Indexes Fade But Not Tesla, Intuitive Surgical and Las Vegas Sands

0:25Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Stock Market Today for Monday. November 3rd. It's Alexis Garcia here. And stocks started the month mixed today with tech leading the NASDAQ and the S &P 500 higher while the Dow slipped. And here with me to help break down everything you need to know about today's trading action is IBD Market Research Director Justin Nielsen. So Justin, a big week for us Dodgers fans. We had a pretty strong October for the market. starting the month of November, a little mixed. But what do you have on top for us today?

1:05Alexis Garcia:Yeah, well, I mean, look, just like the Dodgers, I struggled at some points in October, so it wasn't a given. But we will talk about some of the stocks that held up a little bit better today, even though a lot of these stocks or indexes, I should say, faded off the highs. But Tesla was holding up strong. I do have a position there. Intuitive Surgical, that's a new ad on Swing Trader. And I got a little piece of that as well. And then we also will take a look at Las Vegas Sands, which, as a lot of people know, has no exposure to Las Vegas anymore. But it's still worth looking at the stock. Well, you know, Justin, my dad used to tell me it's better to be lucky than good.

1:45So we'll take that in baseball and I guess in the market. But let's go ahead and check in on the major indexes. The S &P 500 finishing the day up almost two tenths of a percent. The Dow down half a percent. The Nasdaq up half a percent. And small caps down about four-tenths of a percent. So I'm going to get my screen share going, Justin. But again, talk to us. It seems like the market, you know, last week finished on a pretty positive note. And like I said, gains for the month of October were pretty strong. But how are you characterizing the current market right now?

2:23Alexis Garcia:Well, certainly one of the things that we had to deal with in October that did make it difficult was October 10th. That was that big drop that we saw on the S &P 500 and the NASDAQ. Remember, what was going on was President Xi in China was saying, hey, we're going to be curbing some of these rare earth metals. And President Trump said, well, you know what? I'm not cool with that. We're going to slap you with tariffs. And so there was a lot of back and forth and this very sideways action. So certainly we could have gone down a lot more from that. And so for a lot of us who maybe took defensive action, if we hadn't done anything, we would have been better off.

3:01Alexis Garcia:But that's in this case, right? Just because something works out, you know, I always say, look, if you've got a 19 on blackjack and you hit and you get a two, was that a good thing? You know, it wasn't a good process. You're going to lose on most of those. But, you know, you can be lucky every now and then. So, look, the sideways action, it did resolve itself to the upside. And as you mentioned, look, you look at a weekly chart on the S &P 500 and that's a breakout. You know, it may not have finished strong. It was off its highs. But that was breaking out of that little sideways area into new highs.

3:34Alexis Garcia:You know, it's hard to complain too much about that. Same thing with the NASDAQ composite, a solid gap up breakout to new highs, almost to the 24 ,000 level. but well above the 23 ,000 level. And today, hey, we're holding. So that's a good thing. Now, going back to the daily charts, we did close in the bottom half of the range for a lot of stocks or indexes, I should say. The one exception being the Russell 2000, which as you noted was the stock index that was down for the day. But at least it was well off its highs, finding support potentially at the 50-day moving average line and showing an upside reversal.

4:12Alexis Garcia:But I will warn that a lot of the upside reversals that I've been seeing on the Russell 2000 or even RSP, which is the equal weighted S &P 500, a lot of those seemingly upside reversal reversals do get undercut. And so I think they're still kind of trying to find their footing in a lot of ways. But look, overall, again, if you look at the NASDAQ and the S &P 500, there's a lot of strength. That strength has potentially narrowed. You look at something like FNGS, which is the top 10 stocks in terms of market cap to a large degree. This is still looking strong, but again, it's not even. You have some stocks like Amazon that we mentioned on Friday's SMT that are really rocking, Alphabet doing very well.

