Stocks Bounce To Close Out Wild Week; Vertiv, MaxLinear, SpaceX In Focus

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0:42Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Stock Market Today for Thursday, June 18th. It is the end of the week, final trading day of the week. My name is Ken Shreve, and today I am joined by Ed Carson, our news editor. And before we talk about today's stocks to watch, well, we had a nice day of outperformance for the NASDAQ and small caps again today. We had the Dow lag by quite a bit, weighed down by a tough day for IBM. But before we get into all of that, let me bring in Ed Carson, who, as usual, has got three stocks to watch. Good afternoon, Ed. Good afternoon, Ken. We might look at a few others, but I want to take a look at Vertiv, MaxLinear, and SpaceX.

1:28Okay, sounds good. It is the end of the week, so we'll spend a little time talking about the week that was. The market is closed tomorrow for the Good Friday holiday, so let's get to talking about the market. I'm going to share my screen here and start by taking a look at the NASDAQ composite here. And like I said, it was a good day for the NASDAQ composite. Let's get a refreshed screen here. NASDAQ composite was semiconductor stocks. Again, we'll take a look at the composite here. Had a nice gain of 1.9 percent. And small caps were not far behind, Ed. They look like they were also up 1.9 percent.

2:16S &P 500, also a good day. Not up as much. S &P 500 up. about a little over 1%. Real story was the Dow. The Dow lagged by quite a bit, only up two-tenths of a percent. I'm not sure if that's the final settle. Tough day for IBM. That was a real drag. IBM was down 5 % in the blue chip index. That gapped all the way down to its 50-day moving average. Did have a nice day of outperformance by Caterpillar. in the Dow Jones and also good days for a couple of tech stocks. NVIDIA had a good day in the Dow. That was up almost 3 % finding support at its 50-day moving average. And Amazon also outperformed in the Dow as well today.

3:08So let's start by just taking a look at the NASDAQ, Ed, just another great day for the tech index. And this has just been a semiconductor-driven market. I saw the chip-making group and the chip equipment stocks once again outperforming. And this is after two straight distribution days for the NASDAQ after we had that two-day Fed meeting conclude yesterday. So mentioned on IBD Live today, this is a bit of a counterintuitive market because two distribution days in a row for the NASDAQ, and then we got a nice higher volume gain today. Yeah. I mean, on the one hand, if you look, sort of take it back really far back, the last few weeks were sort of range bound and we're right.

3:52We just traded around the middle of the range for the NASDAQ. But we've had so many big, wild days in the past three weeks. I mean, some big losses, some big reversals, ups and downs. We gapped up on Monday on news of the Iran deal. And then we promptly gave up most or all of those gains over the next two days, depending on what index you're looking at. partly because of the Fed decision, which came in, it seemed as more hawkish than maybe markets were hoping for. But then we rebounded right back. And we came right back. And, heck, we were rebounding. Really, the moment the market closed on Wednesday, we rebounded right back this morning.

4:33And, yeah, so we closed with strong gains on the NASDAQ and, I guess, maybe decent gains on the other indexes. AI and chips. You know, you say chips really led. It was also just AI in general. You know, it was really strong biotechs and some other related like medical products and testing. So it was very growth focused. So I think a lot of IBD type investors probably did pretty well this week, you know, depending. There were some losers, don't get me wrong, even among the growth space. But, you know, an interesting week. Not a week you can just sort of rest calmly with, but there were some nice growth opportunities today and buying opportunities and some nice moves.

5:13And some other stocks are actually setting up, like you mentioned, NVIDIA. That's a stock that's setting up. Yeah, yeah. One thing I noticed, the volume on the NASDAQ today was quite heavy. It is Thursday, but this is Friday. Tomorrow is the third Friday of the month, so options expiration was today. Normally not on a Thursday, but since Friday is a holiday, we did have options expire today, which did result in higher volume on the NASDAQ today. So, yeah, another good day for the NASDAQ. We do have some distribution days that we're paying attention to on the NASDAQ, but we do have to pay attention to this nice day of accumulation on the NASDAQ today and a nice retaking of that 21-day moving average today.

