Stocks Quiet To Cap Solid Holiday Week; Nvidia, Tesla, Guardant Health In Focus

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0:40Hello and welcome to another episode of the Stock Market Today video. We're coming to you live as we typically do on a Friday to give you the week's wrap up and the day's wrap up and almost the end of the year wrap up here. So we're coming to you on December 26, 2025. My name is Justin Nielsen, and today I am joined by Ed Carson, our news editor, while Mike Webster is on a holiday, or actually probably just driving at this point. How are you doing, Ed? I'm doing all right. How are you? Okay. It seemed like a little bit of a quiet day today, but you've got a few stocks that we can take a look at.

1:14What do you got for us? I got NVIDIA, Tesla, and Garden Health. Okay, very good. And while we do a quick recap on the market, we'll go through some charts here. I'll show the NASDAQ composite here, which was basically most of the indexes were basically flat. NASDAQ was down just a scotch, about a tenth of a percent. The S &P 500 was going back and forth between, you know, positive and negative at the end here. It ended maybe just slightly, slightly negative. IWM, the Russell 2000, that was down a little bit more, half a percent as that comes back to its 21-day moving average line. And the top of this base, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, that was down about a tenth of a percent as well.

2:00So not much activity, a fairly tight spread between the high and the low today. What's your take on the market overall there, Ed? Yeah, I'm not really paying too much attention to today because it was almost just like a blip. It was a strong week. I mean, so, yeah, I mean, it's like light volume day after Christmas. It's hard to take too much of it seriously. But the major indexes had a strong week. The S &P hit a new high. I mean, hit a new high on Friday as well. Dow Jones hit a record close on Wednesday. NASDAQ is getting close. The breadth was just OK. And we saw the Russell 2000 give up some of its weekly gain.

2:35So it wasn't up much, but it was still up. So I don't know. It was a pretty good week. It's been a strong little stretch. There was such a quick turnaround for the whole market that really – it really wasn't along. Like a week and a half ago, things were not looking good. Especially AI. It was kind of like, oh, is AI dead? It was like, oh, have we moved on? Have we moved on? But we were seeing on that day, that Wednesday, that we see the NASDAQ down. But the S &P was falling below. And you started seeing other – the Dow and the Russell were in the midst of multi-day losing streaks. So it was all starting to fade.

3:13And then it was like, nope, never mind. You know, it was just that it was a princess bride nearly dead and just had to just just need it. Didn't, you know, a miracle match or something. Anyway, so now we're in a good position. I don't know if you want to do a whole lot right now at the end of the year. I mean, if you're significantly invested, yeah, it's a Santa Claus rally. Maybe that doesn't have to happen. And sometimes there's heavier selling once we get into January as people sell their big winners for not having to pay taxes on it. But it just seems like things are in a good situation. People should be looking for setups.

3:46I mean, I think, honestly, pausing right here would be great if the NASDAQ could sort of pause right at these levels next week and then get through early next year and didn't take off. I mean, that would be ideal. Who knows what the market will do? But things are looking good. But I mean, just really, really impressive little stretch here. Yeah. And I mean, I think the big news for at least on the technical side, we did get that, you know, back above the 50-day moving average line, back above the 21-day moving average line. On Monday, the low cleared both of those lines for the NASDAQ. And we got a little bit of a follow-up on that.

4:21So I think that was kind of the positive action. Wednesday, of course, you know, a very minor day. Today, a very minor day. volume. You can't really pay too much attention there. Wednesday was a half day. You know, today, the day, you know, it's boxing day. It's, you know, a lot of people are not really paying too much attention to the market at this point, heading into a weekend with just one day between our Christmas, our Christmas holiday and the next week. So hard to make too much of it. But yeah, as you said, S &P 500 right there at highs. And that's pretty impressive. Again, considering how, So, you know, back here in October, we got this ugly day.

