Stocks Pause Ahead Of Huge Earnings; Nvidia, GE Vernova, LivaNova In Focus

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0:40Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Stock Market Today for Tuesday, excuse me, Wednesday, January 28th. We had a Fed meeting today, of course. I also had a lot of earnings reports to go over, lots of earnings reports after the close. Before we talk about all of that, Let me bring on our news editor, Ed Carson, who has got three stocks to watch for today. Good afternoon, Ed. Good afternoon. I want to take a look at NVIDIA, GE Vernova, and Liveanova. All right. Three stocks to watch. Before we do that, let's take a look at what happened in the stock market today. Busy, busy day for the stock market.

1:19We did have a Fed meeting today. As expected, the Fed stood pat on interest rates, kept the federal funds rate unchanged. at a range of 3.5 % to 3.75%. Major stock indexes didn't move much on the news at all. It was pretty much as expected. We did have small caps lag today. Russell 2000 fell about 0.5%. It looks like Russell 2000 down about 0.5%. The rest of the market mixed and mostly unchanged. Take a look at the NASDAQ composite. it looks like it ended with a gain of about two-tenths of a percent. Did give back some gains. Closed near its session low. Looked like volume picked up the pace, so might end up calling this a bit of a stalling session today.

2:13S &P 500 also didn't give up much ground at all today. It closed near the flat line as well with a fractional gain. And then the Dow Jones Industrial Average here also closed near the flat line. But, Ed, major stock index is coming up against some round numbers here. NASDAQ Composite bumping up against that 24 ,000 level. Again, this session did have the look of some stalling today. The NASDAQ couldn't hold on to a decent intraday gain today. Closed near its low. Volume picked up the pace a little bit. So we're probably going to add a mild distribution today, a little bit of a stalling session.

2:57But Fed decision today, not much of a surprise. Anything new in the policy statement today or, you know, not much new? Not much. I mean, the Fed was a little bit more hawkish just because the shutdown is over. That's what Fed Chief Powell was trying to explain. He was like, well, there seemed to be fewer concerns. He seemed pretty upbeat about things. It's not just the risks seem to be fairly balanced and the upside and downside risks aren't as great. Inflation isn't as big of a concern and the labor market isn't as big of a concern. So he seemed pretty upbeat. The market really didn't move on the Fed.

3:30Yeah, it was a stalling day, but honestly, there's so many big earnings that are coming up that that could be that may be, you know, it's understandable. I think if you call up zero bull, and I don't even know if this is updated, but, you know, this is, I believe it has gone over 60 % in the latest week. So this may come in tomorrow that it gets updated. So it's not in there, but I believe it's over 60%. You get over 60%, that's getting pretty darn bullish. So the market, I mean, it's probably the best that the market held off, you know, given the huge earnings tonight and then tomorrow and the next week.

4:05If we get through next week and we're at new highs, then maybe you can say, hey, maybe we could go on another leg. You know, maybe that would be something. But we're not there yet. So we'll have to see how the market reacts to all the big results tonight, tomorrow morning and so on. Yeah, what we're looking at here, just a little bit of additional color here. This is an investment advisors bullish is a weekly survey of newsletter writers. And what we're looking at is the percentage of newsletter writers that are bullish and the percentage of newsletter advisors that are bullish. And this chart here is just looking at bullish sentiment.

4:45And I think we're going to get a reading that is above 60. And when sentiment gets above 60 percent, in other words, when you have bullish sentiment over 60 percent in the past, that has been during times when the market has started to top and has started to pull back. So, you know, at this point, you know, NASDAQ is up six days in a row, coming up against the 24 ,000 level. You know, maybe we start to pull back here. But when, you know, anytime you start to get excessively bullish sentiment in the stock market, everybody starts to slant bullish in one direction. That tends to be the time when, you know, the market can pull back.

5:33Conversely, when sentiment gets overly bearish and everybody is bearish, that tends to be the time when the market tends to bottom. So that is the story behind that. Semiconductor stocks in the news today. SMH has been a tremendous performer. That outperformed again up 2.3%. Once again, Ed, several semiconductor stocks in the news today. We had a nice earnings report from Texas Instruments, TXN. This is not a top holding of SMH, but I believe it's down maybe in the top 10 holdings. Yeah, it is. And then memory chips did well. Micron was probably doing well, even though it had no news. So I don't think Seagate was the huge winner, but I don't think it's in SMH.

