Stocks Hit New Highs On Earnings; Corning, Viking, Granite Construction In Focus

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0:32Ed Carson:Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Stock Market Today for Thursday, April 30th. It's Alyssa Coram here. And more all-time highs for the stock market on some notable earnings reports. We'll get to the action there. And I'm also seeing some headlines about the best month in a couple of years here. What a month it was in April. Ed, joining me now, Ed Carson, our news editor. Yeah, really impressive month. I want to take a look at three stocks, Corning, Viking Holdings, and Granite Construction. All right. We will take a look at those stocks. But first, as always, let's take a closer look at the major indexes.

1:11Ed Carson:The Nasdaq Composite on the day up nine-tenths of a percent. But that was actually the smallest gain on the day. The S &P 500 up about 1%. The Dow today up 1.6%. And small caps had a really great day, Ed, with the Russell 2000 up about 2.2%. So that's really interesting that the Nasdaq composite was the weakest of the gainers when we had all of these big tech earnings. So I know some mixed results underneath the surface there, but some earnings standouts in today's session, Ed. Yeah, absolutely. A lot of earnings standouts. And even the mega caps that didn't do well were generally still raising capital spending guides.

1:56And so, you know, they may have suffered, but there was a generally strong growth in AI hardware. But, you know, even beyond that, there's a lot of industry groups that did well. So it was just a strong day. Yeah, there was some mega caps did great. Some did not. But, yeah, the NASDAQs at highs. The S &P's at highs. The Dow and F. Russell are almost at highs. This has been a great month. I mean, it's like there was this last several days has offered, created some handles. We've had some pullbacks. We're going to look at a couple names that are pullbacks. So they're, you know, and now that we're out of the bulk of earnings after tonight and tomorrow morning, it's like after we get a few minutes into Friday's open, we'll be through the biggest week of earnings.

2:38And it makes it a little safer to buy stuff. You know, I mean, people could have done things today. They could do things. But so but everything looks great. You know, there was a gauntlet of earnings. Oil prices were skyrocketing earlier in the week. They came down today. But, you know, and overnight they were really high. They kept on rising. They reversed lower a little bit, but still oil price is very high. But the markets are sort of shrugging that all off. It'll take whatever it happens. All of a sudden, I mean, I guess that's what happens. We haven't had the best month in a long time. It was great.

3:11March was terrible. It was all sort of locked in. It was all March. That's where the sell-off was. And it was all April. We've had a rally. And boom. You know, so nice timing there. I mean, not exactly, but close enough. Just really, really strong action. Yeah. So really, this is why we are around, not to trade in March or in February, but to trade in times like this. And this has been a really good market.

3:36Ed Carson:Yeah, I think that the IBD methodology approach to market timing could not be more helpful. Right, Ed? Because, you know, for active investors to be able to shift with the market tides and to be ready for this kind of environment, having that having that sort of skill set to recognize those signals. And that's a lot of what we do at Investors Business Daily is that work on the index level in addition to looking for those leading individual stocks. So like you said, striking when the iron is hot. And boy, has it been hot lately. Yeah. And honestly, if you just bought when you have follow-through days and you sell off and you just sort of just did that and said, I'm buying the indexes.

4:25like you buy TQQQ and other things, or buy index kind of ETFs, whether they're leveraged or not, you can make big gains just on that, let alone any individual stocks. As long as you get out, you know, that's so, again, the market is such a huge part of the IBD methodology. And we wait for a few days, you know, there was a lot of, you know, half, you know, a little one day rally, two day rallies, that's not enough. And this follow through day didn't have to work, it could have failed, but there's things but, you know, you start as slow and you build up gradually but steadily. And, you know, when things are working, this is what can develop.

4:59Ed Carson:Yeah. But this is the edge, right? When there is that uncertainty out there, looking at the technical signals and managing risk accordingly. And like you said, not going all in. But when you get more and more signals, add more and more exposure or scale back when things go against you. So things worked exactly how they should have over the last couple of weeks. And now that we are in a power trend, then we have that to think about as well. Because if you have leading stocks with considerable profit cushions at this point and, you know, earning season, it's still been that landmine, goldmine type vibe at again this season.