5:00Back here in November, we got this ugly day. And even this breach of the 50-day moving average line, you know, could have gone a lot worse, right? It could have come in a lot more, but we didn't. And I think that's the story here. Now, before we go too far, let's take a look at RSP, which is the Invesco S &P 500 ETF. This was up, you know, just slightly. It was basically S &P 500, you know, flat on the little bit on the downside. This was flat a little bit on the upside. But it does seem like the breadth overall has been fairly impressive. And whereas the IWM, the Russell 2000, has, you know, come in a little bit this week after Monday, RSP seems to be holding up a lot better.

5:46The RSP and Russell 2000 seem like they were kind of going in tandem with each other. But RSP seems like it's holding up a little bit better to me. What do you think? It definitely is. I mean, it is holding up better. Yeah, it's just so the breadth was fine. It wasn't great. I mean, it's not like we're tremendous. That was the thing. But we're right there at highs. All of these indexes are right at highs. I mean, it also wouldn't take that much to go to the 50-day line again if things are bad. But, yeah, everything's working out pretty well. I mean, yeah, NVIDIA, which we'll look at, that was really strong this week.

6:17And we had a few of them. You know, Google was strong and a few mega caps were doing that. But as you say, like RSBQQEW, which is still pretty big. I mean, it's the 100 biggest financial. So we're not talking about minnows here. But that was up and that had a solid week. So, yeah, I mean, there were definitely stocks that were flashing buy signals. There have been really this whole stretch ever since that last Wednesday that things have turned considerably better over that stretch. Yeah, no, absolutely. Just a few other areas to kind of look for before we go into our usual sector ETF analysis.

6:55Let's highlight SMH. You mentioned NVIDIA, and we'll cover that in more depth in a little bit. But the semiconductor, the Banex semiconductor ETF, this has really come back strongly. Again, it looked like this was potentially getting in some trouble here as it just was getting knocked down day after day after day. Is the rebound balancing out that downside that we saw just last week? It does seem to be. I mean, for me, it is. And it's not just NVIDIA. There's Micron that's doing it. There's a few names that are in there. You know, Micron is a big part of this. And that one really took off. So, I mean, there's a strong argument, I think, that you could say SMH is the way to go.

7:35If you say, like, I don't want the single stock risk. You know, NVIDIA is working right. Taiwan Semi is working right. Micron. Some of the non-AI chip makers are doing pretty well, like analog devices. I mean, they're not huge weights anymore. But, you know, there's definitely some stuff going on out there that has been doing. So I think SMH is a good way to play the chips right now. Though when we get to NVIDIA, nobody could argue against that giant. Right, right. But, yeah, I think that looks pretty good. And I think this will – look, IGV does not look very good still. And that one's still struggling.

8:10That's still below the 50-day line. ARK, which I think is a pretty good measure for like more speculative or more high beta names, still below the 50-day line. Obviously, some names are not like Tesla's the biggest weight in there. Tesla's near highs and we'll get to Tesla, you know, but ARK is not. You know, I mean, so it just sort of it's SMH is clearly still looking very good. That's really like, you know, we're worried about AI. But at the end of the day, the chips are still among the strongest parts of the chips of the tech sector. And as we often do is let's go ahead and take a look at the 10-year treasury yield.

8:46You know, it's certainly kind of just been going a little bit of back and forth here lately. So is there much that you can make out of this right now? Seems like kind of a toss-up, you know, day by day. Yeah, it is. I think that's the way to put it. There was some strong GDP data, but like some of the other reports we've had, it's just there's little things about it that you're not 100 % sure on. It still looks pretty well. The numbers, it probably wasn't as strong as the headline number, but it was still solid. So I think we're going to be maybe in a holding pattern. We don't really know how the economy is doing with inflation and jobs, overall economic growth, some mixed signals, mixed data.

9:25So I think the bond market is probably wondering what's going to happen. It may be until we get the January data that we start feeling more comfortable with how things really are. And is that, do you think, because the shutdown? Yeah, because of the shutdown. Right, exactly. And they had to make some guesses, like the CPI, they had to make some guesses. And there was also in the GDP report, which is old Q3 data, there's weird things like video game things. And there were some weird things in there that threw off things back and forth on both sides. You know, we're going to do something a little different on the sectors here.

