, believe that this is a real expectation breaker. You know, you had a very nice report. the market, at least certain fund managers, picked apart the comments made by Haktan and other executives during the call and found a reason to sell. And maybe it was just projections that just failed to beat everyone's estimates. Maybe they were looking for more detail on the size of their biggest new clients. regardless the market has definitely judged uh the the recent news as uh a reason to take some profits because we have a stock that that clearly not only more than doubled from from the april low but it's it's really acted as a as an ai sector leader so if you bought this stock recently it's it makes sense to play defense here and just the way that it dropped through to 50 days is is very different from prior declines.

14:46Not to say that this great stocks run is over, but it feels like that it's going to need some time before it makes a really good IBD-style breakout and setup. No, absolutely. Another one that was a little hard hit today, it wasn't all rosy cheeks in the in the medical space. This is a biomed biotech with some phenomenal earnings and one that we've been watching, especially as it came out of this ascending base recently. But this was a fairly, fairly harsh break below the 50-day moving average line, though closed well off its lows. Yes, it did. And that would give holders a reason to see how the week finishes up in the final full trading week of 2025.

15:38If it closed near the session low, Justin, I think it would have been a unanimous IBD decision based on rules to take profits because that was, it would have been the first close sharply below the 50-day in many, many months. And I think, for instance, you see that over in early May on the earnings that were reported, I think for Q1, you can see it went down to a low, yeah, there we go, 529. That was such a sharp break, even though it finished near the intraday high, it was so below all the moving averages, it made sense to take some profits. And no one, of course, had any idea that it would then have an earnings breakaway gap three months later.

16:27So from there, we've had a nice run. The stock acted on news that, and I believe we have a story on this as well on investors.com, that the company decided to end a late stage trial for a treatment for thyroid-based eye disease. So I don't know how much of this move since the summer was banking on some good news regarding a new treatment for a serious eye disease. But for now, I think the daily chart action show that there are some long-term investors who really want to shore up the stock. But let's keep an eye on it. But notice, too, that, you know, it's interesting, Justin, that I didn't notice before, but the volume was not as heavy as one might have thought on such big news.

17:25True, it was 67 % above average, but that volume turned out to be less intense than the prior sell-off, 2 to 50-day. You see that low of 749.75 in late October. That was a much, much heavier sell-off. But like today, it finished almost at the intraday highs of the day. So when I kind of try to decide on whether I want to trim a position or outright exit a stock, I often want to see not only a big price decline, but a huge, huge increase in volume. Mm hmm. Yeah. So, yeah, 87 percent above average. And again, this might also depend on where you bought it. Very different if you bought it down here as it was coming out of this or, you know, even from the gap or, you know, as it tightened up from there, as opposed to if you bought it recently.

18:25And that's one of the issues lately is recent buys, a lot of them are failing. Some of them come right back, retake their buy points, but it hasn't been easy lately, really, for October and November here. So where you bought definitely makes a difference. You know, instead of locking in profits, you might just be protecting yourself from further losses or keeping those losses small. So let's wrap this up with a look at one of the gold stocks, Franco Nevada, FNB. I frankly don't know a lot about this business. Thanks to the market surge, I can tell you, right, that it's dealing in the royalties and streaming business of gold.

19:11But I really like how the stock has not only rebounded back above the 50-day pattern recognition on market surge shows a couple handle breakout. But I see it as also given that the stock is still 13 points below that left side peak at 225.63. Justin, I would venture to guess or even perhaps maybe anticipate a potential new handle that forms. And we've seen good examples of really great stocks that form a couple of handles while still fashioning the right side of that base and then break out. Notice the relative strength line is rising, but it's still not quite at its high. But there's still time for the stock to demonstrate some real relative strength.

19:57And finally, the last point, beyond the good fundamentals, beyond the strength of the industry group and the underlying gold price, Notice, too, that you can really gain a lot of insight into a stock by looking at its past breakouts. You look at August after they reported a 65 % Q2 EPS increase. It formed a nice little handle near the top of two bases. There were really two bases in one, one with a cup without a handle, and then one with a cup with a handle. And there you go, right? And then we had just what looks like a perfect handle because it slanted lower along the lows. Then it broke out and never looked back.

20:40We can just stay on this daily chart and hopefully others who are more interested in doing research on Franco Nevada, you can see back in January, it had similar action. It got back above the 50-day moving average and then it cooled off a little bit, forming a handle, which was probably five or six days. You need about five days on a daily chart or one week on a weekly chart to get that final shakeout of uncommitted holders before a potential big breakout occurs. So I hope this one will work for those who are watching this. And I certainly will be watching closely for Leaderboard. Well, really appreciate the commentary and the extra chart analysis.

21:23Very great stuff. So thank you very much for that. and uh will you be on tomorrow on ibd live sure will will ed carson uh yeah one of the usual suspects on smd he'll be hosting but uh i'll be paneling with david ryan our special guest on on tuesdays yeah we have david ryan tomorrow we had a special guest peter borgia today which was a lot of fun uh someone we actually pulled from the audience kind of uh situation uh you you uh had that great idea. And of course, you can watch us on IBD Live every day. We start 10 minutes before the open and go, well, at least 90 minutes, sometimes quite a bit longer like we did today, into the market open with analysis of the markets, current stocks, and, you know, lessons just on managing your portfolio and managing risk and all of those things.

22:16So Dave is a regular panelist there. So you can catch him there at investors.com slash IBD live for a trial. And then also the leaderboard product is something that he very closely watches and is involved with along with Ken Shreve. And so that's a way to kind of get IBD methodology ideas, you know, delivered, delivered to your inbox, your phone, however you wish to get those alerts. So a great product there. So thanks a lot, Dave, for being on the show.

22:50Okay. And that's going to wrap it up for us today. Catch us tomorrow and we'll be right back here after the close. See you then. Have a great day, everybody.

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