Stocks Bounce, Hit Resistance; ASML, BrightSpring Health, Ralph Lauren In Focus

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0:40Ed Carson:good afternoon everyone and welcome to stock market today for wednesday february 18th my name is ken shreve and on today's show we're going to talk about sort of a yo-yo session for the stock market nasdaq composite was up as much as 1.4 percent during the final hour of trading that gain did fade all the way down to about 0.4%, but a little bit of rally into the close. Had some stronger than expected economic data before the open. A big gain for the Russell 2000 did fade. We'll get into all of that in just a little moment, but let's bring on our news editor, Ed Carson, who has got three stocks to watch.

1:20Ed Carson:Good afternoon, Ed.

1:21Ken Shreve:Good afternoon. I want to take a look at ChipGear Giant ASML, BrightSpring Health, and Ralph Lauren.

1:28Ed Carson:All right. Very good. We'll take a look at those three stocks in just a second. But let me go ahead and pull up a chart of the NASDAQ composite. And it was definitely a yo-yo session for stocks here because that was some pretty good selling that we saw in the NASDAQ composite during the final hour of trading. You see the NASDAQ did close off its highs late in the session here. We'll get into that in just a little bit here, but it did manage a gain of eight-tenths of a percent here. Take a look at the S &P 500, which also managed a decent gain today, up six-tenths of a percent. Real story was the Russell 2000.

2:12Ed Carson:Russell 2000 today was up one and a half percent. That gain did fade, looks like, all the way down to about a half a percent, And the Dow Jones Industrial Average did lag today, closed with a gain of about four-tenths of a percent. We did have positive breadth on the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ today, less than two to one positive. But, yeah, NASDAQ today, we did have better-than-expected economic data before the open. Add durable goods orders for December, much better than expected. Ex-transportation, better than expected. Housing starts were pretty good. And then the Fed minutes came out at 2 p.m.

2:55Ed Carson:Eastern time. We know the Fed is divided. Not much new in the Fed minutes. That didn't really move the market much either. But all in all, not too bad a day.

3:07Ken Shreve:Yeah. I mean, we extended the bounce from yesterday's lows. So that's nice. I mean, so it wasn't just a blip. Because yesterday we barely rose. But now it looks a little more meaningful. So this could be day two of a rally attempt. On the other hand, we did hit resistance. I mean, I just want to be clear, the S &P 500 hit resistance at the 50-day line. We're still, the NASDAQ's well below that level. The S &P is below, still below that. So we need to get above that and decisively. And I think that's something David Ryan's been bringing up. And this is just endemic of a sideways market. We have a couple of days up or three days up, sometimes five days up.

3:40Ken Shreve:But then we roll over. So sometimes there's an upward bias with the S &P or the Russell especially or a downward bias like the NASDAQ. But ultimately, we're sort of going sideways. And that just, if you buy on strength, if you buy on the second or third or fourth up day, there's a good chance you might be in trouble a couple of days later. I mean, some stocks work, but others do not. And it's just a trickier environment when you have a broad uptrend. It just makes it so much easier. The vast majority of stocks go up, especially a lot of the leading stocks. So it's still tricky. I mean, it's just a tricky environment to be playing with new positions.

4:13Yeah.

4:14Ed Carson:Well, we've talked about, we've seen some higher volume declines in the market. We've seen it in the S &P 500. And this was a heavy volume drop through the 50-day moving average right here. And then you mentioned the S &P kind of bumping up into some resistance. It's the 50-day moving average that it's running up against. It's basically converged with the 10-day and the 21-day moving averages. So the S &P is kind of running up into three different former support levels here. So we'll see if it's going to be able to break through that. Really, it's the NASDAQ that is, you know, it's further off highs than the S &P 500, and it's further below its 50-day.

4:56Ed Carson:This index as well is sort of suffering from more distribution than the S &P 500. That was a break a little further back than the S &P 500. It rallied up to the 50-day line several days ago. So it could try to do it again, but definitely could see some resistance as well. UWM, the Russell 2000, this was the index that was up 1.5 % at one point today. It really didn't bounce back as much as the NASDAQ did late in the session. It was up 1.5%, only ended higher by about 0.4%. It's not dealing with resistance levels like the S &P 500 and NASDAQ. It's still above its short-term moving averages, but still closed off highs.

5:43Ed Carson:So we'll see where this takes us. But economic data was pretty good this morning. Durable goods, housing starts, and again, not much from the Fed today. We know it's a divided Fed market. Still thinking that first rate cut is going to come maybe in June, maybe in July. but Fed kind of on the back burner for now.