5:46Ed Carson:But But giving winners room to run now that we are in these very powerful conditions, I think, is something to note here as well. Absolutely. And this is, yeah, I mean, this is why we talk about other things, similar things like the eight-week hold rule. Those are really more for good markets. So these stocks, when stocks have run up quickly, you want to try to hold them, you know, for quite a while. You know, it's not ironclad, but just all these things. It's like this is the time to have more risk, to be heavily invested, to hold those winners, to maybe add to them if you can, be a little bit more aggressive stocks at times.

6:21Yeah, this is when you're more aggressive. When things are generally going up, that's when things pay off. As opposed to when the market is constantly volatile and pulling back, step on the gas when there's a long straightaway.

6:35Ed Carson:Yes. And let's zip through some other market and sector ETFs. Ed, I will punch them in as you take the lead here. Where should we go? Let's just take a look at RSP just to make sure people see that. I mean, similar to the Dow and the Russell, but, you know, this is showing you it was a real gradual decline. There was nothing wrong with this. Found support of the 21-day line. It's really close to high. So it's not just AI. It's not just mega caps. Really strong day. So nice to see this QQQE, which is a lot of AI stocks. I've got to say there's a lot of that, but this didn't have the mega cap. So this was even stronger.

7:12So you see, and this rose yesterday, you know, and, you know, so it was, this is showing a lot of strength, even within tech. And then there's some industry ETFs, which I don't really have to discuss. So just showing that there's breadth out there, a number out there, like regional banks. Again, they sort of hemmed and hawed, but you can see how you don't want to ignore them. All these things is like, they could be some buying opportunities. here, there's XLI, there's XME. So there's things that we're flashing by signals, this is on the sector level. So you want to be looking at these things too, you know, as well, especially with a lot of other names extended.

7:49Ed Carson:Yeah, top-down approach and bottom-up. So, you know, looking at the major indexes and sectors and individual stocks, all to find where that money is rotating, where the setups are, where the leadership is. Hi, this is Alex Osula, host of the WSJ's What's News podcast. We bring you the biggest news of the day, from business and finance to global and political developments that move markets. If you're looking for more insights and tools to understand the latest headlines, consider becoming a subscriber to The Wall Street Journal. Visit subscribe.wsj.com slash what's news to subscribe now. All right, let's take a look at Corning.

8:32Ed Carson:Ticker here is GLW up 8 % on the day, Ed. And this was a very tricky one because the earnings reaction was not that great. But I think this all is a great lesson. We love lessons here, right? When we analyze these stocks, it all depends on where you got into this one, right? If it was a more recent buy, like where I was buying on the gap up on the follow-through day, a very clear sell signal on earnings for me. But if you got into this a little bit earlier, whether it was a bounce off of the 50-day line, that's another setup that I really like, or maybe it was the breakout a couple of months ago, you could probably have waited to see if this held the 10-week or, you know, the 50-day line here on the daily chart because, yeah, I think I said yesterday on IBD Live that I would not be surprised at all to see this stock hold that 50-day, 10-week.

9:31Ed Carson:And it looks like that's what it's doing. That looks like what it's doing. It also sort of came down to that trend line. And there was sort of on a daily, there was sort of a handle. The consolidation was too short to really be there. But you couldn't buy that handle because of the gap up. I mean, there was right there if you did that. But on the gap up on, you know, that it was you didn't have an opportunity to get it right there. But that's basically where it came down to. So a lot of support came in there. So you could have bought it here. It's not great to see that big sell off. OK, it's not that was that's not the gradual, graceful pullback to the 50 day, 10 week line that we like.

10:05It didn't help that the market was selling off on Tuesday in addition to it, but it wasn't good. So, you know, the thing is, is that you're sort of like, what are we doing at this point? You know, some of the easy, clear buy signals from early April are gone. Some of the stocks that are setting up have lower relative strength lines. Yeah, this relative strength line has pulled back over the last couple of weeks, but that's up for a big uptrend. So this is still one of the leaders. This was an opportunity as it sort of went back for there. I think, you know, where maybe around the, yeah, right there, right at the 21 day line, right at sort of a roundish number, number top of the base, all those things could have been bought today.

10:39Again, it's not perfect, but it's hard to find perfect bases after a month rally. But, you know, this is in a strong area. Growth is strong. It had a negative reaction to earnings, but I think the earnings themselves were pretty good.

