Stocks Sell Off, Bitcoin Dives; Google, Philbro Animal Health, Royal Caribbean In Focus

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0:33Ed Carson:Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Stock Market Today for Thursday, February 5th. It's Alexis Garcia here, and the major indexes tumbled on Thursday. The drop stemming from selling in tech, Bitcoin, and we had some surprise jobs data thrown in for good measure. So here to help break down everything you need to know about today's market action is IBD News Editor Ed Carson. So, Ed, we had the software-as-a-service SaaSpocalypse yesterday. Another tough day on the market.

1:10Alexis Garcia:Yeah, a lot of things going on. I want to take a look at Google, which ended up surprisingly strong. Filbro Animal Health, which is ticker PAHC, and Royal Caribbean.

1:20Ed Carson:All right, we'll get to those stocks. So let's just quickly round up the major indexes. The S &P 500 finishing the day down 1.2 percent. The Dow also down 1.2 percent. The NASDAQ down 1.6 percent and small caps falling over 2 percent today. So let me go ahead and get our charts going here, Ed. Starting on SPY, that's the S &P 500 Spider Select ETF. And we can see here breaking below the 50-day line.

1:51Alexis Garcia:Yeah, I mean, this had been sort of holding up there. It held, held. It was like creaking, but it broke through here. It actually undercut the January low of, you know, at least intraday. So it's the lowest in 2026. You know, yesterday was more deeply divided. There were things that were doing really well, and NASDAQ and some techs were not. This day was much more, the breadth was much more negative, especially on the NASDAQ, but it was negative on the NYSE as well. So there were pockets of strength or pockets of resilience. But, you know, an RSP, yeah, that was down. I mean, obviously, you're in a much better position.

2:27Alexis Garcia:The drop wasn't as big. It's falling from record highs, not at the edge of the 50 day line. So a lot less technically damaging. But SPY falling through. Yeah, it's just a lot of negative things. You know, I think it's Bitcoin. There's some other things that were going on. But it's real risk off right now. It's just risk off. The NASDAQ really fell sharply today, has been weakening. Software really melted down. Chips were holding up OK, but there's just a lot of weakness. Anything crypto is getting crushed. So this is actually now the lowest since late November. So, you know, the higher lows thing is sort of breaking down.

3:08Alexis Garcia:I mean, for a while we were holding there. If you look intraday on the NASDAQ, and it really works for almost all the indexes, there were some efforts. Okay, here we go. We bottomed it. We actually hit lows of the day fairly early on. But the intraday rallies, and we had a strong one, but it faded. Strong one, it faded. We almost came to session lows before just a little blip at the end. So I would definitely caution people. Don't get excited by one decent day, or certainly not one good 20-minute run. I mean, those things happen. You're always going to see those kind of bounces, just like you're going to see some falls, you know, little intraday falls.

3:45Alexis Garcia:Need to see a lot more than that. I think people need to be really more defensive. There's some things that are working, but they aren't, you know, you just don't know how. It seems like this divided market is, you know, was definitely weakening broadly today.

3:58Ed Carson:And let's go ahead and check in on the Dow Jones Industrial Average as well. This one, a little bit better shape, below the 21 day line, but still holding above the 50.

4:09Alexis Garcia:Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, this is looking better and there's things that are working, you know, showing strength. It had a bad day and one more day and maybe it's at the 50-day line. On the other hand, one good day and this could be at record highs. So definitely in a better situation. You look at that RS line has been trending higher for a few months and it definitely hit a new high. It's the highest since, I don't know, looks like maybe June or even higher. So, you know, that's positive for Dow. It's not a great sign necessarily for techs, even though there are a number of techs in there.

4:38Alexis Garcia:Um, IWM for the Russell 2000, this tested the 50 day line. It might've actually closed below the two, the, uh, the 200 day line. I don't know. I mean, the two, sorry, the 10 week line. Uh, I don't know. And the Russell sometimes is slightly divergent from that. So it's, it's possible that stayed above, but clearly that's testing again, that was looking so strong, but it's been pulling back. So it had more margin for error, but that margin is going away. I mean, it's sort of, I mean, that's that sort of thing. RSP, which you had brought up earlier, that's clearly the best looking thing out there.

5:09Alexis Garcia:There's some other equal weight type things that are gonna show that kind of strength. So it's not a disaster. There's some ETFs that are holding up reasonably well. So I don't wanna, you know, it's not, everything is going wrong, but it's hard to know. You don't know if the whole market's gonna sell off or what if we have this whipsaw rally back into tech? Some of those other sectors that did well may see drawdown. So, you know, it's tough either way. I think people should probably be pulling back on their exposure, even if it's just from selling their losers and not doing much in the way of buys.