5:04Alexis Garcia:But then you have others that are not looking so good on the FNGS side, like Meta, for instance, that has just got creamed on its earnings report and is now below the 200-day moving average line. So the bottom line is as strong as the S &P 500 and NASDAQ look, your results may vary depending on the stocks that you have in your portfolio, which is always the case. But when there's a narrowing, you might find that a little bit easier to be very different from what the indexes are doing when there's a narrow market. Either you're really on and you're getting those leaders that are the best ones out there and not getting the laggards, or the breadth is kind of making it so that the stocks that you choose are just not the right ones.

5:49Alexis Garcia:It becomes a stock picker's market. And if you're in the wrong ones, you can really see some detriment to your portfolio. It's always trying to thread the needle there, Justin. Let's just quickly check in on the 10-year Treasury yield. We have some potential economic data coming out with the ADP jobs report, I believe, this week. But again, we have the government shutdown. So nothing officially coming from the agencies here, Justin. But this ticking up today, about a tenth of a percent. But moving above the 50-day line here, but again, what are your thoughts with the Treasury yield and what you're seeing shaping up in terms of all this economic data that's, you know, potentially flowed out there?

6:30Mm hmm.

6:31Alexis Garcia:Well, this is certainly a big kind of shift after the Fed meeting. And again, I don't think anyone was surprised that we got the cut that everyone expected. It was that hold on on December. You know, let's not get too excited about December. And that really kind of changed the math here in terms of the 10 year Treasury. And so that's why you saw that I think it was like a 90 percent chance for a rate cut just really diminished in a significant way for the December futures on the Fed funds. So, you know, what that means is there's a readjustment here. And again, that can kind of explain some of the problems that we've been seeing with RSP and the Russell 2000.

7:11Alexis Garcia:But, you know, this is something that we're going to have to watch. You know, is it just a little adjustment and now everything is fine? or is this a little bit more of a serious, okay, we're gonna start seeing the yields trend higher, which could, again, kind of filter down to a lot of places in the market. And as you mentioned, look, we do have the government shutdown. There is a little bit of this data that is missing. You also mentioned we're getting that data from other sources, right? Instead of going to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we're relying a little bit more on ADP for our jobs numbers, you know?

7:41Alexis Garcia:And this is also, we've got an earnings season that's still in play here. And that's giving us information in terms of as companies are sharing their guidance and what they think for the future. That's giving at least some indication of, you know, some projections and things like that that we can look at for growth. But it's certainly not the complete picture that we're used to. And, you know, maybe that's something that as November unfolds, we're going to get a little bit more clarity there. And that will, again, really filter down to the 10-year Treasury yield and to other areas in the economy.

8:14I just want to apologize. My dog had a lot of thoughts on the 10-year treasury yield here. But let's check in on iBit. That's the Bitcoin trust ETF. Bitcoin falling today about 2.8 percent, drifting lower toward this 200-day line, Justin. But talk to me about what's been going on in the crypto market.

8:35Alexis Garcia:Well, I only bring this up because I'll be honest, I don't follow what the crypto market is doing. I don't understand it well enough, but I can trade a chart. And right now, this is kind of in a no man's land. It's underneath the 50 day moving average line above the 200 day moving average line. I wouldn't short it here because, look, you could get that support of the 200 day line and, you know, see this kind of rocket up. I'm also not an eager buyer right here because, you know, while it's below the 50 day moving average line and just kind of going back and forth here, I don't feel like I have an edge.

9:04Alexis Garcia:But look, while it's a no man's land, that doesn't mean that I'm going to go either way. But I do watch it because a lot of times, just a couple days, and this turns into a trade. So if this got above the 50-day moving average line, I think that would look a lot more interesting, especially if it kind of was able to cross this downtrend that it's been in. And so the 50-day moving average line, I think, at least for me, is the first stop to help me out with that. All right. Well, let's go ahead and take a look at NLR. That's the uranium and nuclear ETF. This one also down today about 4 % and testing the 21-day line.