10:54Ed Carson:Exactly. Totally agree. You saw that acceleration of growth on both the top and bottom lines here. So, yeah, I think a buy here today totally makes a lot of sense. You have a very defined risk level with that 50-day moving average. So we know that this is in that fiber optics space, you know, AI-related name. So one to watch. And one more thing on this, you know, it's like earnings are out of the way. That is a huge risk. I mean, I just saw that make, so there are other risks involved in this chart and they're definitely there. But A big one is that those are off, you know, not that next week's earnings on opticals won't matter, but still, it is nice when you can find stocks at this point that have earnings out of the way.

11:41Ed Carson:All right. Let's move on and take a look at VIK Viking Holdings. A tricky breakout here, Ed. A week and a half or so ago, broke out. Downside reversal off highs pulled back. Now clearing a trend line and retaking that prior buy point just above 81. one. Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure if you want to do a year-long cruise with Viking, but maybe, maybe, yeah. So if for some reason the river gets rough, you can try to get off. And I mean, look, oil prices were really high. And so, and I was talking about this on my life. It's like, it's a tough one. It is really tough because look, oil prices fell today.

12:26It actually held up pretty well. If you look at jets, you know, that is something obviously is more exposed to oil and maybe more exposed to Mideast flights and all that stuff. That really sold off. And there were a lot of names that were looking pretty good until that big sell-off. So there's a few names in travel, but Viking is one of the very best. There was positive news from rival Royal Caribbean today. So that's important. The Royal Caribbean doesn't look as good, but it had a big gain today. Well, it did. And then it fell off. Wow. I didn't realize how much that had come off right at that resistance level, the 50-day line.

12:58So even so, Viking had a really strong performance. It didn't trigger a sell signal here. So it bounced back, breaking the trend line back above the buy point. You could be doing it. We'll see. I mean, if oil prices surged to 150, Viking is not going to have a good time. I mean, it's not, you know, it's not just for Viking, but people flying to where Viking has cruises. I mean, it's just things like that. But, you know, so, you know, But this one did offer a rebound buy today. And so something to be looking at.

13:32Ed Carson:Yes. And let's go to GVA. A fantastic move here for Granite Construction. Up almost 12 % on the day. Really kicking things up a notch here, Ed, on that earnings report. Even though it does look like bottom line growth or lack thereof, you know, wasn't that great. But tell us a little bit more. clearly the technical action very strong. What was it about this report that investors were liking? Well, I mean, and gap numbers is what analysts tend to look at. So, I mean, normally we look at adjusted, but on some stocks, it's gap. So that's why you see this big loss and widened. But adjusted earnings were positive and had showed really strong growth.

14:15So there was that. I think that's probably what did that. It was 30 percent revenue growth as well. So you're seeing some pick up over the last few quarters. And, you know, this is just everything is, you know, it's, this may be more in traditional construction, but everything in heavy construction is really rallying right now. I think the time to probably the best time to buy was when it was breaking the trend line, breaking the short-term highs, you know, today, like there in 129, it really came on in the last few minutes, even, you know, even on, you know, it was, it was, you know, more like around 132 and then really came on in the last, you know, hour or so.

14:55So at this point, you might want to just sort of wait, see if it pauses here, because that's getting pretty far from the 50-day line all of a sudden. And that would be what I would do if I hadn't, you know, I didn't do anything, but if I had bought it, you know, I would have bought it around 129. Now I probably wait to see if I can pause and see if the 21-day line can do some catching up for a little bit. But that's what's going on again. You know, so it seems like there's a turnaround in the business, even though the gap numbers aren't really showing it yet.

15:26Ed Carson:All right, Ed. Well, we have some earnings to check in after hours. Why don't we do that? I know Apple's the big one, but they usually don't report until the bottom of the hour. 1.30 or so Pacific. Yeah, they're not quite there. But SanDisk and Western Digital, two memory plays are out. Those are my games. Both of them beat Views. SanDisk just absolutely obliterated Views. But we've seen this with some other things. And obviously, expectations were high. I mean, we had Seagate out earlier this week. And this is up, I don't know, like 300%, 400 % already this year. I mean, you know, SanDisk. So it's like, you know, so I'm not sure.

16:05It's already had a decent week, you know, really, some ups and downs. So that's just something that's just a 10-day line there. It looks like it would be a 50-day line, but no, that's the 10-day line for it. So we'll see how that goes. This could easily do a lot of things. As people just judge it, what should people be willing to pay for it? Obviously, it's gone up a lot, but the numbers were blowout numbers. The guidance was really strong. And I do own this one.

