S&P 500 Hits High Despite Shutdown, Jobs Data; Vertiv, Snowflake, Reddit In Focus

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0:25Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Stock Market Today for Wednesday, October 1st, the first trading day of the fourth quarter. On today's show, we'll talk about another up session for the market. It looks like we got all-time closing high for the S &P 500 and the Dow Jones. NASDAQ stopped just short, although the NASDAQ 100, I think, got an all-time closing high as well. So we'll get into all of that in just a moment. Let me bring on my good friend and colleague, Ed Carson, who's got three stocks to watch. Good afternoon, Ed. Good afternoon. I want to take a look at Vertiv, Snowflake, and Reddit.

1:02Well, I do want to say, yeah, the S &P 500 got to record highs, you know, today, all-time highs. And the Dow and the S &P did hit record levels here.

1:28So, just wanted to show that. So, yeah, so the S &P hit a record high. It was a modest day, but Dow was up slightly. New record close, 0.1 % or so, I think, by the close. NASDAQ, 0.3%, 0.4%, and IWM for the Russell 2000 was up slightly. Not quite at highs, but not very far either. Okay. And we did get some economic data before the open that the market didn't seem to mine the ADP private payrolls. A big miss, but that might have been skewed from some downward revisions from the jobs data in prior months today. Is that generally right? Because it was a big miss on the ADP this morning. It was a big miss, but it was a decline this month and the prior month was revised for decline.

2:19It was not a good report. I mean, anybody is like, so that is not a good sign. I mean, clearly like AI is one of the reasons why we're still get this economy growing, but that was down. I think the market didn't mind that is because treasury yields fell and Fed rate cut odds rose. So that was like that because there were starting to becoming more and more concerns that, well, why do we need to cut rates? The economy, we've been getting all this strong economic data. What exactly are we doing here cutting rates if we have relatively inflated, you know, elevated inflation and strong economic growth?

2:54So this puts Fed more rate cuts more firmly in play. Market also didn't seem to care about the government shutdown, which isn't a surprise. Day one doesn't really doesn't get doesn't really unnerve markets anymore. This just sort of happens every few years. Well, you mentioned that 10-year Treasury yield. It was lower throughout the day, again, because of that weak economic data. You mentioned that chances for more rate cuts before the end of the year increased a little bit. But it was a nice move off that 4 % level for the 10-year yield. It's been under pressure in recent days, but, yeah, just under a little bit of pressure today.

3:35Yeah. All right. Advancing stocks declining, advances versus decliners on both exchanges. Advancers had a slight edge, less than 2 to 1 positive on both exchanges. Let's take a look at that equal weighted RSP, which is equal weighted S &P 500. You can see sitting up near highs. We'll see if it can break out with conviction over this 190 level. But this chart here, Ed, indicative of still pretty decent breadth in the market. Yeah, just a few days ago when the market was pulling back, this was sort of getting to be a concern. But it held that level. The other indexes held their 21-day lines. And, you know, we're bouncing right back to high.

4:18So, yeah, we're definitely looking strong and looking pretty broad, too. Okay. And then QQEW, equal weighted NASDAQ 100. I mentioned the NASDAQ 100 did hit a mark an all-time closing high. You mentioned the strength in QQEW Monday, Ed, when it hit an all-time high. It showed more strength again today. Yeah. So this is looking quite strong right now. And again, just a few weeks ago, it was really looking like a laggard. Now, all of a sudden, now it's almost leading here. So, you know, nice turnaround for this ETF. All right. Checking in on leading growth stocks today. Fusion powers the sun and stars.

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5:49Yeah, there's definitely a mixed bag on growth stocks. I mean, there were some solid performers and some notable losers. But yeah, this is, again, after a pretty solid pullback, we're bouncing back pretty nicely overall. Yeah, no doubt about it. Take a look at gold, which continues to outperform GLD. This is the spider gold shares, which basically tries to mirror the price of gold. Been on a really, really strong uptrend here, probably a little bit extended, but you can definitely tell where the money is still flowing in this market. Yeah, it looks really, really strong. It's sort of surprising how well gold and growth have done together, but that trend has definitely worked in 2025.

6:34Seeing some money move into the medical sector, into healthcare stocks. Let's take a look at an ETF, PPH. This is the Van Ecke Pharmaceutical ETF. Wow, look at that two-day move. Yeah, and it looks, it's reflecting of the Trump tariffs, and it's more a relief rally. It's not that the drug makers are excited necessarily about the tariffs, but it seems like most of them are going to be largely shielded from those tariffs. So not really that concerned. And so that has been weighing on drug makers to some extent in recent months. And so big, big relief rally the past couple of days. Very good. All right, well, let's take a look at a pretty significant breakout today.

7:16Still seeing a lot of setups out there, stocks building bases. We had Vertiv on the leaderboard watch list for a period of time as it set up, and we moved it from the watch list to the leader's list in the model portfolio today on this beautiful breakout from a cup with handle base. Yeah, and what's nice about this cup with handle, it's almost like a handle to this larger base. Sometimes you'll see these big, ugly bases. This one really fell sharply. And, you know, there were some opportunities, but sometimes, you know, you get another opportunity when there's a tighter base that's right next to or just above.