5:59And, again, nice day of performance for growth stocks again. For the week, NASDAQ composite, nice weekly gain here. Let's see what it was up for the week here. Weekly gain looks like up 2.4 % for the week, and that's on top of a gain of 7 tenths of a percent last week. And let's just take a look at the S &P 500 again. We'll check in on the daily gain for the S &P 500 again. That was up a little over 1 % for the day, but similar to the NASDAQ, the S &P 500. A bad break for the S &P 500 yesterday, a little bit below the 21-day moving average. It rallied as well, up 1.1 % today. Not as much volume on the NYSE today than the NASDAQ, but a decent day for the S &P 500.

6:58Pretty similar situation, Ed. S &P 500 finds itself in as the NASDAQ here. Yeah, I agree. The only difference is it, you know, both of them, again, both of them were below their 21-day line. It's just yesterday. It was not good. And the S &P, I think, really had given up all of its gain from Monday. So it was not, you know, I was like, that's not so great. What's going on here? So we did bounce back. It's just a volatile market. And I think while it's nice that the growth stocks are working, but we're talking about stocks that often right now with high average true ranges, You're having stocks on a normal day have 7%, 8%, 10%.

7:38And then you have these big whippy days. I mean, there have been some big gains in these names, and there are also some big losses. It's lucky that they're leading. And so they often actually did fairly well on Tuesday, Wednesday, all in all. But yeah, so bouncing back, we're still in this little range. It wouldn't take much for us to be back below the 21-day line and back below this week's you know, gains and wipe out this week's gains, but it really wouldn't take much to get to new highs either. So, you know, wouldn't, you know, and of course on the downside furthers, there's the 50-day line and some other things.

8:12So once again, a couple of days could really change how we look at, but the overall trend is bullish. The overall, you know, just have to be a little bit more tactical. I think, you know, not reckless. You can drive fast, but definitely be paying attention to the road. Definitely, definitely. Weekly gain for the S &P 500 at nine-tenths of a percent, and so not a bad weekly gain for the S &P 500. Take a look at the Dow Jones industrial average again today. Not a great daily gain for the Dow today. It did close near its lows. It ended a four-session win streak yesterday, managed to close above all of its moving average and gave back some gains today.

9:09Didn't see news on IBM, but it was a big, big decliner today, Ed. Also in the Dow, a noteworthy decline for J.P. Morgan. This was a stock that made a very, very big move, headed a nice breakout, I should say, for JP Morgan ahead of today's downdraft, but very, very heavy volume in JP Morgan, volume more than double average today. The stock down 2.5%, a pretty big price bar today, and volume very, very heavy. So disappointing action for breakout investors that watched this stock breakout with conviction over the 320 level here. So some pretty big sellers in JP Morgan chase today. Yeah, I mean, that I can understand.

9:57I don't know what happened with IBM, but just I don't know about so much about, but just for this week, we saw the 10-year yield come down while the two-year yield rose several basis points. So you have this narrowing in the yield spread. And yeah, JP Morgan does a heck of a lot more than just traditional banking. But still, the traditional bank is you borrow short, you lend long. And if the short end is coming up and the long end is coming down, margins are likely to be squeezed just a little bit. So you can understand why banks wouldn't have had a particularly good week, all in all. But yeah, so disappointing on that front.

10:30Still, the Dow hit a record high as recently as yesterday. As Wednesday intraday, it hit a new high. So while the NASDAQ and S &P are stuck in a range and the Dow didn't have a particularly good week, it held up a lot better. It did a lot better last week or during that whole sell-off. It never got to the 50-day line. So, you know, just sort of different things. Just sort of back and forth. Because you can see the RS line had been improving for a while just today. Well, JP Morgan, but just for, you know, but for the Dow, I mean, there had been a little bit of stretch, a mini stretch of the Dow outperforming.

11:06But that maybe that ended in the last couple of days. It was just a spectacular move in that two-year note yesterday. I saw that two-year note. Wasn't that up something like 15 or 16 basis points yesterday? Certainly at one point. It didn't end up like only up nine basis points, but the 10-year fell three. So then the yield spread narrowed by 12 basis points, which is pretty significant. And the two years more reflective of what – the 10 years more about the economy, the two years more about Fed rate policy. I mean there's other things, but – Two years more closely tied to – yeah, to the Fed – yeah, to the Fed interest rate, yeah.