16:31Ed Carson:I was getting back in when it cleared this trend line, rebounding off of the 50-day added a little bit more on the follow-through day and this little shelf area. So I think that round number of 1 ,000 and the 10-day makes a lot of sense for a first stop level for a portion of the position, Ed. I know you like using the 10-day line for some of these hot stocks. Yeah. And especially with that extra buy, which is, you know, I'm not sure where that is, but you can see that wasn't like huge. You don't want to give up. It's not great to lose all that gain. That'd be a place. Yeah, I like that. I like that a lot.

17:07But obviously, this has just had enormous run. And again, this is basically a model book stock after having a huge run, then it breaks out again in January. And then it, you know, it's just amazing how much this has moved. But down right now after hours, and that can happen. It's like, well, it's tremendous news. It's tremendous guidance. But, you know, the market is what the market is.

17:27Ed Carson:Yeah. And right now, I would say for something with a 21-day ATR of nearly 8%, as of right now, and who knows where this will be later after hours or tomorrow, but a 5 % decline is kind of tame. Kind of tame. For something with such a high ATR that's gone up so much. So even if it does go down on the report, depending on how it does it, right? I mean, saw with Corning, it can still find support and potentially go on to build another base. So again, it depends on if the action looks normal or abnormal. But as of right now, you know, it does look like if it starts the regular session tomorrow with a 5 % decline, it would still be above that.

18:13Ed Carson:And it would still be a strong week. It would still be a 5-6 % week. So it's hard to get too upset about that, especially, you know, especially on top of everything else that it's done. Yeah. All right. So you mentioned also Western Digital. So let's go there. Similar. Yeah, similar. It gapped up on Seagate yesterday, closing high today. It's down a little bit. I don't think it beat by as much. I didn't dig into numbers. And I think the guidance, I mean, it was strong numbers, strong. So it just came down. Same kind of situation. I don't think this has offered as many opportunities to get in. There wasn't, you know, that little shelf that we saw with Sandisk.

18:54You know, I know, yeah, Roku is another name. And that one looks really strong. BeatFuse guided well up. It broke the trend line, reclaimed the buy point, the old buy point. I suppose there's the high handle, though it's going to gap up above that. So, you know, this was sort of tricky because now you have to see what happens. We'll have to see what happens tomorrow. But this has turned profitable. I mean, now it's earnings are going versus losses. or it's coming over there. So that's a nice turnaround, you know, a long time coming. So while the relative strength line, you know, historically is not there, it's sort of turning around and it's figured out, I think people were worried about it.

19:30You know, is it really going to, you know, develop into something? And it has, it looks like.

19:36Ed Carson:Yeah. So right now we're seeing Roku shares up about 9%. And we still don't have Apple. I guess we won't filibuster another five minutes for the show, but we will have the coverage over at investors.com for everyone. As of right now, I guess some last minute positioning before the numbers hit looks like shares up a fraction. But if we keep filibustering, we may get Sandisk and Western Digital turned positive. They're only down 3 % now. There you go. So it's our 4%. So, but yeah, a strong market. This is the last huge day, but next week is really busy with earnings. Plenty of really important earnings as well, but wow, what a market.

20:18Ed Carson:Yeah, an incredible month and a power trend that will be interesting to study when it does eventually end. All right, Ed, thank you so much as always for your analysis. And thanks everyone for tuning in. And that's it from us for today. But we will be back with more tomorrow morning on IABD Live. Investors.com slash IABD Live for all the details on that. We're going to be joined by Eric Kroll, co-author of The Life Cycle Trade. And he's done a lot of historical work on rallies at their inception. And if they can go on to be moneymakers or life changers. So we'll have to see how this one stacks up.

21:04Ed Carson:So join us starting 10 minutes before the opening bell. investors.com slash IBD live. We'll see you there. And then we'll also see you right back here tomorrow to wrap up the week.

21:37Ed Carson:gives listeners a leg up in the world of markets and investing. From the Fed's moves to market bubbles, we dive into the biggest deals, key players, and business news ahead. If you're looking for more news and tools that you can use to help navigate the markets, consider becoming a subscriber to The Wall Street Journal. Visit subscribe.wsj.com slash takeontheweek to subscribe now.