S&P 500 Holds Key Support; Twilio, Universal Health, Palantir In Focus

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0:25good afternoon everyone and welcome to stock market today for tuesday december 16th it's alexis garcia here and mixed messages were the big theme out there stocks were mixed in today's trading tape. And we also got some mixed jobs data. The delayed November jobs report showed an uptick in jobs added last month, but the unemployment rate jumped to its highest level since 2021. So what does it all mean? Well, hopefully Ed Carson, who is joining me today, can answer that. That's our IBD news editor. Yeah, Ed, what's going on? What's on tap today? Yeah, I want to take a look at three stocks, Twilio, Universal Health, and Palantir.

1:11All right, well, we'll get to that. But let's check in on the major indexes. The S &P 500 finishing the day down about two-tenths of a percent. The Dow down six-tenths of a percent. The NASDAQ up two-tenths of a percent. And small caps down two-tenths of a percent. So I'm going to get our trusty charts going here. But talk to me about today's trading action. We had some selling yesterday, a little bit more mixed today. S &P 500 looking to hold this 50-day line. Yeah, the NASDAQ tried to get above that. Yeah, the NASDAQ tried to get above it, almost did. I mean, it did intraday briefly. The S &P held it.

1:51I mean, it's one of those things, look, if you want to be glass half full, you can say, oh, look, you know, the NASDAQ's putting up a fight. The S &P held support, but the S &P did go below its 21-day line. I mean, just fractionally. We're in one of those situations where all the major indexes with a good day or two could be at record highs. All the major indexes could be below their 50-day lines. The NASDAQ already is still, despite today's gain. But they could all be below their 50-day lines with one or two bad days. So we're in flux. We're in flux. I mean, there were certain things that worked.

2:22Tesla worked. Some AI stocks found support. But the AI stocks have been just terrible. Tesla was clearly – that's one big reason why the NASDAQ rose, because of Tesla. And then a few other mega caps had marginal gains. They weren't doing much, but they were up. So that, I think, was a factor. And we'll look at other things. But, you know, so that, so there were certain things that worked out, but the breadth was weak, it looked like. You know, that more advancers, you know, there are fewer advancers than decliners today. So, you know, not great, not terrible either. So it's hard to make too much of it.

2:55RSP fell more. Something beyond, you know. So some mega caps did a little better, but health insurers were weak today. You know, there was energy stocks were weak today because crude oil, you know, fell to its lowest level, as you said, five years, four years. And natural gas has been plunging lately. So a lot of those names falling. But again, RRSP, all it's just, you know, it's really close down to its 10-day line. So that one looks pretty good all in all. They didn't have a good day, but it's clearly that's fine. And since we're on market breadth here, let's take a look at QQEW. And again, this one down slightly today, but bounced off the 50-day line.

3:34Looks a lot like the S &P, but yeah, it fell. So it lagged the NASDAQ, but it's above the 50-day line. I mean, it's a glass half full, but it's a very tiny glass. It's either half full or very half empty. Either way, it's not – nobody should look back and say, this was the day. I mean, it wasn't, you know, for good or ill, this was, it's just sort of marking time right here. And it seems like we're just really trying to thread the needle here in terms of looking at signals of which direction the market wants to go. It doesn't seem to really have a clear picture yet. I know you wanted to also take a look at IBIT.

4:11That's the Bitcoin ETF. My charts here are lagging a little bit. It looks poor. It bounced today. It's really down quite a bit. It's an inside day. So this was, you know, you would like to see this go up just as it's a risk on type of situation. But you can see you would need a lot for this to start looking better. And a lot of stocks that are related to crypto. And this is a lot, a lot of AI plays. They need a lot of work. Yeah, we're sort of in flux. And so it's a situation where if you have stocks that are working fine, you know, hold them. But it's also because divided markets can easily slide either way.

4:45You know, it's a little bit like Batman's two-faced. I mean, OK, the person might be acting nice right now, but at any moment it could turn evil or vice versa. That's sort of how divided markets are. You just don't know. It's just not very stable. So definitely some things are working. Other things are not. If you're going to play this market, be very quick to get out if things don't work because, you know, we've seen some pretty heavy losses. I think the high beta names in the AI space, especially most of them are damaged. But even those that don't, you know, they're pretty risky. I mean, there can be some big losses.

5:19So probably just sort of watching and waiting, taking action on individual stocks, especially, you know, if they go, you know, but not doing a whole lot quite now. No, and that risk management and knowing your stop loss rule is so important right now, especially we've seen so many breakouts fail recently. But, you know, again, any other further thoughts on the market before we jump over to individual stocks? And I'll just say on the judge report, yeah, it was mixed. It's hard to know. Payrolls were better than expected, but there's a lot of stuff going on with the shutdown. Fed Chief Powell said, I don't really trust those payroll numbers on the last week.