11:51And then NVIDIA actually made a noteworthy move in the Dow today, too. That was one of the Dow's best percentage gainers. Still fighting at the 50-day moving average. Hasn't bounced yet. We still hold this in the leaderboard model portfolio, waiting for it to bounce off the 50-day moving average here. It's not a broken stock by any means, but it hasn't bounced yet. But good to see it reverse higher with some volume today and get some nice outperformance up almost 3 % today. Yeah, and I think if this one gets over this particular week's high, it would then be clearly above the 50-day and 21-day line.

12:26And it did close above those levels, just barely, but you can't really tell. But if it got above this week's high, like Monday's high, I think there could be an early entry there. And at the end of next week, it should have a base. And probably, at least on a daily chart, it looks like it'll have a double bottom base in that regard. And then it would be forming right on top of sort of a long, sort of, you know, not necessarily the greatest looking bases. I mean, there was that cut base within that thing, but this would be sort of a, you know, sort of a base sort of on top of a longish consolidation.

12:56Maybe, you know, even though it's not the prettiest one, it's definitely tighter than what we had been seeing. So maybe that'll be the opportunity for investors.

13:08Industrial ETF XLI. This is the industrial select sector SPDR ETF XLI. This is still in the early stages of a breakout. As we mentioned, the Dow Jones, you know, in all-time high territory, blue chips doing well in this market. And XLI is an ETF that's showing some outperformance as well here in the early stages of breaking out. So for people that want some blue chip exposure with individual stock exposure, XLI is a good way to play blue chips here. Well, I would say it is and it isn't. And the reason why is that, okay, I mean, this has a lot of aerospace names, which is fine, and definitely industrial.

13:56Like GE is doing quite well. That may be the biggest holding. But number three is GEV. And nobody, I mean, while that used to be considered old industrial, it's just turbines. But clearly, that is now. And, you know, we've seen other things. I assume Cummings is in that as well, with not necessarily as big of a portfolio. But GEV, big, big move for GEV this week. I saw a lot of energy plays. Cummings, which is a truck engine firm, about as old the economy as you can get. Well, some of them are also making generators for the AI. And that had a nice move this week, even though it paused today. So, yes, I actually wanted to bring you out of XIs because, again, the AI ecosystem is so large.

14:38A lot of those things in there, it's hard to get away from the AI ecosystem. So even your industrial ETF has got some AI power in there. Yeah, interesting. Yeah. And then healthcare. Boy, you know, everybody's talking about this, you know, the fiber optic and the chip rally. But, you know, we've seen this rally broaden out quite a bit. And biotechs have been participating for quite some time. And, you know, we actually increased our position in XBI yesterday. The XBI biotech ETF has been in the leaderboard model portfolio since August. But we took advantage of that breakout yesterday and increased the position and got a little bit of follow through today as, you know, biotechs continue to act pretty well in this market.

15:34Yeah, a lot of biotechs. And this thing also has some testing firms that – and there's some medical products that are doing well. So this is definitely an interesting area. XBI, it seemed to get a benefit from ticker QURE. Not so much because – and QURE is in XBI, but there's no real big holding in XBI. So this is fine. But QURE, it skyrocketed. And what it was is that the FDA sort of said, okay, maybe we don't – you're testing because it had skyrocketed. I rocketed several months ago, then tanked because the FDA was saying, no, no, we want more research before we can do this approval. And then they flipped course again, flipped again and said, yeah, that's probably good enough to try for approval.

16:19And that's just positive for the biotechs. I was like, oh, OK, maybe it won't take so much effort to get some approvals. So it wasn't just a cure. It was obviously probably a benefit to the ETF at the margin. But there's a lot of names that really moved on Wednesday, a lot of 4%, 5 % gainers. But XBI may be the best way to play it because a lot of these names are extended or doing this and that. Yeah, XBI looked really interesting. Yeah, and you mentioned XBI. A lot of the top holdings here are 2 % weightings, 2 % exchange weightings. You don't have holdings with 5%, 6%, 7 % weightings. Your top holdings are a bunch of 2%, 2 % weighted holdings.