6:27But nonetheless, that obviously has been a huge performer. And NVIDIA was a strong performer. There's some news on that, and we'll get to that in a little bit. And obviously, that's the big kahuna in a lot of those names. So, yeah. So, NVIDIA had a good day in the SMH as well. Absolutely. Breath, let's take a look at market breath today with RSP. Again, the S &P 500 basically flat today. Take a look at the equal weighted RSP. That, you know, was down three-tenths of a percent. So, it underperformed the S &P 500 today. and then the equal weighted QQQE. See how that did today. That most likely did a little better, a little better, up one quarter of 1%.

7:20Take a look at FFTY. This has been outperforming quite a bit. Great start to the year for growth stocks. FFTY, another day of outperformance, up 1.2%. We did have gold stocks at last check. About 40 % of the IBD50, I think, is still made up of gold stocks. Take a look at GLD today. Last check, gold stocks were outperforming again today. Look at that day for GLD, up 3.85%. So not surprising to see FFTY outperforming. ARKK, another growth ETF, doesn't have nearly as much gold exposure as FFTY. why that was down 1 % today. So this episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate.

8:11Instead, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate C. According to Indeed data, Sponsored Jobs have four times more applicants than non-sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Let's go ahead and take a look at NVIDIA, which is a top holding of SMH. And this is starting to improve its technical health here. We did move NVIDIA from our leaderboard watch list to the leaders list today. It is now a member of the leaderboard model portfolio.

8:53Nice move today, up 1.6%. Yeah, and there are some more, I mean, I don't know if it's official, but more positive signs that NVIDIA's shipments to China can resume. And so that's something that's just helping a little bit. And if you draw a trend line from the top of this base, it's now clearly above that. It might have already been above that yesterday, but it's clearly there. And it also is above or right above like the January 16th high, not the January 5th high. So those are a couple of, so it's above a couple of early entries. There's still another one, you know, that you can do with the 193.

9:31But I will say this, after today, if tomorrow, you know, the reaction is, we haven't, I don't know what Meta and Microsoft have said about capital spending, and Microsoft may not say it for a while, but if the reaction is positive, that would be a huge headwind, you know, potential risk factor. And there would be a couple of weeks. NVIDIA does have earnings coming up, but it would seem like the risks are a little less tomorrow than they were today when you just didn't know how things would go. And again, it's up after hours a little bit, but we'll see what happens. Nobody really knows what's going on with all those reports.

10:09But yeah, I mean, it's acting well. It's still, honestly, I know we don't talk about valuations very much, but it's still pretty cheap. If you look on a forward basis, if you go to a weekly chart, you can see what the forward PE is. it's a lot cheaper than a lot of names with much slower growth uh that is a 24 pe that's pretty good you know so it's uh that's um so you know obviously they have to keep delivering but that's there's a lot of reasons to like this name well it is a bit perplexing selling at 24 times forward earnings when you look at the growth rates here right i mean selling at 57 times this year's earnings.

10:52NVIDIA is already in its fiscal year 2026. That's its current fiscal year. And then its next fiscal year, 2027, earnings are expected to accelerate 65 % growth. So, arguably selling at a very cheap forward valuation here. So, we will see. We're going to go over a lot of high-profile earnings reports after the close in just a little bit, but some more stocks to get to. So good to see NVIDIA showing signs of life and, again, trading a little bit higher in after-hours trading. So, again, NVIDIA, a new member of the leaderboard model portfolio. It has been a member in the past, so we'll see if NVIDIA is able to fully break out of this downtrend.

11:38Next, let's take a look at GE Vernova, GEV, a recent spinoff of General Electric, along with several other companies, GE Verona, ticker GEV. Nice little breakout on earnings and nice earnings growth for GEV and sales growth a little light in Q4, but a nice reaction by the market today. Yeah, they raised guidance. So a lot of that guidance was on acquisitions. Like They sort of like, now we're going to factor this in. So the guidance may not have been as amazing, but they had raised guidance a couple months ago. There were some concerns about wind. I would say the problem with this stock is it's very volatile.

