Market Gains Fade Despite Chip, Bank Strength; AMD, Dycom, Primoris In Focus

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0:38Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Stock Market Today for Thursday, January 15th. It's Alexis Garcia here. And the major indexes opened strong thanks to some nice earnings from Taiwan Semi and some of the banking names out there. Small caps led the day, but the market faded off those highs by the close. So here with me to help break down everything you need to know about today's trading action is IBD News Editor Ed Carson. So Ed, we were talking about before the show how ready we are for a three-day weekend. It seems maybe the market is too, judging by some of the late selling action today.

1:22Yeah, the major indexes showed a little bit sort of like my energy levels as the afternoon wears on. But I want to take a look at a few names. One, Advanced Micro Devices, AMD, as well as DICOM and Primorus. All right, well, we'll get to those names. Let's just quickly round up the major indexes. The S &P 500 finishing the day up two-tenths of a percent. The Dow up half a percent. The Nasdaq up about two thirds of a percent and small caps, again, leading the day up almost a percent today. So I'm going to go ahead and get our trusty charts going here. Yeah. What are you noticing about today's market action?

2:06It seems like we've really been in a space where we're just kind of off highs, chugging along. You can see the S &P 500 here, again, fading off those early gains, but still in a pretty good position here. Yeah, I mean, overall, stepping back, the market is near record highs. It was disappointing, though, because there were a lot of positive catalysts. Taiwan Semiconductor, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BlackRock. So really lifting. And there was a lot of lift, especially early on from, you know, from some of those things, like especially Taiwan Semiconductor, the broader chip sector, huge gains.

2:44along there. And yet other areas, other parts of this tech sector, some healthcare, some other areas were just faded off. I mean, and so we're weak or raised gains. So that's just disappointing. Small caps continue to be doing very well. Chips continue to do well, which we'll look at. I mean, everything outside of, it's not chips, but when you strip out some of the mega caps and some of the software names that have been weak, you look at these equal weight ETFs, they're still doing pretty well. But yeah, it was just a disappointing session from where we started. Yeah, I'm still in small caps here, Ed.

3:21It seems like after being kind of stuck around this 250 level, really moving out and now trying to establish above the 260 level here for the Russell 2000, we can briefly take a look at the NASDAQ composite before we move on. But again, And a similar action here, you can see the S &P 500, the Dow, all, you know, near highs. The Nasdaq has sort of lagged a little bit. But again, an update still, but it looks like it's inching ever so much closer to that 21-day line. Yeah, what a nice to have seen this get this up. You know, the Nasdaq has been consolidating for quite a while. All the other indexes have been hitting highs here and there.

4:04What a nice to get that up there. Obviously, it's still holding above the 50-day line, and it would just take one good day to maybe get above short-term highs, maybe one more after that to get to all-time highs. So it's really close to that. It's just, you know, there was really good news today. And the fact that's the only thing is that the market couldn't hold it particularly well, despite what seemed like just unambiguously good news. You talked about some of the equal-weighted ETFs. Let's just check in on RSP. That's the S &P 500 equal weighted ETF. Again, this one continuing to move into high ground here, flirting with that 200 level ed.

4:42We can also just look at QEW quickly. That's the NASDAQ 100. A gain here of about a tenth of a percent. But we can see tech not really doing as well, reversing again off these highs and still below the 50-day line. Yeah. And could we switch over to QQQE? Because that one actually is a better representation. We just realized recently about how about that. I should have known earlier. That rose. I mean, that's close to record highs. So that's still doing better than some of those mega caps, some of those names. I just was disappointing. With that one, we'd like to see the NASDAQ more in that position, get up toward those highs.

5:23But yeah, just sort of some weakness. It's more underlying. there's definitely divergence within tech and within the market. All right. How about we look at some of the bank ETFs? As you mentioned, we have a Goldman Sachs earnings out today. KBWB, that's the Invesco bank ETF, was up 1.6 percent. Nice move here above the 21-day line. We can also just take a look at XLF. That's the financial select spider ETF, a gain of about four-tenths of a percent today, again, continuing to move upward after a bounce above the 50-day line yesterday. So yeah, thoughts here. Yeah, the banks are doing better because obviously there's a few names that did well, especially Goldman.

6:08Some of those other names like credit cards, you know, those are continuing to struggle or have issues there. So that's why XLF wasn't, you know, faded a lot more, whereas Goldman and some of the big banks, they held their gains. I mean, there wasn't any, they just held it. So this was definitely an area of strength. All right. Well, we talked about chips with Taiwan Semi, but we can take a look at SMH. Again, moving into high ground here, peaked above this 400 level, but again, finishing off highs. It's still a nice gain of 2.1 % today. Yeah, they're definitely faded off highs, but it's hard to get too upset about a 2.1 % gain.