6:09Ken Shreve:Yeah, and maybe the next Fed rate cut might come when Powell is no longer chief. I mean, it's still months away. But yeah, I mean, look, if we keep on rising, then we'll look at the past day and a half and say, yeah, this is great. And if we don't, we'll say, oh, we hit resistance today. I mean, it's like, it's everything. It's just like, in this kind of sideways market, it's hard to know what any particular day means, really. Right, right, right.

6:36Ed Carson:Talking about the strength in aerospace and defense stocks, ITA had another good day today. That was up nine-tenths of a percent. And then another good day for chip stocks. Big news from NVIDIA late Tuesday. What was the deal? This is an expanded AI chip partnership with Meta platforms. So I know the VanEck Semiconductor Index had a good day, up 1.2%. NVIDIA was up nicely early on the news, and it closed near lows, but still up 1.6%. What was the basic news between NVIDIA and Meta? I know NVIDIA has been supplying GPUs to Meta for quite some time, but this is an expanded partnership.

7:29Ken Shreve:An expanded partnership, a lot of GPUs and some CPUs. use. So that's, you know, it just, if you're worried about NVIDIA getting crowded out a little bit by AMD and Broadcom, this allays those fears a little bit. I mean, obviously those are still out there. Meta is doing stuff with both companies and all that. So it's not like they're out either, but yeah, AMD was a loser today, but we saw a lot of, a lot of, you know, chip gear and memory names. So, so, so chips in general, we're doing well today overall. And as you say, aerospace, base. One of the things with software is trying to bounce. It's trying to bounce.

8:03Ken Shreve:And like IGV, it's got a long way to go. That's one reason why the NASDAQ got to bounce. It has so much repair work to do. There's so many things that could hit it. You know, it's not, you know, it's, this could easily just be a sideways action and then we cliff off again. Or maybe we realize which software makers may have more resistance to AI disruption than others.

8:26Ed Carson:I Yeah, yeah. I saw Shopify was the best gainer in the NASDAQ 100 today. And, you know, it was up 7%, but a stock that has certainly suffered a lot of technical damage in recent weeks.

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9:12All right.

9:13Ed Carson:Well, let's take a look at a top performing name in the chip equipment group today, ASML. This is a Dutch manufacturer of lithography systems. Pretty good close for ASML, 3.5%.

9:33Ken Shreve:Yeah. What do you see here, Ed? Nice action. It bounced off the 21-day line, extended that. It sort of cleared the bulk of this short consolidation, so you could probably use that. And on a weekly chart, this was a three-weeks tight, I believe, if not more so. So that was a three weeks tight in there, I believe. Yeah. So it got above the bulk of that. I mean, you could have used that as a position more of maybe as an add-on position because it is a short, you know, for these three weeks tights are often more of an add-on unless they're really close to the base. The RS line is at a new high. This is going well.

10:08Ken Shreve:I mean, the chip equipment is, look, that group has gone up to number three and you can see just the massive move this has made. It was around, it was below 600 in April and now it's more than doubled in that time. And a lot of that gain has just come just in 2026. Honestly, it's gone up about 400, 450 points in 2026 alone. So there were a lot of other names in this group doing well, but this one had the three weeks tight and acting very well.

10:34Ed Carson:Absolutely. And I would actually call, I mean, you could say there was a breakout from a big, big base right here. You could also call this week a breakout week as well. So anytime a stock shows strength and support after a breakout, you have that right here where it just traded tightly, three weeks tight after that breakout. So ASML, definitely a leader in the chip equipment group. All right, another name we looked at this morning on IBD Live. Let's take a look at BTSG, Bright Spring Health Services in the Outpatient Home Care Group. made a nice move over the 40 level. Volume picked up the pace from yesterday.

11:18Ed Carson:Bright Spring Health Services. What do you see here?

11:21Ken Shreve:Bounce from the 50-day, 10-week line. So you could have used that. I think you could sort of treat this whole last several weeks as sort of a de facto flat base. I mean, we didn't close about the left-hand side. So you could use 4103 or 4126 as a buy point. It's above one of them. It's not above the other. It's also got the 50-day line. So it's actionable. if you were going to do it you probably want to get onto it soon because earnings are next week so there's not a lot of time this was our stock of the day but it's just that investors may have a decision to make this one could easily consolidate right here for the next week and look fine but just not provide much of a for new buyers wouldn't provide much cushion but acting very well look at that tremendous earnings growth uh you know i've sort of turned profitable in 2024, ramped up this last year, should be solid in 2026.

12:09Ken Shreve:So a lot to like about this name. And RS line also at a new high. So just a lot of strong fundamentals and technicals here.