12:17And I would go to a five-minute chart or any kind of chart, and you can just see how this stock reacted. Because in the pre-market, it was up. Then it was down. And we saw a lot of gyrations. Eventually, it found its footing. But, you know, that is this one issue is that this name does have that thing. And who knows? And we saw a number of stocks that had big gains yesterday fall significantly today. So you just don't know. So that would be something to watch maybe tomorrow morning. But it got above these short-term highs. So I think that would be an early entry. That's sort of a handle there that was just slightly too low to count.

12:55731 is the official buy point. But I think this is one of the AI energy plays. And yeah, wind's not doing great, but their natural gas turbine business is just on fire. So that is ultimately a strong day today. Yeah, 4 % revenue growth, material deceleration from the prior quarter. But again, just a company that still could be in the early stages of a move here. Nice setup here, support at the 10-week moving average. and still in the early stages, possibly a breaking out of a nice little short short base here. So GE Vernova composite rating of 81. Not not not too shabby. Big, big company here.

13:43$193 billion market cap, but nice, nice technical setup. And we'll see if this one can continue to make progress relative strength line here up near highs. Not quite in new high ground, but not in bad shape at all. All right, let's take a look at a name that people may not be familiar with. I took a look at this name on IBD Live when we had Mark Minervini on earlier today. This is L-I-V-N, Livanova. Yeah, and it just like with all the stocks that are— Let's start with the daily chart here, and I just wanted to point out the daily chart and what we would call a base-on-base pattern here, a stock that broke out initially and then started moving sideways again.

14:34Yeah, on the basis of getting tighter and tighter, you know, a little bit too. So that's nice to see. I wanted to get something away from all the AI news because a lot of the stocks, there are a lot of AI-type plays that are acting well, including GE Vinova, including NVIDIA. But you just don't know with all the things that are going on. This one's been just acting well. It's got a tight little base. It's been finding support at the 21-day line, a couple of times at the 50-day line. It has some, you know, it's got some, you know, medical products from it. It's trying to expand into places like sleep apnea.

15:06It's not, you know, the growth rates haven't been amazing, but it's been solid. It's double digit. So I just want to be obviously, you know, you probably don't want to have a bunch, you know, a portfolio full of AI stocks that have a tendency to go up and down 10 % at every given day. You know, that's the only fun on the up days. It's terrifying on the down days. So it's nice to have a mix and diversity of things. This is, you know, a lot of medical has been acting well, you know. So, yeah, so just some, you know, some solid action here, you know. So up-down volume ratio 1.2, AD rating, you know, B+.

15:42So there's just some positives out there, you know, so sometimes to mellow out in your portfolio. Absolutely. Nice gap up here and didn't make a whole lot of progress, but a really nice, powerful gap up out of this base here. And then it just started moving sideways. The red line here is the 10-week moving average. It found support at the 10-week line. So we'll see if it can muster a breakout from this base right here. Again, a relative strength line up near new high ground. That tells you that it is outperforming the S &P 500 and Livanova. And this is a company that was formed. Very interesting technology here.

16:26They do make an implantable device to treat epilepsy. The technology here is from a company that was called CyberOnix. CyberOnix used to be a publicly traded company. It merged with another company to form Livanova. So if you haven't heard of Livanova, it's just a new company name that was formed between the merger of CyberOnix and another company. But this implantable device basically sends a stimulus of sort of electronic pulse to treat epilepsy. So kind of an innovative treatment here. And we'll see if it can break out. We are in the middle of Q4 earnings season. And I know we've got a bunch of earnings reports after the close that we want to look at.

17:15And so, Ed, I will let you lead the charge here. I know we've got some magnificent seven stocks that are reporting. So where do we want to start? Yes, a lot of stuff going on. Let's start with Tesla. Okay. Smaller than expected decline in EPS and revenue. We'll look at all the details. I don't know about anything about deliveries or anything. And, you know, most people are interested in what's going to happen with robo-taxes and so on. There might have been some stuff in there, but it's really Elon Musk conference call. But getting a modest lift here needs to get back above the 50-day line. And maybe last week's highs could be an early entry if it can get above that area.