10:02We're going to go with the weekly gain and just see how things end up. Something to talk about there, yeah. You know, and we'll start with the worst first. So let's go ahead and start with Jets. Surprisingly, you know, this was really looking strong, but it really didn't participate this week. So I think it brings into question, you know, this sector rotation has been a little tough. You think the market's going one way and then it doesn't really kind of continue. But overall, you look at the weekly chart and it's hard to it's hard to say, you know, even though this was maybe one of the worst sectors for the week.

10:37it's still, you had this really strong move off. So it doesn't certainly seem like it's in trouble. No, it almost looks like a three weeks tight. I didn't look at last week's move, but that could be almost a three weeks tight. After a strong move, that almost seems bullish in that. Yeah, and then you already mentioned ARKK, which was down a little bit for the week, getting that potential resistance at the 10-week moving average line or 50-day moving average line. Another area that didn't do so great this week. And this is kind of the way we like it. Staples, you know, you kind of if you are seeing strength in the market, especially in the growth area, you really don't want to see the XLP consumer staples do particularly well.

11:18This seems like it's getting resistance right there at 80 and at its 40 week moving average line. Let's talk a little bit about IBIT. This, you know, actually ended up for the week, but still very, very damaged. Yeah, and every time, look, it hasn't been able to get above the 21-day line at all, which has been falling. So it just hasn't been able to do it. Now, I would also caution, this seems to make weekend moves or moves overnight, and then those moves can just disappear in a few seconds in regular session trade. So, yeah, until this gets up, and there's a lot of crypto-related stocks, and until this rebounds, it doesn't have to get to record highs, but it has some real momentum that a lot of those stocks are going to be under pressure to.

12:02Yeah, totally makes sense. Another area is, again, something we'll get to it a little bit, XLY, which consumer discretionary. But one of the big components here is Tesla. That's about a 20 percent weight. And along with Amazon together, those are about 40 percent. You know, it's worth noting, OK, here's here's the XLY on the daily coming out of this double bottom. Our SPD, which is the equal weighted version of this, also coming out of a double bottom, maybe not as strong, but not falling apart. So it's not like this is just Tesla holding everything together. XLY, you know, holding up pretty well.

12:42Yeah, I mean, consumers are still some strength there, especially on the higher end. And so that's where the discretionary spending tends to do well. Yeah. So, you know, we've been talking about on the something I mentioned on IBD Live this morning, Tapestry, which is the coach bags, you know, Ralph Lauren to a certain degree. And I mean, I was looking, you know, we've been talking about AEO, American Eagle Outfitters and A &F, the Amber Crumley and Fitch, both, you know, doing doing fairly well in the consumer discretionary. and a lot of talk about XRT, you know, kind of setting up here. But moving on to energy, XLE, this was, you know, this was up a little bit, just two-tenths of a percent.

13:24So not one of the strongest sectors, still below its 50-day moving average line. This is probably a bad price here due to the split. But, gosh, it just seems like it keeps on going back and forth and hasn't really trended for the last month here. Yeah, I mean, energy stocks are just so tough, and it just – energy prices really aren't doing particularly well. There was a little blips that you get, and so some of the names were coming up a few weeks ago, but that's over for the short run, at least. Something we were calling the AI adjacent for a while here is the utility space. This is still below its 50-day moving average line.

13:59And again, usually more defensive, but we certainly saw a lot of participation by the utility names. Again, you know, as power, the distribution, manufacture of power, all of that was coming into the forefront in terms of the energy needs of AI and data centers and what have you. Also, XLRE, which tends to be a little bit more defensive. This is still below the 200-day moving average line and the 15-day moving average line. That relative strength is not great. Yeah, right. Right, exactly. You know, and, you know, there have been kind of these, you know, glimmers of hope, you know, sometimes where we've looked at ITB, the home builders, and it looked like that was getting above the 50-day moving average line, maybe making a comeback.