9:42Alexis Garcia:Yeah, so a heavy hit here. A lot of stocks that have been, again, very, very good looking, very interesting looking, you know, not having a great day. But there are a lot of things that are holding up. CCJ, which is a component in this NLR, this is a uranium miner. and they also have that deal. That's where the gap up came from. They have a deal going on with Westinghouse in terms of building some nuclear reactors, I believe. But hey, this has come down and looks like it's testing the 100 area. But a lot of the NLR stocks pulling back like this, but they certainly don't look broken. And when you look at NLR, that uranium and nuclear ETF, it does seem like right now, it could potentially get that support at the 21 day moving average line.

10:29Alexis Garcia:So something to watch there. All right. Well, let's go ahead and take a look at XBI. That's the biotech ETF. This one also down at 2.5 percent today. But, you know, it seems like it really tried to hold the short term moving average around the 110 level. Yeah, I didn't know what was going on here because XBI has been trending so nicely and that hit. And this is something that's really spread out. So in order to make it come down as much as it did, you really have to have some damage being done. And certainly one of the areas that did damage this is ticker symbol Q-U-R-E. That was down over 50 percent as we were watching this on IBD Live today.

11:13Alexis Garcia:And that, you know, came up well off its highs, but still down 50%, you know, considering how bad it got. So that was definitely, you know, something that was kind of pushing XBI down. But look, this has been an area of strength. I am still watching it. And the fact that it got that support at the 21-day moving average line is worth considering that, hey, this is not necessarily broken. It did get that support. Okay, let's take a look at GLD. That's the gold shares ETF ticking up today about two-tenths of a percent. But seems like the 21-day line here, a potential level of resistance, Justin. Yeah, potentially.

11:53Alexis Garcia:And it's just tightening up right there. So I would see a move above this as being a strong signal, especially if it closes that gap in from last week. Now, look, this was really raging, so, so strong over the last few months. This pullback, you know, again, it could just be a pullback as it consolidates and gets back to back to highs and beyond. When you look at like the weekly chart or the monthly chart on this, this could be the beginning of something, you know, it had that long, flat area. So this is the first test of the 10-week moving average line, which when we're looking at stocks a lot of times, that's an opportunity to purchase.

12:34Alexis Garcia:So I think this is still well worth looking at. And whether you look at gold or SLV, which is the silver, that's also looking strong right there at the 21-day moving average line. So I think these are both ones to watch. And let's wrap up with XLY. This is the consumer discretionary select sector. This went up about a percent today. just underneath this 243.40 buy point, Justin. Yeah, so very, very strong. And of course, you have to remember that the two biggest components here are Amazon and Tesla. Again, I do have a position in Tesla, but just looking at Amazon, that was one that we talked about on the SMT on Friday after it gapped up following its earnings report and a nice follow-up.

13:19Alexis Garcia:So even though these are closing at the bottom of their ranges, you still can't ignore the fact that these are very strong moves. So Amazon having some really strong moves there. And then Tesla, which we'll talk about in a little bit, breaking out of a flat base. So nothing to sneeze out there. So having the two biggest components, doing a lot of heavy lifting for XLY is one of the reasons why this consumer discretionary area. Now, if you do want kind of another look at this RSPD, which is the equal weighted consumer discretionary, a very different picture. You take out those trillion-dollar companies and you're seeing that there is some weakness in that consumer discretionary sector, whether it's retail, restaurants.

14:03Alexis Garcia:There are some areas of strength, but some areas that are just looking pretty bad. So something that I think we need to watch and don't necessarily think just because XLY is doing well, that consumer discretionary overall is okay. Harvard Business School Executive Education delivers breakthrough learning for leaders, stimulating classes led by faculty at the forefront of their fields, topics that will define the future of business, discussions that transform perspectives and ways of thinking, and access to the brightest business minds on the planet. Learn more at hbs.me slash breakthrough. That's hbs.me slash breakthrough.

14:44All right. Well, you mentioned Tesla. Let's go ahead and jump into it then, because this one up about 3 % today. Justin, if we look at a weekly chart, breaking above this flat base 470-75 area, or at least getting very close to that buy point. So your thoughts here?