17:53Tesla up 2.5 % in the early going. We'll see if that's going to be able to get back above its 50-day moving average. Trading around 442 right now in the after hours session. And that's right around where its 50-day moving average is. Absolutely. And what else do we have? Microsoft, not sure what's going on on this one. It beat views. I saw one thing that it's Azure cloud computing rose up 39 % and that maybe it was only in line. I don't know what their guidance was like. They often give their guidance on their conference call. So I'm not sure what's really out. People are really interested in the CapEx.

18:33This is down. It has made a balance, but it was coming right up to resistance. So we'll see how that goes. Meta. Yeah, right there. I was going to say, Microsoft coming right up into that 200-day moving average. Anytime you're a stock that's in a pronounced downtrend like this, sometimes it's very difficult for stocks to get through these resistance levels. And for Microsoft, that 200-day line, we'll see. Sometimes these after-hours weakness, you know, it sometimes is a different story the next day. But we'll see, down almost 4 % in after-hours trading. We have another big cap tech. Was that going to be meta?

19:11Meta, yeah. Okay. And that one beat, and they also guided up on Q1 revenue. And this one, it's turned around. At first it fell. Now it's up. I don't know about their capital spending plans. So we'll see. That could swing things as well. But this one is getting above its 200-day line. I don't know if you would call that actionable, some kind of downtrend, but, you know, potentially tomorrow. but at least it's making a move here. That's nice. Nice move up 5%. 5 % and after I was trading, that looks like a nice move. Yeah, and so we have a number of other ones and I'll go through this quickly. LRCX, which has been really extended.

19:54That one is up slightly, beat views. I think the guidance was pretty good. So that's continuing to move. Celestica, this one is very volatile and this one is already, I saw big swings. I saw this down a lot more earlier. It's now down 3 % or so. It beat views. I don't know what the issue might be. So, you know, we'll see. Maybe it could turn around because it's definitely improving. It cleared a short-term high yesterday that made it actionable. Las Vegas Sands, that had been doing okay, but that one is now down sharply. I think they beat views, but, you know, that one was trying to make its way back up.

20:30Doesn't look like it's going to happen. And BIAV Solutions, VI-AV, this one I think was around a buy point, you know, in the last couple of days. I don't know how it closed today, but that one beat Fuse only slightly, but still it's up. And IBM is up nicely, up 8%. So that one's going to move above like, you know, some key levels, like above the 50-day line, maybe a lot more. Yeah, it looks like above most things, you know, in that base. And one last thing is - That looks like a very significant move for IBM. That's not only going to gap above its 50-day moving average. Looks like that, at least right now, could move above that recent high of 312.81.

21:12So nice move. That looks like a very bullish move for IBM. Yeah, it's a nice thing. And one last one would be ServiceNow. This one's been doing terrible. But it's bringing it up because it's the first pure play software company. I don't know how the results were, but the stock is not reacting well. It was down like 6%. So, again, and this is not like this, not like it had high expectations. People are really gloomy on it. Software has been struggling. So just wanted to bring out that that may be an area that continues to struggle going forward. Wow. Yeah, you just think the news couldn't get any worse for ServiceNow.

21:48That is one heck of a correction in recent months, and the stock is down another 6%. The selling in the enterprise software group has been relentless in recent months, and ServiceNow getting hit hard again in after hours. Wow. Well, lots of after hours action. Thanks for running it through it all with us, Ed. We appreciate it very much. Thanks so much. All right. That'll do it for today. And, yeah, not much movement in the market today. Small caps lagged a little bit, and we had tech stocks outperformed a little bit. Lots of action in today's after-hours activity. We're going to hear from Apple tomorrow.

22:38We've got some more data storage stocks set to report SanDisk and Western Digital reporting after the close. Tomorrow morning, we've got Caterpillar, Lockheed Martin in the defense group. So more earnings reports tomorrow morning on IBD Live. Rachel Fox will be in the host chair. So be sure to join us for IBD Live tomorrow morning. If you haven't checked out IBD Live yet, you can do that by going to investors.com forward slash IBD Live. It will be Ed and Lexi for the Stock Market Today video tomorrow, so be sure to check them out. That'll do it for today. Have a great rest of the day, everyone.

23:25We will see you back here tomorrow.

23:42Hey, this is Telus Demos. And I'm Miriam Gottfried. We're reporters at The Wall Street Journal and the hosts of WSJ's Take on the Week. It's a weekly show that 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.