14:44But that just kind of petered out. Nothing really came of it. We talked about RSP, the equal-weighted. XLV, the healthcare area, this seems like it's set up in kind of an overall pattern here, a very long saucer with a handle getting tacked on. and support at the 10-week moving average line. So that's been looking a little bit better. XLI, you know, relative strength, not great lately on this as it's gone flat, but, you know, maybe perking up a little bit. We'll see on that one. QQEW, which we also mentioned, you know, that was up, you know, nicely, as was the Qs, both about, you know, equal in terms of their gains for the week, you know, maybe a 10th of a percent off.

15:27And then XLC, let me do that again. XLC, one more time, XLC. Okay, the communications area. This is Meta and Google or Alphabet, I should say, the parent company together. And a nice double bottom. Looks like it's gotten a handle tacked on there. Very interesting since Meta has looked so poor being down below its 40-week moving average line. whereas Alphabet has looked so much stronger than so many of the Mag 7 lately. Yeah, I mean, Google, everybody realized that AI was a strength, not a weakness. And, you know, they seem to be able to either turn out they're going to make money off of it or the perception is they're going to make money off of it, whereas Meta, they're spending so much money on it.

16:19And maybe people just aren't seeing the same payoff. But yeah, this is, I said SMH was a good way to play the sector. I'd say Google's a better way to play that. That's such a hot and cold. There's such a difference between that and what the ETF is and obviously Meta. Yeah, absolutely. XBI, we talked about health care and one of the stronger areas this week was XBI, the biotech area. I actually wrote a column on that for Swing Trader. You know, this was offering another entry after we had had a nice move on this one in Swing Trader. This is also a leaderboard position. So that's been doing fairly well.

16:58KBWB. So the banks, you know, whether it's Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley, these seem to have come up recently and held up pretty well. The economy seems to be better and better than people expected. There's a wider yield spread and there's a lot of deal making, it seems like. So there's just a lot of little things, a lot of the big banks and including foreign banks, too, that they're just doing doing pretty well right now. They're not amazing, but, you know, anybody taken like, especially when you consider the last few months where there have been some real herky-jerky moves in the tech space, these have done really well over that period.

17:36And XLK, the tech space, as you mentioned, you know, it was certainly getting clobbered quite a bit last week and, you know, down here in the beginning of November. But this now looks like it's setting up with a base. So very, very different look here. Prospects much stronger after a very, you know, very strong week following up on the bounce last week. So that's been looking good. XLF in the financial space that has also broken out and continued moving higher this week. one of the better performing sectors. SPY that we talked about getting to new highs very nicely. FNGS, so again, one of those areas not dead yet.

18:22So even though this is coming up to the 50-day moving average line, could get turned away there. It got support right here at the lows in November, came right down to there, got support, and seems to be bouncing up and was very strong for the week. XLB materials, that one was also strong this week. You know, one of the stronger areas, actually. And, you know, this has been kind of cobbling together a nice move with the relative strength, still below its moving averages, but, you know, perking up above its short-term moving average recently and looking a little bit stronger. What do you take that for on the material side.

19:05I mean, there seems to be just, you know, like actual tangible goods seem to be doing pretty well, like raw stuff or semi-raw, like you look at XME and obviously gold and all that, you know, copper, they're all doing well. So there just seems to be that kind of situation right now that those areas of the market have been strong. So, yeah, and XME was kind of on next on our list. This is such a such a hoshposh of stuff. You know, you've got the coal in there, you've got the gold, you've got the silver, you've got, you know, steel, you got copper, aluminum, a little bit of everything. But this has certainly been a very strong move the last month here.

19:49So that's been interesting to see. ITA, the aerospace and defense also kind of carving out a little base here. So that's been interesting. SMH that we talked about, that is one of the stronger areas for the week. Again, a really strong move that started on Monday and just kind of edged up higher each day this week, which was nice. FFTY, our growth kind of indicator, this getting back up to the 50-day moving average line after a strong move Friday and a gap up on Monday. Didn't really make much more progress from Monday, but held against, which that's a win right there. The gold miners also doing very well.

