Stocks Dip Heading Into Fed, Big Earnings; Rubrik, Jabil, Spotify In Focus

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0:26Ed Carson:Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Stock Market Today for Tuesday, July 29th. It's Alyssa Coram here. And today we saw downside reversals off of fresh highs for both the NASDAQ and S &P 500 ahead of the Fed and some big earnings. And joining me now for all the context we need to know is my colleague, Ed Carson. Ed, what do you have for us today? Yeah, I want to take a look at Rubrik, Jabil, and Spotify. Okay, we'll take a look at those stocks and a couple of earnings out after the closing bell. We'll get Ed's hot take on those results. But first, look at the major indexes. Here's the NASDAQ, as I mentioned, reversing lower, down four-tenths of a percent by the close.

1:05Ed Carson:Meanwhile, the S &P 500 was down three-tenths of a percent on the day. The Dow off by about a half a percent, and the Russell 2000 down some seven-tenths of a percent. So we'd never like to see a downside reversal off highs, Ed, but put this in context for us. Yeah, I think in context is that, look, the markets are at record highs and we have a lot of news coming up. I mean, tomorrow morning we'll have GDP. We have a lot of earnings tonight, tomorrow morning, but then GDP report, then the Fed announcement, then we have Microsoft and Meta and a bunch of others, and then a bunch of other news the day or two after that.

1:43After running up all this time, steadily, steadily, a little step back. I mean, the NASDAQ's not even close to the 10-day line, really. You know, it's just not – we're just not getting there. This just is like a blip. It still looks like we're still on that upward path. So, I mean, I think investors probably should be cautious. I mean, the market showed a little caution. It makes sense to be a little cautious about new buys for the next day or two, given the chances of huge swings in individual stock sectors and the whole market. But, you know, the market still looks really, really good. Yeah.

2:16Ed Carson:And I think when you get a downside reversal off highs, what we say is your expectation is likely to see potentially another day, two or three of weakness. But with all of the big news, we'll have to see how that rocks the market boat, so to speak. But you mentioned the 10 day line. We're about a half a percent above that level on the Nasdaq. We also are keeping an eye on the low from 722. Our chief market strategist or senior market strategist, Mike Webster, is looking at that level, which roughly coincides with the 21-day line. We're a little less than 2 % above that level for the NASDAQ. So it could be reasonable to see a pullback to that level.

3:00Ed Carson:But we have seen this steady uptrend without much of a pullback. When's the last time we had two down days in a row, Ed? It's been a little while. It's been a little while. I mean, look, this whole rally, even going back to May, June area, yeah, we had some down days. And in a few days, they weren't so great. But we've really, even the 21-day line seems to have been just the line of the sand. When things get terrible, we come down to the rising 21-day line. Again, that will change at some point, whether it's next week or next year. But it has been a really powerful rally and a pretty easy one to hold winners generally through.

3:41Ed Carson:Okay. And the S &P, meanwhile, is 1.5 % above that 21-day line that you mentioned there, Ed. All right. Anything else to point out with the major indexes of interest to you here? Not really. It's a pretty quiet day, ultimately, in the context of the rally. Okay. Well, let's check in on the 10-year treasury yield real quick. We did see that ease quite a bit today. And I know you always like looking at, okay, well, what's the dollar doing, right? So give us your take on what we're seeing that interplay there. Yeah, I don't know. Normally, yeah, I just need a stronger dollar. I guess people were rushing into dollar assets, maybe long bonds.

4:22I don't know why maybe people rushing into treasuries is a safe haven again. If you feel like maybe tariffs are off the table, people are going to to go back into the dollar and the tax. I mean, not off the table, but people getting clarity. It is interesting that, oh, people are saying, oh, the Fed's coming. Well, this probably doesn't have too much to do with that because the short end bonds really didn't move much. There was a big drop in this long end, which isn't as tied to the Fed. But in any case, it's the lowest in a few weeks. So it is interesting that the market, the stocks didn't rally despite this, but it's still within this general range that we've had for several months now.

4:59Ed Carson:Okay, let's also check in on Bitcoin and gold while we're at it, both of which I do own small positions, and at least gold is a smaller position. Bitcoin here continuing to trade in a range, Ed, so still setting up, I think. Yeah. I mean, I'll be honest. It's been throughout this year, it seems to have gotten tighter and tighter. You know, like the moves aren't quite as volatile, even as there was an enormous drop. But, you know, in the context of what a lot of tech stocks were doing, it wasn't that bad. There's a lot of interplay. So I think that's acting very well. Gold, you know, that's a safe haven kind of thing.

5:38There's always things back and forth on inflation and this and that. But this is pausing. While it hasn't been great to see it pull back a little bit if you bought it near the highs, this is pausing after a long run. So it deserves a break.

