Stocks Edge Up To Fresh Highs. Tesla, Broadcom, Astera Labs In Focus.

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0:31Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Stock Market Today for Thursday, October 2nd. It's Alexis Garcia here, and stocks hit fresh highs today despite a government shutdown. Tesla stock was a notable mover after posting a record Q3 delivery numbers. That beat analyst expectations. And luckily, we have our resident Tesla expert on with us today to cover that. But here with me to help break down all that you need to know about today's trading action is IBD News Editor Ed Carson. So, Ed, what's on deck for us today? Yeah, I do want to take a look at Tesla. I also want to look at Broadcom and Estera Labs.

1:12All right. Well, as always, we'll get to those stocks. But first, let's just check in on the major indexes. The S &P 500 finishing the day up fractionally, but again, hitting a new record high. The Nasdaq up four-tenths of a percent. The Dow finishing the day up two-tenths of a percent and small caps up about six-tenths of a percent. So, Ed, I'm going to go ahead and get our screen share going here. But how would you characterize the market action today? I mean, it was slightly positive. I don't know. It's hard to say anything. We're at record highs on the S &P and NASDAQ. The Dow set a record close yet again.

1:49Small caps are close to highs. You know, I think beneath the surface, there was definitely some strength. There was a lot of AI stocks were strong. Some speculative names were pretty hot once again. So there was a lot of strength out there. There were some stocks that reversed lower around buy points. But that's going to happen when you have modest market moves. I mean, sometimes that happens. But the overall trend, look, we've been riding the 10-day most of the time, 21-day here and there. And every once in a while, the 50-day line, something close to that. But this has just been a real steady rally.

2:23I think if you look on a weekly basis or a monthly basis, I mean, you can don't want to I mean, I get too much in the weeds sometimes on a daily basis. But just looking on a weekly, looking on a monthly, I mean, there were some pauses. But if you look on a monthly, there were no pauses, really. I mean, not we've just been running up since early April. So it's basically been six months of a rally that hasn't, you know, yes, individual stocks have had issues. Yes, there have been this and that, but nothing that's really shaken the foundation of the market rally. So just things are looking good. Things are looking good.

2:55All right. And you want to hit any of the specific indexes before we move on it? Or are we? No, I think that's fine. They're all showing sort of the same thing. And let's check in on market breadth with RSP. Because, again, this is something we have been keeping an eye on. This up today, about three tenths of a percent, breaking above this 190 level. But, again, it seems like positive action here. Yeah. Yeah, a new high for RRSP. And, you know, just a week ago, it was testing the 50-day line. Not that it was way off record highs. But, I mean, what was a worrisome sign when we had that pullback last week?

3:32I mean, yeah, a little over a week ago, we were pulling back. It wasn't that big. But you just didn't know that we bounced back on the indexes. We bounced back here. And what about QQEW? That's the NASDAQ 100 equal-weighted ETF. And again, this one up today about seven-tenths of a percent, but also looking pretty strong here. Yeah, and this one was the real lag. It actually really was lagging about a month ago. Below the 50-day line couldn't get above it. And now it was the first to really hit new highs out of all these indexes and ETFs and keeps powering higher. So showing strength in growth stocks probably.

4:09And let's just check in on the 10-year Treasury yield down today about four-tenths of a percent. You know, we've kind of seen it move up here and it's been falling lately. But how do you think this is varying in terms of what Fed rate cuts might expect? We've got a government shutdown in the works. So thoughts here? Yeah, I mean, it never really tried to break the downtrend. And it bounced, you know, from a couple of weeks ago, but, you know, just was getting interesting, but it had never gotten up to even the 4.2, 4.4 areas. So we're coming back. The ADP report was really weak and we're not going to get a lot of economic data from the government anytime soon.