5:55The jobless rate rose quite a bit, well, I mean, relatively. But I don't think it's really moved the Fed expectations that much. It's got a long way to go, probably before the next, not a long way, but it's probably not going going to do much next time unless the market, unless the economy really sours. I mean, really deteriorates after these three cuts. But so I think that, you know, we're going to want to see some more data. This is like, finally, the next month will be more regular. Yeah, we got this. But this, I think the report came right with the shutdown was ending for making it more complicated.

6:27So we'll just have to see how we go from here. All right. Well, we'll just wait and see. The thing about AI for business, it may not automatically fit the way your business works. At IBM, we've seen this firsthand. But by embedding AI across HR, IT, and procurement processes, we've reduced costs by millions, slash repetitive tasks, and freed thousands of hours for strategic work. Now we're helping companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business, IBM. Let's go ahead and take a look at Twilio. this was up 2.7 % today, a peak above a 138.19 buy point.

7:13Yeah, so it closed just below there, but you can sort of see a pseudo handle. It wasn't like it paused for a few days. It wasn't long enough to be there, but you could have used that as an early entry. That's also, if you look at this sort of as a longer base here, it's back above the 135. That early entry sort of lines up with that prior one. And so it's not like there was a ton of, you've only got one or hardly anybody's disappointed unless you bought right at 138.19 on that one day. Most people in the last year or so are happy. So this has been showing relative strength. It had that gap up on earnings.

7:46It sort of gave up a lot of those gains, but it came up and formed a new base out of that. So most of that trading was on light volume. Between those, today was the heaviest volume since that sort of gap up that we had. So, yeah, it was a positive sign here. You know, it's not amazing growth, but the relative revenue growth has been slowly picking up last few quarters. So, yeah, a lot of things that were acting well here. All right. Ticker UHS, that's Universal Health. This went down about six tenths of a percent today, Ed, and again, has been really flirting with that 50-day line. Yeah, and that's the thing.

8:23It's the first pullback since a pretty big run that it had. So this is sort of the first time, the first or second time that you hit the 50-day or 10-week line after a run is a chance that you can maybe add shares if you get that rebound. I mean, usually we look to see some strength. So we'd like to see a nice, strong bounce off the 50-day line, 10-week line, maybe get above the 21-day line, breaking this trend line. And, you know, you can sort of see this as maybe this action is sort of the beginning of what could be a handle to a huge base. You know, on the weekly, you can sort of see how we have this huge base going on back to here.

9:00I mean, that's sort of what was already there, but that's the top there. There's still uncertainty about how health care subsidies might be coming in there. But that hit health insurers today, but didn't seem to affect UHS. But that's just something to be aware of. I'm not well-versed enough about how that might affect, for good or ill, hospitals. But that's something that is out there, a big policy change that seems to be coming down the pike. But, yeah, this has been acting well. Nice, steady grower. Again, we're looking for things. We're going to look at a tech name, but it's nice to look at some, you know, want to have at least one name that's not in tech, since a lot of the tech names have been struggling.

9:41All right. Well, speaking of tech, let's look at Palantir. I'll switch back to the daily here. Palantir up 2.5 percent today. Technically back in this buy zone, back from this 185, 75 buy point, Ed, but rebounding off the 50-day line this week. Yeah, and that old buy point probably isn't valid, but it's still nice to know if you're getting above that because a lot of people did buy around there. So it's getting back to that level. It is notable that it's pausing there. So it sort of looks a little relevant that way. If there's one more day, this could be a handle right there in this new consolidation because 207.52 is a consolidation on a weekly chart.

10:23It looks like it should be long enough. Maybe it just needs another day or two. I didn't do the math. It would need 30 sessions on a daily, but it's definitely long enough on a weekly. But if it paused one more day, it could have a handle there. But still, if you go back to a daily, the recent highs would be the place where you could enter. So it's just below there. And I understand if somebody wanted to sneak in today because it sort of went in there near the highs, it was added to swing trader. It's, again, just one of those situations that if the market goes south, this will probably go down.

10:52You can just look and see how Palantir fell. I mean, I would also note is that Palantir fell in some volume. Most of its bounce had been on light volume. There was the strong day last week that was back to average volume. So, I mean, I'm bringing it up. I think it's worth looking at. So, I don't want to be – it's not like I dislike this chart, but it is something to note that it didn't show a lot of power there when it came back for the most part. So, you'd like to see this move out in volume. You know, if you didn't put a lot of effort, you know, power ahead of time, you definitely need to see it on, I think, the move.

11:29But this one, again, just continues to show strength where a lot of other A &I names continue to fall or are now 10, 15, 20 percent below their 50-day lines. This one's holding the 50-day line, you know, right on the cusp of a buy point. So looking good. All right. Yeah. And we'll be looking at that recent high of 190.39, Ed. Well, thank you so much for your insights today. And that wraps it up for this episode of Stock Market Today. If you want more market analysis, be sure to tune in tomorrow to IBD Live. You can head on over to investors.com slash IBD Live for all the details there. And thank you so much for watching.

12:12We'll see you right back here tomorrow after the close.

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