15:03Alexis Garcia:Well, one of the things, and again, I do have a position. We have to kind of mention that each time we talk about it. But one of the things I do like here is that the 26 percent depth from its last base has now gotten a even tighter base at 13 percent for this recent flat base. And so, again, very sideways action. It really just let that 10 week moving average line catch up to it. And then today kind of you can consider this a breakout above that, you know, well, four 70, 75 area. It looks like it did pull back just slightly. it crossed over it, but, you know, ended up closing below it. But, you know, this is still, I bought it when it was over 470.

15:41Alexis Garcia:And so there was no reason to get rid of those shares just because it, you know, closed a scotch below it. Still very strong in the upper part of the range, still actionable, I believe. Now, look, the fundamentals on this, it's not a fundamental story, right? You know, unless you're talking about the speculation of what's possible with the robo taxis, with the humanoid robots, all of those things, all of those promises that have been out there for a long time, full self-driving and everything else. You know, if you kind of, you know, go off of that and say, well, gosh, this company is undervalued because of the life changing things that it has going for it.

16:16Alexis Garcia:For me right now, I don't know whether or not it's going to fulfill all those dreams, but I know that the chart looks pretty good. And so I'm kind of ignoring the fundamentals, the weak earnings and all of those things and saying, look, this is a breakout and I'm treating it as a swing trade. If I get a lot of cushion, hey, I might hold onto this for longer as a position trade. But you've got relative strength line at recent highs, a flat-based breakout, support at the 21-day moving average line, a lot of things going for it, making it look a lot more interesting than it has in a while. And Justin, earnings are out of the way here, but we do have some potential news this week.

16:53There's a lot of discussion about the upcoming vote on this Musk Pay package. So, you know, if you're an investor, you know, this is potentially actionable, but there's potential news. So how are you approaching that?

17:07Alexis Garcia:Yeah, I mean, it's out there, you know, it's gonna go one way or the other. I'm not sure how much it affects the stock. We'll see, you know, at this point, it's not like, you know, in the same way that an earnings report, you know, there could be some back and forth. And again, I just I don't know which way that vote is going to go personally, but I just know what I'm seeing on the chart right now. And, you know, when it comes down to it, if I feel a little nervous because it's pulling in or the chart is acting funny, then I'll get out and I have ways to manage my risk. One thing that is difficult when you're trying to manage your risk by putting some stops in is that gap down risk.

17:44Alexis Garcia:And so that's something that's hard to get away from. And especially when you have a news event that you know is coming up, you know, that's an extra thing that you have to consider. So maybe you can, you know, size your position down accordingly. Right now, this is not such a size for me that it would get me in a lot of trouble. But again, we'll see if I can get some cushion on it. That can turn into a larger size if we get into some more updates here. All right, let's move on over to Intuitive Surgical. That's ticker ISRG. This went up 1.8 % today, Justin, and it had this nice earnings jump here of about 14%, and it's really trying to hold those gains.

18:26So thoughts here as it builds the right side of this larger consolidation. Yeah.

18:31Alexis Garcia:So one of my favorite kind of plays is when something gaps up strongly on earnings or news, and then it just holds so nicely. And that's exactly what ISRG did. Again, I do have a position in this one as well. We added to Swing Trader because it kind of has this really, you know, really great upside reversal look that it had on Friday, and then it followed up on it today. So it's kind of breaking that short little downtrend. And let's just take a look at the weekly chart. You know, it really just kind of, you know, puts a puts a fine point on this, how strong that week was because of that earnings gap up and how tight it has been.

19:08Alexis Garcia:It's not even like coming down to the 50 percent retracement range. It's just like way up at the top of its range. It's not giving anything up. So that break above the 200 day moving average line or in this case, the 40 week moving average line, the black line on your chart. That's a that's a great look. And now it's just holding tight. So I thought of this as an area where, you know, you can get involved. And going back to the daily chart, you have a real easy way of managing your risk. If this goes below the lows of today or, you know, or Friday, then I'm out, you know, because, again, it tested kind of that area around where the lows of the gap up day were.