12:18Ed Carson:I'd like to see that RS line poking into new high ground when the stock is doing the same. And you mentioned that big, big earnings growth in recent quarters. This is what fuels the stock's price performance. You also have that top line growth right along with the earnings growth as well. Earnings coming up in nine calendar days for Bright Spring. So one to keep an eye on. And it has been a huge performer since this breakout from a cup with handle base. And even though pattern recognition is not recognizing a base here, I kind of agree with you, Ed. This almost This looks like a flat base, and I think you could use this 4103 as a legitimate entry here.

13:03Ed Carson:Totally agree with that. All right, well, let's take a look at ticker RL. And we're not going to call it Ralph Lauren. We call it Ralph Lauren, ticker RL, NYSE listed. And this is a nice little consolidation here in a stock that is trying to break out over the 380 level with a relative strength line in new high ground. And the stock is not quite there yet. Pretty bullish.

13:33Ken Shreve:Pretty bullish. And look, the earnings, you know, look terrible at first, but it closed pretty strong. So I'd say that's a support day. I mean, ultimately, it closed at the top of the range on that one day. And it's just been rising, rising, rising. Several of those days in higher volume. Not today, but there has been a lot of higher volume. So that's encouraging. Solid earnings growth from this name, double-digit sales growth in the recent quarters. This is going well. I mean, it's one of these kind of somewhat upscale apparel, so they probably can push on the tariffs a little bit more. Some of the higher-end apparel names have been able to do that.

14:09Ken Shreve:They can pass on those costs a little easier. And yeah, so this is doing well. It briefly got above the 380 buy point, but you could argue there's a downtrend line or just getting above the 377.07. So either a shallow downtrend from the top of the base at 380 or just use 377. Either way, it's above, it's close to the 50-day line. I think people could have done that. At this point, you might say, well, I'm going to wait for it to get above 380 from this point. But yeah, just again, strong fundamentals and technicals. And this is one that's probably not going to be AI disrupted. So I think that people do need to think about how their portfolio, because it can be affected positively or negatively by AI and the resulting stock action.

14:54Ken Shreve:Make sure you have some diversity. And this is not a slow, pokey stock. It's a solid performer.

15:01Ed Carson:Absolutely. Definitely a stock that has trended well in the past. You can see that right here. And here is Ralph Lauren, possibly ready to get moving again. And a composite rating of 97 alerts you to a stock that has shown excellent relative strength in its industry group, along with top fundamentals as well. Well, I know we've got a bunch of top-rated gold stocks reporting after the close today. But outside of the gold sector, I know we've got other earnings reports to watch after the close. I know we're going to look in the restaurant group. Where are we looking in the restaurant group?

15:47Ken Shreve:Yeah, let's Cheesecake Factory. And that one.

15:49Ed Carson:We all like to eat at Cheesecake Factory, I know.

15:53Ken Shreve:I know. And it's been a long time. But I remember the nice gigantic menus and big portions. This stock missed on earnings, it looks like. So this one right now is coming down. And we'll see how that goes. But that may fall back below the buy point a little bit. Obviously, it'll be an interesting reaction there, how that goes. Maybe there are special factors so people will be okay with it. Carvana, I don't know what happened here. On some metrics, they beat. On some, they may have missed. But Carvana, people are not happy with this stock after hours. It's obviously been on a downtrend. It was trying to battle back a little bit.

16:28Ken Shreve:But oh, wow. Yeah, that is going to be a big drop. Looks like it'll fall back to the lowest level since maybe early May. You know, who knows where this goes, but just... At least right now, that is going to be below this 285, 285 low right here.

16:44Ed Carson:This is an extended trading, so we don't know if that's going to hold, but trading at 279, 280 in after hours.

16:53Ken Shreve:Yeah, so I don't know. I haven't not really seen the gold names move. I mean, they may not move that much. They move more on gold prices. So I'm not sure if the earnings are out on any of them. I mean, there's so many things going on. There's TPL is one name that's interesting to look at. I don't know how much is moving Texas Pacific land. This is an oil play, but it's really become more of a data center play, at least in the future. And this one, I think the earnings were sort of in line. And this is one of the top performers in the S &P 500 this year, actually. So I wanted to bring this one up just down a little bit right now, but has had pretty good numbers.

17:31Ed Carson:Very good. Yeah, a lot of the gold names tend to be not too liquid in extended trading. But names that we're following is Alamos Gold, AGI. They're going to be reporting after the close today. Really fast, fast growing gold, gold stock, top rated name in our database. Also, we'll be watching for earnings from Core Mining, CDE. That one looks to be trading a little higher. But again, some of these names just are not very liquid. There's Roll Gold.