5:42Alexis Garcia:So you don't have to do it. It's sort of like you don't have to play every day. You can play when things are going well. You don't have to. It's like if it's really raining outside, you don't have to have a picnic. You can say we're canceling the picnic. We'll have the picnic when it's nice out. There's nothing wrong with that. That's the nice thing about being an individual investor. You don't have to be fully invested all the time.

6:05Ed Carson:No, absolutely, especially in these conditions where it's been so hard to identify a market trend here, Ed. Let's go ahead and look at some ETFs starting with SMH. That's the VanEck Semiconductor ETF down about three-tenths of a percent today. Again, holding at this 50-day line. But, you know, chips have been the one area that have been strong, but sharply pulling back here over the last week.

6:31Alexis Garcia:Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how this goes. I mean, there were some things that we'll see. I mean, AMD really knocked it last week and we'll see. I mean, Google's huge and we'll talk about it, but some AI infrastructure stocks held up reasonably well today. Some did not. But so it's just something that, you know, can that hang on, you know, and that's something there's a lot of positive news you'd think for chips and for a lot of AI hardware, but it's not necessarily translating into the stocks right now. Yeah.

7:03Ed Carson:And how about we take a look at IGV? Talk about not translating. I mean, software has just been getting completely pummeled here. We had the big sell off thanks to Anthropic and their news about this new Claude coworker. It seems to just be a lot of questions about what the software sector is going to look like as more AI tools come online.

7:27Alexis Garcia:Yeah, I mean, it's not just that there's all this damage and like there does seem to risk, but you don't know. And I think one of the things is that software's generally had higher valuations, in part because you have steady growth. I mean, obviously, individual names might have all things, but you know, you're selling every quarter that, you know, there's recurring revenue, etc, etc. So you can feel confident it's going to be there. Yeah, you might beat a right, but the margin of how bad things can be can only be so bad, at least on, you know, so as opposed to say chip stocks or something else.

7:59Alexis Garcia:Now, you don't know. I mean, what's the demand like going to be for a lot of these software makers? Some may do great, some may not. And it just sort of all of a sudden, that's just like, you know, there's some real thinking about things in the last few weeks and months. It's like maybe fundamentally, a lot of these names might, you know, just going to have a real, real decline, some kind of almost an existential decline. I don't know that, you You know, maybe the market will change its mind, you know, but right now that's sort of the sentiment. And that's just a fundamental thing. You can't just look and say, look at the earnings.

8:32Alexis Garcia:It's like, well, we don't know about next year or the year after that or 2028. Well, people just use, you know, some AI tool for 2 % of the money. And, yeah, so it's a real tough time and it may be for a long time.

8:48Ed Carson:Yeah, let's go ahead and take a look at ARK-K here, Ed. Again, this representing a lot of growth, speculative stocks. This one not having a good run here of late. Down again, over 5 % today and really just falling below the 200-day and this round 70 level.

9:08Alexis Garcia:Yeah, I mean, ARK doesn't have much in the way of chips. And what it does have in chips is AMD. So that's not good for them. They have a lot of Tesla, which is struggling with it. Not that bad. I mean, everything's selling off a lot of crypto. ARK is not in good things right now. Uh, so, but, you know, that's, you can see how this was looking okay a couple weeks ago. It's like, okay, here we are. But it really has sold off since then. And, you know, that's just what's going to happen right now. And that's what's going on.

9:38Ed Carson:Yeah. And I mean, look, we've been talking about Bitcoin. Let's look at iBit. That's the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF. I mean, this down over 13 % today. But again, Bitcoin not looking good here as of late. I'm on the weekly chart. Just a really bad week for Bitcoin.

9:56Alexis Garcia:Just really intense selling. Just really, really intense. And you can see it had been weakening already. And it's just a meltdown here. It's the lowest since at least November 2024 for Bitcoin. There's just nothing seen to be. Everything just seems like papier-mâché support levels. It just seems like it just keeps on just going through, going through. And it's just not coming in. And that's hitting everything in crypto. It's notable, and we'll talk about it a little bit with MSTR, but like MSTR had earnings tonight. We'll talk about that because that company is now underwater on its Bitcoin. And you just have to wonder, it has not worked as a hedge.

10:35Alexis Garcia:And I think that are people selling Bitcoin because of other losses? Are they selling other things because Bitcoin is falling? I think this is contributing to a sentiment and also just selling pressure in stocks, even maybe in some things that aren't particularly tied to crypto. So, yeah.

10:49Ed Carson:And, you know, one area that's holding up is XLP. It's the consumer staple select spider ETF down fractionally today, Ed. But, you know, this is still in a buy zone here. And, you know, we've seen this come on pretty strong here over the last few days.