17:07So it's very, very spread out among the top weighted stocks. So, yeah, so that's it. So healthcare stocks outperforming. We saw a nice breakout earlier in the week from a company called Verisite in the medical services group. That broke out earlier in the week, and it actually passed the 5 % buy zone today. So this isn't biotech, but, you know, just another healthcare name that saw some good follow-through. Just a classic cup with handle breakout earlier in the week and good follow-through here. Composite rating of 98, good fundamentals, accelerating revenue growth. Yeah, they've got a new – they did a lot of cancer testing.

17:55They released fairly recently a cancer test that, you know, you do your genomic testing with it, but then they do AI to basically to like for breast cancer patients to help determine if the kind of breast cancer is like, would they benefit from chemo or not? I mean, that would be a huge thing is to find out, no, no, you really wouldn't. Then don't go through all that. So you can imagine how that'd be a benefit. And we are seeing, and they're not, there's some of them are in different groups, but a number of testing firms, cancer or other testing firms that are making nice moves. I think Garden Health is probably the one that we've talked about the most on IBD Live and Stock Market Day.

18:32And Garden Health is not making money, but it's growing pretty nicely. And Garden Health is sort of like trading relatively tightly, a little shelf above a prior base. And then there's billion – I think Garden Health might be a leaderboard stock. It is. Yeah, GH is on leaderboard. Yeah. We like this company a lot. Yep. And then billion to one, BLN. This one is profitable. It's a recent IPO, recent-ish. And this one is just teasing that you could sort of treat the last several week or two as a handle to this gigantic base. So that's making some nice, starting to tighten up relatively again. So there's other names out here and other companies that are using AI and other things.

19:13But Verisite is definitely part of all that kind of stuff and niche area that's getting a lot of interest. We put billion to one on the leaderboard watch list, BLLN, composite rating of 56, EPS rating of 73. This is an example where sometimes you want to look past the IBD ratings because when you look at their recent results at billion to one, And you can see this company has really kind of moved into profitability and top-line growth. So there are some other issues here that are weighing down some of the ratings. But you can see the company is in profitability mode and earnings mode, top-line growth.

20:03You check out some of the fund ownership here is pretty solid. Still in the early stages of being discovered by funds, but you can see some funds in the IBD Mutual Fund Index are in here. Still, again, in the early stages of being discovered, but we like the way this company looks fundamentally and still in the process of setting up here. But we're going to keep an eye on this one and see if it can muster a breakout over the 1.1.10 level. So just kind of on the watch list right now. But like you said, another diagnostics testing firm here. So we'll keep an eye on Billion to One. This podcast is brought to you by ReliaQuest.

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21:21Yeah, let's do it. First one is going to be probably the institutional quality leader in the data center cooling space. That's going to be Vertiv, V-R-T. This is a stock that tried to move above its 50-day moving average yesterday and closed right at the 50-day line. Made a nice move today and with some volume up nearly 5 % closed just above 333. What do you like about Vertiv here? I mean, I like that it's come back. Technically, like a week or so ago, So certainly two weeks ago, I was starting to be like, yeah, maybe I should just forget about this one for a while or at least put this on the back burner.

22:03And the relative strength line, what I don't like about is the relative strength line has lagged a little bit. But any stock that's paused for a little bit is going to have some kind of RS issue. And there you have it. It's moved above the 50-day line, moved above the trend line. I love that combination. You know, it's sort of like it's giving two reasons for an early entry here. so nice powerful move AI infrastructure stocks definitely had a good week this is still too young to be a new base but another week it could have a base and it looks like that would be a double bottom so that would be a 345.18 buy point so you could have started a position here or got a position you could add to it at 345 or you could wait for there it wouldn't be too far above the above the 50-day line there, though.

