The Tale Of Two Markets Continues; Brinker, Cinemark, Expedia In Focus

0:00Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Stock Market Today.

0:13Justin Nielsen:It's Alissa Coram here, and we are continuing to see a tale of two markets. Joining me now to break down all the action is my colleague, Justin Nielsen. Justin, what do you have for us today?

0:24Alissa Coram:Well, I'm going to try and romance the audience a little bit. We'll do Dinner and a Movie with Brinker International. That's EAT, E-A-T. Cinemark for the movies. That is C-N-K. And then Whisk Away on a Vacation with Expedia, E-X-P-E.

0:39Justin Nielsen:There you go. Sounds like a fun time. It's almost like it's Valentine's Day. Almost. A little entertainment on the show today. But hey, if there's no tech involved, tells you what kind of market that we're in. And so speaking of, we'll take a closer look at the major indexes and then get into those stocks. So the tech-heavy Nasdaq down about 0.8 % on the day. The Nasdaq 100 down 1 % on the day. Justin, a much milder decline for the S &P 500 down 0.3 % on the day. The Russell, tracking small caps, down about 0.7%. The Dow was actually positive today up about a quarter of a percent or so. So we are seeing continued weakness in the tech area and the Nasdaq composite on the ropes here, Justin.

1:32Justin Nielsen:What do you make of it?

1:33Alissa Coram:Yeah, it's definitely not a time to be in tech right now, at least heavy there. A lot of the areas, you know, they're still setting up some of the areas, especially in software, but it's hard for a lot of these to get traction right now. We're seeing a lot of breakout failures. And then there is just kind of the ugliness that you're seeing. Let's take a look at SMH, for instance, in the chip space. It's never a good look when you come up to your 50-day moving average line, get turned away and go down from there. That's more like, oh, that's what we look for in shorts when we're shorting companies and looking for things to go down.

2:08Alissa Coram:So, you know, Magnificent 7, MAGS, of course, has a very heavy weight here. It's not breaking down completely, but it's also just there's no oomph to it. And meanwhile, we've got the Dow Jones Industrial Average, as you mentioned, that was up today. Thanks in large part to Visa, one of the members there that had a really, really nice move. That sticker symbol V really breaking out very strongly, as was MasterCard today. And, yeah, the RSP, equal weighted S &P 500, still just holding up their spitting distance from new highs. It made new highs last week. And even the S &P 500, despite that Magnificent 7 really kind of taking a lot of the S &P 500, weighing it down, it's still holding exactly where we'd want it to.

3:05Alissa Coram:You know, it's holding above that high, that previous high. It's right there at its 21-day moving average line. It hasn't broken down below that, and it still remains above its 50-day moving average line. So I'm not going to say, oh, you know, this is, again, time to really panic here or anything like that, because there are these areas of strength and resilience that we're seeing. but not if you're in tech, not if you're in some of these names like Sandisk, you know, that were our former leaders. And again, I have just really gotten taken to the woodshed. I mean, Sandisk today, it closed well enough and off its lows, but at one point it was down more than 10%.

3:47Alissa Coram:That's kind of rough going for the portfolios right now when you're kind of in shaky territory and then you get something that's down 10%, it's really hard to hold on to these things. So yeah, I'm focused a lot more away from tech, a lot more into other areas. Worth mentioning that one of the best performers today in terms of your ETFs, in addition to XLF, because again, with Visa, MasterCard, doing a great job there for XLF. You also had XLP, the staples, as being one of your top areas. So it is a little bit of the defensive action that we're seeing. So, yeah, you got to be careful out there.

4:35Justin Nielsen:Okay, so a defensive tone there. And before we take a step back, I do want to zoom in a little bit more and look at the intraday chart of the NASDAQ because this was something that we covered on IEBD Live this morning. Our senior market strategist, Mike Webster, was really wanting to see the NASDAQ and the Qs take out the opening levels. We did not do that on the Qs. Looks like we closed, I don't know, eyeballing it roughly mid-range on the day. and then the NASDAQ composite looks like it temporarily got above the opening bar, didn't quite fill the gap, but then fell back down, also looking like it closed roughly mid-range or so.

5:22So what do you make of where we finished the day in terms of,

5:27Justin Nielsen:hey, wanting to see the bulls step up, spend a little ammo here, try to get the NASDAQ composite back on its feet? Are you concerned about that? Or are you viewing the action over the last couple of days as, hey, maybe this is an opportunity, a pullback that we can then see a bounce and see fresh buying opportunities from?

5:52Alissa Coram:I'm always looking at this could be an opportunity, right? Because you have to have that mindset, You know, that the idea that any given period, no matter how bad it is, you could be four days away from a follow through day and a change of trend. You know, that's just kind of, I think, a good way to approach things. At the same time, risk management has to be very top of mind as well. You have to be thinking no matter how good stuff is, at any moment you could roll over and have to really start protecting your profits and protecting your capital. So you really have to kind of hold both of those ideas in your mind at any one time.

6:29Alissa Coram:But getting back to the intraday chart, it's a real interesting point. I think, you know, the close, we're always interested in when you gap down on a Monday, how do you close? How do you finish? And as for today, could have been better, could have been worse, right? It did accomplish that goal of getting above the high, but it couldn't hold that. And it feels almost like a microcosm there of what we're seeing in a lot of stocks. it gets up above these levels it just can't hold there and it never quite breaks down enough to really get you into a panic mode but the the weakness it just kind of grinds lower and is very difficult to make progress and so unfortunately sometimes what you see is this kind of slow move down a drawdown that gets bigger and bigger in your portfolio as you kind of die a death of a thousand paper cuts.