6:45So the market pulled it down, but it was still a strong gain. Chips are definitely one of the strongest parts of tech. And we can take a look at IGV because when we talk about software, not one of the strongest areas right now, continuing to lag down 1.3 % here and falling below the 100 price level. Really ugly week, really ugly last few months. It just hasn't been good at all. So this was one of the areas of weakness, one of the reasons why the market couldn't hold. How about we just round this out with a look at ARKK, just get a sense of where some of these growth speculative names are going.

7:24This went down 1.6 % today, but still holding above the key moving averages. Still above the moving averages. A lot of crypto plays were weak today. I mean, there were some things going on, stalled legislation, and ARKK owns a fair amount of crypto names. And there's some other things that faded off highs, but I think that was the big weakness for ARKK. Today we helped a coffee shop get an insurance quote simply and easily and made sure a floral delivery van was able to make someone's day. We're the Hartford with decades of experience insuring millions of unique small businesses. When it comes to your small business insurance, one size absolutely does not fit all.

8:11Get a quote or find an agent today at thehartford.com slash smallbusiness. All right. Well, let's go ahead and look at some individual stocks. You mentioned AMD, a gain here of 1.9%. But again, we can see those gains fading, closing at the lower part of the trading range. But a nice follow-up day, Ed, after breaking back above the 50-day line yesterday. Yeah, this is a difference where you look between daily and weekly. on a daily, this was disappointing because it jumped up. Like, it was up really strongly. It was clearly above the 50-day line. It's still clearly above the 50-day line, but it was the size move of there.

8:49Got above the short-term highs, which I think you could have used as an early entry into this. So a lot of great things, but then it came off. So that was disappointing because some people bought that, and that day could be down 3 % or 4%. On a weekly, it looks a lot better because it's been a strong week. Like it's in the upper, I don't know, 20, 25 % of the, 73%. So it's pretty high in the range, 12 % gain. So you look at that and go, that's a good week. I mean, yeah, you'd like to be at highs, but you, so a little different perspective there. I think that if it gets back above the short-term highs, you know, then it could be buyable.

9:27It is disappointing to see today's move, but it really has been a strong week for this name. And Taiwan Semi makes AMD chips, which is a big reason why AMD and a lot of these names were up. So we're looking at a close zone above around the 234 level as a potentially actionable area? Yeah, I think that would be probably where you'd want to see that, you know, it'd probably be an early entry for that name. All right. How about we hop on over to DUI? That's DICOM Industries. countries, a gain of 3.3 % today, Ed. And again, another one kind of moving above some of these short-term levels here around the 366 level.

10:04Yeah. So it didn't quite close above that, though. So it wasn't that—it is a flat base on a weekly chart. So that is a traditional buy point. You can see that it's, again, strong week. So you can't—a relative strength line at a new high, at least some point today. I think it may have closed off of that. So you could have bought, you know, so that's a real positive, tight action in there in the prior weeks. If you go back to a daily, you know, there were some short-term levels that it's been clearing this week. Just not right there, but just the last couple of weeks, it sort of got above that area.

10:40So I think people could have used that as an early entry, and it's still above that. So again, from the perspective of a weekly, this has been a strong move, and it did hold on to most of its gains. It just didn't quite close in the buy zone. Pretty solid numbers here. This one of these things is getting more into AI infrastructure. So that's been a booming area. This was a stock of the day earlier in the week. AMD was our stock of the day today. DICOM was, I believe, yesterday. And then our third stock was our stock of the day on Monday. Before I forget. Yeah, let's head over there to Prim. That's Primora Services.

11:16A gain of 7 % today, Ed. It was flirting with this 138.52 buy point, but a nice move today, just clear out of the buy zone. Yeah, and there were opportunities. It didn't just jump up immediately. There were opportunities to get into this. This one does builds and maintains power plants, refineries, and some of the things in the power plant area. And some of those things is more like definitely AI adjacent, but refiners are doing pretty well, too, right now. So this is just acting well here. accelerating revenue growth the last few quarters. Earnings growth has slowed, but to 54%. It's hard to get too upset about that.

11:55So just a strong name here in the heavy construction field, which has been kind of one of these AI winners for a while now. All right, Ed. Well, that wraps it up today. Thank you so much for your insights today. We appreciate it. All right. Well, again, that's it for this edition of Stock Market Today. If you want more market analysis, be sure to tune in tomorrow morning, starting with IBD Live. You can head on over to investors.com slash IBD Live for all the details there. I'm pretty sure tomorrow's special guest is Dan Fitzpatrick. So it should be a great show. And thank you all so much for watching.

12:36And we'll see you right back here after the close.

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