5:53Ed Carson:Okay. We'll continue to keep tabs on those. Let's check in on a name in the security software group, which we saw a lot of action in today. You can fill us in there. but rubric among those movers. But a good lesson here, Ed, where maybe don't get aggressive too quickly right at the open. If you see a stock setting up, keep an eye on the intraday chart because stocks can pull back off of their highs just like rubric did, finishing up 2.5%. But if you put that in context of the closing range, it was about 43%. So it did close well off its highs for the day. Yeah. And it was clearly above the 50-day line.

6:37It settled back. It basically got just around this. There's a lot of resistance at 83. It came right up to that. And so that could also maybe, you know, you could, so maybe above today's high would be a place where you could try. But yeah, if you look intraday, this one very quickly, you know, within the first five minutes had peaked, you know, that, and it didn't, you know, it still held on reasonably well, but then it fell off. It did bounce back somewhat in the afternoon. And part of that was because Palo Alto announced it was not. No, Palo Alto reportedly is close to making a big offer for CyberArk software.

7:17So that might have lifted some of the other names. Palo Alto, not so much. But Cyber, and I knew that SailPoint was a big mover, which I don't know how they all tie together, I guess, from News with SalePoint seemed to be another winner. Savvy investors understand consistent growth is built on scale, resilience, and trust.

7:37Ed Carson:For more than 60 years, Medline has proven this, driven by an unrelenting commitment to their customers. Today, Medline is proudly NASDAQ-listed and is the largest provider of medical surgical products and supply chain solutions serving all points of care. With a focus on what healthcare needs next, Medline strives to make healthcare run better. See how Medline is woven throughout healthcare and learn more at medline.com. In case rubric shored up a little bit, rubric is still worth watching. But in addition to the fact that you have to watch, I'm maybe waiting a few minutes, but this has shown a history of these little, there's a lot of times when it's opened well and then closed sort of poorly.

8:15I mean, again, we've seen that with some other names and Toast and Estera Labs are a couple of names that come to mind and those have both worked out ultimately, but you just, it doesn't have to work. I mean, you know, you can be, so it's just, you have to know that's the character of something like Rubric. So you may just want to make, definitely want to be careful about buying early on.

8:35Ed Carson:Yes. Okay, elsewhere, let's look at JBL. This is JBL, up two and a half percent on the day. After going tight, I believe on the weekly, we do have a three weeks tight pattern that this is clearing. after a breakout a couple of months ago, fueled in part by earnings. Then we had a show of strength with some ants on the chart, indicating a lot of up days, a really nice percentage gain, volume behind it. So offering traders another chance here. And this was our stock of the day. Yeah, and the volume dried up during this little consolidation. Nobody really wanted to sell. Found support of the 21-day line.

9:17Three weeks tight was almost a four weeks tight. I think it was one of those that were just barely missed out. So nice action here. You could have, you know, it definitely is an add-on opportunity. You could have taken maybe a small position to start off new. The relative strength is highs. Growth is picking back up. There's a lot of names in this area that are doing well. I got a shakeout the other day, and I can't remember the name. I think Flextronics sold off. So I think Jabil came down. I think there was, look, there was other things going on that day. There was a lot of shakeouts in tech.

9:48But this one ultimately shook that off pretty quickly. So this, again, as Chris Gousel was saying on Ivy Live, this seems to be something that's working. Stocks, leaders that are running up, pausing for just a few weeks and going. Sometimes that doesn't work because it's not a full-on base. But this is something that seems to have been working more in this strong rally.

10:10Ed Carson:Yeah, and a very strong group here. So impressive technical action here. And as you said, improving fundamentals as well in recent quarters. All right. And then in terms of risk management, just really briefly here, when you're buying something off of the 21-day line, seems like that's a good area to set a stop or at least a decisive close below that level. So today, Jabil finished about 5 % above the 21-day. So that seems like a reasonable line in the sand. I completely agree from that amount. from the level and it would also be below the bulk of that recent trading. Definitely something would be wrong there if it closed below there.

10:53Ed Carson:Okay. And let's check out Spotify, a disappointing reaction to earnings here at down 11 % on the day, but it wasn't just the reaction to earnings. It was really the numbers that were pretty disappointing here, it looks like. Surprise, yeah. Yeah. Resulted in me getting rid of the stock. Yeah, well, surprise loss, weak results, weak guidance. I think the real thing is that, you know, and is that for people who were yesterday, it looked interesting. And I think at the highs, somebody could have talked themselves into saying, aha, this is just at the point where I could buy it. It's breaking a trend line.

11:33It's above the 50 day. It's above the 21 day line. But there's earnings, but there's earnings coming in and you don't know. And yes, there were stocks today that were up 5, 10, 15 percent on earnings. So this certainly could have been one of them and you would have looked so smart, but this is what can happen the other way. And unfortunately, not only did it drop, but it dropped all the way back to underneath that. So now it's a round trip of a pretty solid gain. And so it's just, that's just unfortunate. You don't want to be in that situation. This is why sometimes you have to think about how much cushion do you have?