22:54This can make some big moves back and forth, for sure. The ATR, boy, I would have thought the ATR was even higher, but I guess it's calmed down a little bit. It's only 6%, but it feels... Not bad, yeah. Yeah, not bad. It's like, all right, that seems almost tame in this kind of thing. So, yeah, there's a lot of things there. The EPS growth and the revenue growth is supposed to accelerate this year. Again, there were some solid years. It cooled a little bit, but it's picking up for 2026. So that's a positive. So yeah, this is an institutional name. And while it will move around a lot, it's probably not one that's going to fall 15%, you know, in a day.

23:31Watch it do that, you know, on Monday, but here we are. But it's a little bit safer than some of the other names out there. Yeah, big annual earnings estimates still at Vertiv here. You can see full-year earnings this year up 54 percent, next year up 36 percent, and then you can see just the earnings along the bottom here. A lot of companies are providing cooling services these days, but Vertiv is still the leader in that space and definitely look at this as one of the big leaders in the cooling space. So we'll see if this one is eventually going to get going over this 345 pivot here, a little breakout over a trend line.

24:21So hopefully this is a stock that made an encore appearance in the leaderboard model portfolio. We've had this one in the past. So we're going to give it another shot here. Another stock we're going to take a look at is a real high flyer in the chip space. This is, I believe, a chip designer, MXL Max Linear. Yeah, chip designer in the Fabless Group MXL. See all these black little dots here. These are what we refer to as ants. Lots of volume as the stock surged over the 100 level. Now it's just been kind of moving sideways here and coming close to a test of the 50-day moving average. Yeah, this stock went up 401 % from its 2082 buy point up to 104.27.

25:15So that's an enormous gain. So it does have a pretty sizable, it's a pretty sizable base here. I mean, that's not nothing that is forming here. It actually, after today, should have a base. It's a little messy because it hit a new high of 106.28, but it didn't close above the left-hand side of the base. So you can still treat that as this on a weekly will now have, I believe, this is the sixth week. And so, you know, from that perspective, it would be a base that you could use 104.27 or 106.28. Again, it's going to be a pretty deep base, you know, in that regard. But in the context of how large of a move it made, not so much.

26:00So, again, it's having a base, but after such a move, this is okay to have a base. I mean, I think that's fine. I think if it got above the highs from this week, that could provide, you know, a buying opportunity. I'm not sure if it's high enough that it could be a handle if it developed in there. But either way, so I think this week's high of, you know, somewhere in there like a 95, 96 or whatever that was. You know, it's finding support at the 21-day line. Solid growth. I mean, really powerful growth on the earnings front, you know, and that's going to continue for a while. The revenue growth is strong.

26:36So, yeah, a lot to like about this name. This is very hot for sure. But, you know, this one justifies a base more than any other after a 400 % move. Yeah, and the base is holding up just fine above the 50-day moving average. In fact, the pullback looks quite orderly after such a massive gain, like you said. So any stock that moves as powerfully as Max Linear did and really shows a fairly mild pullback is a stock worth watching. We've seen so much power in the chip sector. And it is fundamentals that is driving a lot of these moves in the chip sector. This is a big difference between a lot of the gargantuan moves that we saw back in the late 90s.

27:29A lot of stocks were moving. They weren't making money. But a lot of these moves we're seeing, I mean, just look at the fundamentals that we're seeing at MaxLinear here. I mean, there is major, major growth going on as a result of AI data centers, legitimate growth going on here. So Max Linear is setting up beautifully. The weekly chart, we can't even see the top of the base. The move has been so substantial off the lows. So that's a fairly powerful move here. Final stock we'll talk about is SpaceX, which had a tremendous IPO debut. And we'll just pull up SPCX here. And this stock was trading lower at one point today.

28:25It did recover a little bit off lows. But here's a stock that initially priced at 135 and had a great debut earlier in the week. Ed, there's that pricing at 135 and went up all the way over, well over$200 a share. Two down days in a row, but a nice recovery off lows today. I agree. And, I mean, look, this is now investors have to – I mean, we wanted to see it. It's great to see it move up higher. And now you want to see a pullback of some sort. And you tend to be pretty violent because it's a new IPO. It's trying to find its footing. Now you want to see if it can form an IPO base. I mean, you want to see some kind of base.