19:47Alexis Garcia:It tested that right now. That looks like a successful test. If it fails and goes underneath that. Yeah, I'm it's not the stock that I thought it was. So I've got a real easy way to manage my risk and a lot of potential upside. You know, this is a stock, if you go to the monthly chart, that has had just, you know, a phenomenal run since like 2004 with a lot of periods of outperformance. Now, lately, it has been more of a market performer. And you can see that with the relative strength kind of just going sideways and looking, you know, very flattish over the last few years. But you can see how that relative strength is also kind of skyrocketed lately and is looking like it's on the verge of taking out its moving average lines that you have on there.

20:32Alexis Garcia:In fact, you can see that maybe a little bit better on the weekly chart, you know, with it, you know, kind of retaking those moving average lines and holding up very nicely. So that's what I'm that's what I'm trading off of right now. Looks interesting and still looks actionable. And just following up, the low from Friday was around 2620. The low of today around 2760 in case you need those potential stops. But let's go ahead and wrap up with Las Vegas Sands, which, as you mentioned, has nothing to do with Las Vegas. But this went up 4 % today out of this buy zone here, Justin. So thoughts here.

21:09Alexis Garcia:Yeah, so it kind of this was a tough one because when it came up on its earnings report and came up to that prior resistance around 5805, I was a little hard pressed to buy it right there, especially as it kind of came out because it had come up so quickly from its bottom. But now that it had this little consolidation, this looks a lot more interesting to me. And so, you know, a few days. And by the way, I think Chris Gessel brought this up on Friday on IBD Live. So, yeah, this has a very tight area that it formed right after breaking above that 5805 resistance area and a very strong move today.

21:46Alexis Garcia:Again, it's a little bit of a joke that, you know, the Las Vegas Sands is no longer invested in Las Vegas. They kind of divested. They had already done a lot of international exposure, especially Macau, a few years ago. You know, they sold the Venetian and kind of got rid of the rest of their stuff so they could focus on that international side of things. But again, what I'm interested in right now is that chart. And also, this is kind of a turnaround situation. You see that there's a lot of these red quarters of growth, you know, negative 20, negative five, negative 19. And now it looks like things have turned there.

22:23Alexis Garcia:So now we've got 44 percent in the in the quarter after that and 77 percent in the most recent quarter. You've also seen that turnaround in the revenue growth. You see it to a degree in the annual. In 2022, this was still dealing with kind of the after effects of COVID with a lot of losses that it was dealing with. 2023 was when that turned around and you're seeing some phenomenal growth estimated for the future years. So, again, a little bit of a turnaround situation. And this this just seems like an opportunity to get into it. Right. So still actionable here for you. Yeah, I mean, it's extended from that that buy zone, that that five percent buy zone.

23:05Alexis Garcia:But I'm really kind of looking at this as a move from that that tight area. So it's on the edge. Look, I would have much preferred getting this early. And this is where, again, Chris was looking at this on Friday as his stock on IBD Live because of the setup. He liked the setup. And, you know, whether you bought it as on Friday because it was kind of what we call a setup day, something that looked like it could easily go above that area of resistance the next day, or if you bought it early in the day, just take a look at the five-minute chart, if you go to the five minute chart, you can see that it, you know, kind of came up, you know, very quickly.

23:44Alexis Garcia:It had a reversal, you know, it came all the way down to 60 and then it really took off. So whether it was, you know, you know, 60 and a half or, you know, or somewhere around there when it started looking like, oh, yes, this is, this is gaining steam after that pullback. You know, you had a way to kind of get in at a little bit of a lower price, but there's really not much of a need to quibble too much. over the pennies. This again, the setup is what looks interesting to me. I missed it myself. We were talking about it on IB Live today, but again, I got busy and I missed it myself. So it was kind of out of there.