11:04Alexis Garcia:Yeah, this is one of the best areas out there. I mean, and that's not a great sign for other names. I mean, some of these things have some decent growth, but it's also tough. You just don't know if this will last. You can play that. And some of these things are now extended. they've gone on some pretty big runs. So you can find some things out there in the discount retail, there's some consumer products, but it is tough because they've made such big runs. It would not be shocking to see some significant decline, even if it's temporary, just from a snapback, especially if there's a snapback into tech.

11:35Alexis Garcia:So just really tough.

11:37Ed Carson:Yeah, well, I saw when you and Ken talked about Pepsi this week that we were maybe in for it for the market this week. But let's go ahead and look at some individual stocks.

12:16Ed Carson:Starting with Google, we had earnings yesterday, really clawed its way back today off these lows and finished pretty decently, down only half a percent after, you know, being below the 50 day line pretty much. So thoughts here on Google?

12:35Alexis Garcia:They had strong earnings. You know, you're seeing the acceleration in revenue growth for several quarters. A lot of things were very positive. It was what really got people was just the jaw-dropping consumer capital spending. The Q4 spending was way above views, like maybe triple or what people expected. And then they got it well above. They're basically going to double capital spending in 2026. And that was way above estimates. But Google is delivering it. People sort of feel like Google's an AI winner. So I think people feel more confident that this is going to pay off for them. Now, again, that vibe can change pretty quickly.

13:12Alexis Garcia:But where other companies are announcing, and other hyperscalers are bidding up a lot, including Amazon, which we'll talk about. But yeah, so holding the 50-day line, holding the buy point now is just really impressive performance, given that the broader market did not react well. Again, Google's news should be good for AI infrastructure, but the market is in no mood for that right now.

13:38Ed Carson:So as it's holding this buy point here, Ed, still actionable in your eyes or what would you like to see happen for you to make a move on this?

13:48Alexis Garcia:You know, one issue is that sometimes, you know, and this was obviously still negative, but sometimes you can have a positive reaction to earnings. And I guess all in all, it's a positive reaction given what other things were doing. Sometimes you can have a positive reaction. But if the selling continues broadly, that that'll fall off. It wouldn't be shocking to see if the market had another day like today that Google is down 5%. So it's just tough. I'd like to see the market steady a little bit. But yes, it's in a buy zone. I think there's a three weeks tight as well on a weekly chart there's that.

14:17Alexis Garcia:So you could look for a little more strength before that. But definitely, this should be high on people's watch list because it's doing far and away better than any other mega cap out there.

14:32Ed Carson:Yeah, it's one of the top names there. Let's go ahead and look at Philbro Animal Health. This having a nice day today, up almost 22 % charging above this 46.42 buy point. We've got RS rating at a new high at this breakout. So tell me about this one.

14:52Alexis Garcia:Yeah, I mean, really powerful earnings. I mean, look at that move. You know, it's just really something. It's hard to know what are you going to do here on a day like the day. Go intraday. If you go to a five-minute bar, this was interesting. So it surges up initially, and then it's sort of based for quite a while. And I suppose for a little bit, and you could have bought it as it tried to clear that area. It didn't really move that well, but then later on it did. So you could have tried to play, you know, it was already up 15%, 16%. I usually just try to wait to see if it can pull back, and sometimes stocks just don't wait for me.

15:25Alexis Garcia:And, you know, I'd not say pull back all the way, but sort of pause over a few days. But if you wanted to play intraday, those might have been ways where you could have gotten into it. Really impressive. There were a number of big earnings winners sort of and names that are – this one's pretty unfamiliar, but some other ones that are more familiar, but not usually like the ones that people are talking about. Great, great results. But yeah, now it's extended. Now I think you need to wait to see if it does pause, pull back, provide some kind of other entry. All right.

15:55Ed Carson:How about we wrap this up with a look at Royal Caribbean? That's RCL. This one reversing lower today down about eight tenths of a percent. But again, we saw this gap up here after earnings charged up about 18 percent. And it seems to be holding that, Ed, and digesting that. So thoughts here.

16:14Alexis Garcia:Yeah, this is when I talk about like pausing after an earnings gap. This is what I'm talking about. This was an earnings gap within the base. But this now has a handle. It should have a handle after, you know, on a couple hours. Market surge should change this to a couple of handles so that lowers the buy point. Won't be a handle on a weekly, partly because the week isn't over and also because right now it's positive for the week. But there would be one on a daily because that's five days since the last, you know, since the top. So that provides another entry there. The earnings were really strong.

16:48Alexis Garcia:So, yeah, just sort of wait to see how that goes. You know, some travel names are doing pretty well. Again, a place that not necessarily the online travel space, those got hit by AI disruption, but airlines, cruise operators, those are doing pretty well. That isn't something you can quite take over by AI yet. All right.