7:53This one's right next to the top of the base. Big move here. It is still volatile within there. There's some big breaks. There's a steep, steep handle. There was an opportunity. It was a nice job by leaderboard to grab this while it was moving up. it's now extended. It's pretty far up from the 50-day line. This one might have a lot of momentum, but you could also see it come back. But yeah, definitely some AI plays were doing well today. Vertiv, of course, a provider of cooling solutions to data centers, which run quite hot. So a lot of these cooling companies are doing very well. So Vertiv, nice breakout today.

8:33Just a little past that blue shaded box. That means it's past the 5 % buy zone. See if it can follow through tomorrow. And if it doesn't follow through, we'll look to see if it can hold on to today's gains pretty well. Let's move on and talk to data analytics firm Snowflake, S-N-O-W. That's an easy ticker to remember. Had a huge earnings move several weeks ago. Stock came down, tested the 21-day line. And it looks like it's trying to break out of a little downtrend here. Trying to break out of a little downtrend. There's still, you could argue, well, maybe you could do a little bit more. You know, so that would be an opportunity if you didn't pick anything up today.

9:15Just get above those short-term highs. Maybe in a week and a half, we'll have a base that starts with this earnings gap up. But, you know, you can see, especially on a weekly, there's sort of a draw the line kind of situation where where's the bulk of the base? It's clearly right around that level, just around, like, say, just above 230, so like 232. So that would be an opportunity there, showing some strength here, showing some pickup and growth and solid, consistent revenue grower. So, yeah, definitely. And again, another AI play that we're showing strength today. No doubt about it. Yep, Snowflake looking good here.

9:57The news wasn't all good today. We mentioned growth stocks kind of being a mixed bag. Reddit, tough day for Reddit. Had that nice earnings report that saw the stock gap up close to the 200 level. Looked like it might come down and test the 50-day moving average, but the stock was under a lot of pressure today. Yeah, and there's some chatter, concerns that maybe that they can't, that it's not generating site traffic from, you know, with chatbots like ChatGBT. you know, which is a, it is an issue for a lot of, you know, social sites, just in general, how are you going to get that traffic? I think it's especially poignant for Reddit because Reddit had rallied, yes, on the earnings, but part of the reason why it's had such a, such a strong gains and there's such a strong valuation is, is some of the data sharing deals it's done with, with, with various AI, you know, tools.

10:51So if AI becomes a negative for them, That really changes the dynamic. And I just think here is like there were sell signals. You didn't necessarily need to sell all the way, but there was a reversal here. And by the time it got through the 21-day line, that was maybe you would have wanted to take some off. Again, it does depend on your conviction. It does depend on your style. Obviously, if you bought here, you would have wanted to get out of that area. But now it's like there was that. And by this time, decisive break of the 50-day line, pretty clear-cut sell signal here. Could it bounce back?

11:24Sure. But you can also just think, have to remember, just always keep in mind these growth stocks. You look at this. Everybody looks at this. But you also have to look at things like this. If this one goes on a, obviously, that would be the market too. But if the market goes on a downtrend, could this go from 282 to 80? Yes, it could. It very well could. We basically did that, you know, just a few months ago. So you have to be taking tools, you know, you have to realize that, you know, have rules, you know, the rules are an art, but have some way to be able to scale out a position when the sell signal starts showing up.

12:03Yeah, and we started, like you mentioned, we started to see some heavy volume selling start to crop up in the stock about two weeks ago and culminated today with another very, very heavy volume drop. So signs that some big investors have been selling shares recently. So you want to be careful trying to catch a stock like Reddit on sale. Like you said, it could firm up, but when you get a decline like this, it probably means the stock is ready to consolidate, and we'll see if it can get back above its 50-day moving average and approach some of those recent highs. But just got to be patient. If we go to the weekly chart for Reddit, Ed, we do see a pretty outstanding record of top-line growth in our fundamental block on the bottom left.

12:54very, very big revenue growth, and a company just turned profitable. So there's a lot to like here, but you have to mesh fundamentals with technicals, and that bad break of the 10-week line here on the weekly chart kind of points to a broken stock right now. So we'll see if buyers eventually come back in. All right, well, that'll do it for today. And, Ed, thanks for running the charts. I appreciate it. All right. Thanks for joining us, folks. I appreciate you watching every day. IBD Live is going to happen like it always does, five days a week. Tomorrow, Rachel Fox, our market trader, is going to be in the host chair.

13:42And then my colleague David Chung will be hosting Friday. We're going to be welcoming Jeffrey Hirsch from the Stock Traders Almanac. Almanac. He'll be our Friday guest. So check out investors.com slash IBD live. And tomorrow for a stock market today, it's going to be Ed and Lexi and then Mike Webster and Justin Nielsen will wrap up the end of the week. So that'll do it for today's show. Thanks very much for watching as usual. And we'll see you tomorrow.

14:20Thank you.

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