12:04Do you want to take partial profits heading into it? This was a big drop. I mean, so I totally get if people said, I'm writing this whole thing into earnings, but this is what can happen. This is why you got to be careful buying ahead earnings. This is why you have to just look and to make decisions. And they are tough decisions, you know, if you have an existing position. Exactly.

12:25Ed Carson:And I think position size too is part of the equation for, like you said, if you want to trim or if you feel comfortable holding the entire position heading into earnings, as well as what's your recent performance been like or performance on the year? Do you have chips, so to speak, to spend, right? Or do you want to play it a little bit more safe? And then in terms of how we talked about the five-minute chart on the buy side with rubric, you can also look at intraday charts on the sell side. Maybe you are selling in thirds or even quarters or half of your position. pick your number, whatever you feel comfortable with in those opening minutes to half an hour, and then set a level where you're going to get out of the rest of it if it doesn't recover.

13:15Ed Carson:Or you can also try to see if you can just get a better price, better exit price on the remaining half. So we did have an attempted bounce here before rolling over. So I was trying to get a little bit of a better sell price for my remaining position. But at the end of the day, I think, you know, some folks out there on IBD Live were asking, hey, this had 20 % plus revenue growth. Should I hold on to this? And a lot of times we say, Ed, you're buying on the fundamentals and the technicals and you're selling on the technicals. But in this case, it looks like we saw, at least on the bottom line, weakening fundamentals as well.

13:57Yeah. So there was a lot of reasons to be exiting. And you're right. And I think everybody has to figure out their own way. What's the easiest way, not just to get the best price, but to psychologically help you get out. And that's just like, do you sell some first so then it can get you to get out? Because you want to make sure that you don't cling to it, that you do take some action. And so there's lots of different ways of doing it. But I do think taking at least selling some fairly early on and then seeing how things go. But yeah, this closing near the lows. So by the end of the day, I think most people should have been out of this who bought within the last several months.

14:34Ed Carson:Yeah, exactly. Okay. Well, let's check out some earnings movers with reports out after the Bell. STX, this has been one of the impressive stocks in the last couple of months. I'm seeing shares down over 8%. And here's another one that was setting up even arguably actionable if earnings weren't a part of the picture here. But it looks like at least the initial reaction, pretty poor, down 8%. Yeah. And it looked like it beat views, but I haven't looked at the guidance or anything or what people were really expecting. But yeah, this one looks a lot like JBL. But this reaction is not positive. Booking is another name.

15:16That's down modestly. This one was setting up like, oh, yeah, it was coming down, but it's in a five weeks tight, coming down to support. Well, we'll see. Is that going to be support or is that going to now be resistance or something that it loses sight of? Visa, that was something else that was coming up to the 50-day line. Maybe it's going to back off of that further. So again, Starbucks is another name. I think that one might actually be coming up. So this one might be trying to come up to the to the Tunite line. I mean, it's not the strongest, you know, restaurants are coming in a little trouble here, but still something to watch in Corvo.

15:54I don't know how AI this is involved, or if it's just because it gets involved in things that are AI. But this seems like it's going to be bouncing off maybe the 10 week line, maybe getting up to those levels. You know, you can sort of think of this as a base from going back to 9133. A lot of the base would be underneath the 200-day line. But still, you could see something, a scenario there where that could be actionable. We'll see how things open. This has already moved a lot. It was up 12%, I saw at one point. So we'll have to see how it actually starts trading, and maybe not just at the open, but going into it through the day.

16:31Ed Carson:Yeah, absolutely. You bring up a good point, Ed, with earnings season. I mean, there's a lot that makes it so fascinating, the unpredictability of it, what are investors really going to focus on? Is it that earnings or revenue or guidance or something that management says or otherwise? Or, you know, do we see a day two reaction, so to speak, where you get reversals or an initially positive response that fades? So it's always interesting. Overnight action doesn't always translate to the following regular session, but we'll stay on top of it at investors.com as well as on IABD Live in the mornings.

17:12Ed Carson:Thanks everyone for tuning in. That is it from us for today. Like I said, tune in tomorrow morning on IABD Live for real-time stock market news and analysis, stocks to watch, portfolio management strategies, and more. Investors.com slash IABD Live for all of those details. We'll see you there and then we will see you right back here tomorrow after the close.

17:51Ed Carson:This episode is brought to you by MassMutual. When people count on financial guidance, they want a company known for strength, stability, and trust. With the solutions to fit their needs, financial professionals can help people move forward with confidence, backed by MassMutual's 175-year legacy. Learn more at MassMutual.com.