4:49Tomorrow, we were supposed to get the Friday jobs report, the jobs report for September. That's not happening. So we don't have a whole lot of news coming out. But that ADP report reinforced expectations for our Fed rate cuts and are showing that, wow, the economy is not doing very well after we had had a couple of weeks of stronger than expected data. And let's take a look at some sector ETFs, starting with FFTY. That's the IBD50 ETF, a nice day today, up 1.4 percent. And again, staying above the short-term 10-day moving line. Yeah, and there's growth, some speculative growth in here. And this was, you know, this was leading.

5:26Again, this was one that had a pretty sharp pullback, but ultimately it found support at the 21-day line. and so has come right back up. Just, again, just showing a lot of health there. And another area making a comeback here lately, Ed, has been Bitcoin. This is IBIT, I-B-I-T, the Bitcoin Trust ETF. Yesterday, gapping above this 50-day line and continuing to move powerfully today with a 3 % gain. Yeah, this one can move up and down a fair amount, obviously. I think yesterday was a good chance for people to get into it. I think the 50-day line has been a decent place to try. It doesn't always work, but it's a good place to try.

6:04It's already moved up quite a bit from the 50-day line and just over the last week or so. So you can wait to see if it pauses. But yeah, Bitcoin is back. Bitcoin is back. Let's take a look at NLR. That's the uranium and nuclear ETF. And this sector has been showing strength here at up 3 % today. And again, getting above this round 140 number. But look at that finish up in the top of the trading range there. Yeah, and this has a mix of sort of like more stable utilities and really wild speculative plays. So I wanted to show this. It was a nice move off here. Look, could you just punch up Oclo? This is one of the more speculative names.

6:43And that one had plunged a fair amount, but that's an enormous run for a week or two. And here it is bouncing back. It just paused for a few days. It's up 11%. So there's definitely a lot of this, a lot of speculative names that were up more than 5%, more than 10 % today. And Oclo was there. And NLR is a little safer way to play it. You want to look in and dig in what are they own. We always should do that with an ETF. But definitely some strength here. And this is another one of those broader AI themes because we're going nuke so we can power the AI data center. We need that power, baby, to get this going.

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7:52Tesla was on the list, and this one was a notable mover today. Sharp downside reversal here at finishing the day down 5%. And that was after some better than expected delivery numbers here. So it seems like maybe there is some sort of turnaround with Tesla. But what's going on with the chart action here? Yeah, I mean, the chart, the news, let's just start with the news, is that, yeah, it was better than expected. I mean, it was way better than a consensus, but the consensus, I think everybody knew, was too low. But even the more recent things, it was at the upper end of what people were expecting.

8:25It was a record, so strong. Obviously, a lot of that was the tax credits. That's expiring. So we basically know deliveries are going to fall a lot in Q4 and probably even get weaker in Q1. We'll see. So it's hard to know. You couldn't take that and say, oh, wow, look at the business. It doesn't tell you one thing, one or the other. I think the stock had been rallying partly on the deliveries, but also mostly on self-driving. That's really been the real driver thing. But to the extent that there was a buy the rumor on the deliveries, well, sometimes you get to sell the news. I mean, look how much it's run up.

8:56So yes, it's down. It only fell to smidge below the 10-day line. Okay. I mean, that's not that bad. Honestly, as it's trying to go to the all-time highs of around 488, it'd be nice if this form, say a 10%, 12%, even 15 % handle, because this is a big, wide, deep base. If you want to shake people out, this one, you know, you might want to get underneath some of these things. It doesn't have to go, you don't want it to go right down right away, but over time, maybe a decent handle, then make a run at the new highs, you know, for a new position. If you own it, you just want to go up and up and up.

9:27But I mean, for anybody looking to, ideally, you would take that kind of pause and then and then move out after a meaty looking handle. Cause that's a big base. It's like, you know, when you have a Dutch oven sized base going back to December, you can't have a teacup handle. You need a decent handle, I think, or even its own base. You could even have a handle that's long enough to be its own base. But I think technically, technically it looks fine. Yeah. It's disappointing to have that, but it's also not that surprising given the huge run. So if you're in this one, Ed, just keeping an eye on it then?