20:30This is where a lot of the strength was. And I'm going to go ahead and add platinum just for fun here, because that one has just gone crazy here lately. But, you know, that's the physical right there. Gold, no slouch. That was up 4.4 % for the week. What's happening with the silver, the gold, the platinum, palladium, you name it? There seem to be physical shortages in many cases. I mean, there are certain things. I think that just Europe and the U.S. moving more towards more ICE vehicles like traditional gas guzzling cars, well, that needs more catalytic converters and some things like that. So there's some of those things in there.

21:09But yeah, so some of that's not gold, but it just seems like there's just demand. And the Fed seems likely the next moves will be cutting rates. It's just this momentum still there. There's probably still uncertainty about everything. So the combination of lower rates and maybe just uncertainty about where we are has really, really driven gold up. It is interesting how strong gold has been versus Bitcoin having a not very good year after what you would have thought, especially the dollars week. You would have thought, OK, Bitcoin was doing very well. I mean, it was fine. You know, it's like, but it's really sold off for whatever reason.

21:46And gold has not. Gold has just taken off. It's at the end of the day, it's still gold and it's still silver. And these other precious metals slash industrial metals really doing well. Well, and that is something, you know, as you noted, both silver and platinum do have those industrial uses. You know, I mean, on the catalytic converter side, of course, you know, everyone's talking about, you know, Ford and, you know, a lot of these big companies that are saying, hey, you know what? We're going to back away from some of this EV stuff that we've been doing. So, yeah, very interesting for both of those.

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22:55Let's go ahead and move on from the sectors and get into some individual stocks, shall we? And we can start with NVIDIA. I do have a position in this myself. We do have this on SwingTrader. I should have also mentioned I do have a position in GDX. I forgot to mention that as we were discussing that. But NVIDIA, back above the 50-day moving average line this week. You know, certainly the relative strength has been nothing to write home about for a while. But this is looking potentially set up. Yeah, this was one of the big winners of the week. So it wasn't right there when it came on because we had, yeah, I made a decent move last week.

23:33But it was still below the 50-day line. still considerably. But strong move this week. There was positive signs, like a report that some more advanced chip sales will resume in China. And then later in the week, NVIDIA appears to have made one of these$20 billion, don't call it a takeover takeover, where they get the IP and they get the key talent, but don't technically buy it out. And so that has pushed it up. So to me, it's actionable from getting above the 50-day line. I suppose you could also argue, I think there was like 188 was an interesting area that was like a short, short-term high that was like a week or two before that.

24:14I think another area, so another area you could buy it is 196. That's the reversal day on November 20th, both of them. So that's the thing. There's the November 20th reversal day from after earnings, and then the October 10th reversal day is essentially there. So that seems to be a key area to get above that. The growth is still strong. You know, we've had accelerating EPS growth the last two quarters, sales growth picked up. So it's a little bit like, can it keep going? Can it keep going? And then it picks up again. It's like it was slowing for a little bit. And then you, whoa, you picked up again.

24:44Now, some of that's because there were some blackwell difficulties initially, like early in the year. And now that has been resolved. And they always got to move that on. But it still seems like this is the giant. It's done this before. If you go to a weekly, that doesn't mean it has to end here. But it's, you know, in the midst of all these huge moves, it had a long pause, really, you know, ultimately like about a year long from mid 2024 to mid 2025, where it went sideways. I mean, in very up and down fashion. So maybe that's what's been going on here, but still a real thing. It's still real strong.

25:17It's not that richly valued, you know, either, despite having this enormous run that the earnings have come in, you know, that, you know, so it's still a lot to like about this name. No, absolutely. And then let's take a look at another mega cap, Tesla. A lot of talk again. The deadline of end of year is coming quickly for less safety drivers being in the Austin Teslas. So what do you see going on here? That's a big thing. I mean, Musk has said for the decade this year, next year for self-driving. But normally it's like, oh, it's he's saying that six months away, nine months away, but he's been saying it just a couple of weeks ago.