10:05Yeah, I think if you look, I mean, look, it depends on where you get it. But if you bought the breakout or somewhere around the breakout with this consolidation within the base, it's the 10-day line. I mean, you know, everybody has the rules and you should have rules and try to keep them consistently. But if you say, you know what, I take profits, either on the way up or maybe if it breaks the 10-day line decisively, or you can say, I'm going to wait for the 21-day line, have some rules. But that just goes with any stock. I think that I would be more concerned if it starts going through the 21-day line, especially if it's relatively soon, because then you'd be giving up a fair amount of gains.

10:36This was getting up to$470 or so. If it got down to$430 and I bought it at$390, you know, you're giving up a lot of the gains at that point, and you want to not do that. But that's – it's not there. Right now, this, I think, is pretty normal. It's unpleasant today, but I don't think this was particularly damaging. All right. Well, we'll be keeping an eye on that one. Let's take a look at Broadcom. That's ticker AVGO, up 1.4 % today. And again, reclaiming this 21-day and 10-day line. Yeah, this one tried. I mean, I almost looked at this yesterday, but then sort of backed off the 21-day line. And again, this one sort of backed off a little bit.

11:15It didn't close great. So I will admit that, you know, that one closed in lower part of its range. So not ideal. I mean, it did get above the 21-day line. And you could say it broke a downtrend more decisively from the top of this base. So in the context of the week, you know, it's had a solid week, especially from the intraday lows from yesterday. You know, it's probably pretty high and decent in the range there, or at least up in the upper half of the weekly range. And it had almost tested the 10-week line. But today was a little disappointing to see it come back. I'll also say that a number, despite all the strength in some of these growth stocks and speculative stocks, there were a number of stocks that actually broke out or flashed by signals and then reversed lower.

11:55Or, I mean, sometimes just modestly. So it wasn't like, you know, you get a buy signal and everything was working today. So, you know, if you didn't do anything with this today, you might say, well, okay, I'm going to wait to see if it can get above today's high before entering it. Still relatively close to the 21-day line. But this has been a leader. It's paused. So definitely one that people could be looking at closely. And that high today was 347.61. So a point to look there. How about Astera Labs to take us home up about almost 8 % today? Yeah, I mean, it had a really nice bounce off the 50-day line after some pretty heavy selling.

12:36I mean, this came out quite a bit. I mean, 282 to what, you know, 190 or something. That's a pretty big drop in just a couple of weeks. I think that's also just a reminder about how these super hot stocks can really sell off pretty quickly when things turn for whatever reason. And thank goodness the market wasn't really selling off that much. But big bounce, you know, it's tough here because it's already like 12 % above the 50-day line. But, you know, so that makes it tough for me. I definitely see how people could have bought this, you know, or this 21-day line is going to be resistance. It's right there.

13:12Can it really decisively go above that? But it's really a sign, a nice sign of strength. So this is one of the leaders, and we're seeing a lot of these AI chip names, whether it's, you know, hotter names like Astera, Broadcom, NVIDIA, even AMD, which hasn't been a real leader. A lot of them are, you know, they've been having a good week. And this is an AI-driven market rally, so it's really good to see your core, core AI stocks, you know, rebound this week. And Astera Labs is definitely in there. It's tough. If you were to buy this and you could, you just have to like, well, where are you going to sell?

13:50What is your exit strategy? Because this is one that could turn around and especially right there at the 21-day fallback and it could fall back to the 50-day line. You know, you don't want to, you know, how far are you willing to let it go? Because at that point, though, you could be down 10 % right at a spot where it might bounce again. So it just makes it a little tricky. It could also be just one, you know what, I'm going to wait, see if it bases out and provides another maybe safer opportunity. But nice to see this name come up. All right, Ed. Well, thank you so much for your insights today.

14:22And that wraps it up for us. We'll be back with more market analysis tomorrow morning, starting with IBD Live. You can catch all the details there at investors.com slash IBD Live. And Justin Nielsen and Mike Webster will be back tomorrow to do their special extended version of Stock Market Today. So we'll see you back here right after the closing bell.

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