7:24Alissa Coram:Um, you know, nothing hits you really hard, but there's enough of these little things that you're trying because again, you look at RSP and it seems like there would be enough out there to work. Um, but in, in practice, sometimes that's not as easy. Um, but again, the S and P 500 and, you know, is, is holding up better. Um, RSP, you know, doing well. And, uh, let's also, uh, circle back to the Russell 2000 IWM cause we didn't look at that one. you know, that's, it's, it's below its 21 day moving average line, but above its 50 day moving average line. I feel like a lot of these, you know, indexes are kind of giving a mixed message.

8:03Alissa Coram:They're not, they're not bad enough to really shake your confidence, but they're not good enough to really increase your confidence. So I think we're at a real wait and see moment. I'm not wanting to step in front of and anticipate a big move or bounce here. I'm going to wait for the bounce to happen and then act accordingly. Participate.

8:25Justin Nielsen:Yeah.

8:25Alissa Coram:Yeah. There we go. Yeah.

8:27Justin Nielsen:If we get that, which would be great. So we'll be thinking about that.

8:31Alissa Coram:It's a big if.

8:32Justin Nielsen:Yeah. If. And we're also going to continue to monitor the deterioration here with the NASDAQ right at the 50-day line, below the follow-through day, below the prior marked high, and the S &P you know getting towards its breakout area right Justin so we do have some levels that we are watching with this power trend being tested pretty early on here and I know you and Webby spent a good amount of time talking about that on Friday.

9:03Alissa Coram:Yeah absolutely and look there are you know in addition to some of these areas in the defensive side we also have to give a quick nod to iBit, you know, Bitcoin doing well recently. And I can't wait to talk to Jim Ropel on the podcast. He's coming up on Wednesday. So that's going to be live at 5 p.m. I'm sure he'll have something to say about this if I know Jim. And then, you know, you also see gold, you know, and gold was something that Jim Ropel was all over before. So whether it's GLD or I do have a position myself in GDX. That's been my way of participating. So a lot of this is coming down to weakness in the dollar.

9:46Alissa Coram:If you look at DXY, that's something that has certainly been a factor here. But it's real interesting. Usually we think of IBIT as a little bit more of a risk on, but with the staples doing a little bit better, the Dow doing a little bit better, RRSP, it's, again, this really weird mixed market. And so I think there's reason to be cautious, not necessarily overly aggressive, but at the same time, you got to stay engaged because there are, I think, potentially opportunities here.

10:15Justin Nielsen:Well said. Okay, well, let's take a look at some potential opportunities out there outside of the technology sector, starting in the retail restaurants group with Brinker International, ticker EAT up 3.2 % on the day after a big move on Friday for the stock, continuing a powerful move here.

10:39Alissa Coram:Yeah, that's the key here. So, I mean, I think you could maybe look at this as maybe an add-on entry, a little bit tough to buy up here, you know, because that's not long enough to be a base. It's not quite even long enough to be a shelf necessarily. It's kind of, I don't know, a lip of a shelf, you know, or something. So, but it is important to be looking at stocks like this. And I do have a position in this myself. It is important to be looking for stocks like this for opportunities to get into them. You know, this one is, again, kind of up and out of there. Cheesecake Factory is another one that we were talking about today in terms of, So cheesecake is maybe a little bit more of a longer shelf, but that one was kind of up and out of there.

11:27Alissa Coram:Look, it's it's an interesting thing with the economy. There are certainly a lot of folks getting nervous. You know, inflation has been much more persistent than originally thought. But the consumer, you know, still seems to be alive and well. There's a lot of retail areas that are looking strong. This is retail restaurants. You have a lot of these that have been doing well. And this is one of the areas where I feel like breakouts have been working. There have been a lot of breakout failures in a lot of other areas, but this is an area where breakouts have been working. So I think you have to be very cognizant of those areas that are kind of bucking the trend of normal.

12:08Alissa Coram:you know what's normal out there the ones that are stronger and we're always so big on relative strength you have to just again recognize where some of that relative strength is coming from and both Brinker and Cheesecake Factory people are still going out to eat and you know maybe not even just out to eat I'm going to go ahead and add another one in there because I think Maple Bear CART C-A-R-T you know people are ordering stuff and just having it delivered as well. So there is certainly still, I think a lot of the convenience of, hey, I don't want to make stuff myself. Let someone else make it for me.

12:47Alissa Coram:And of course, Chili's, you know, is getting known for how they've really revamped their happy hour and their menu and done a lot of things that have really led to some powerful gains recently.

13:00Justin Nielsen:Absolutely. Speaking of powerful, how many weeks up in a row? So, you know, one down week in the entire move over the last couple of months. Pretty impressive here, Justin, seeing that expansion for the relative strength line above its moving averages. And then you had a reacceleration of earnings growth back to double digits. So that's always nice to see there. So thanks for giving this one a shout out. So a little bit of an aggressive entry or at the very least an add-on more in this type of market. Let's go, now that we've had dinner.

13:43Alissa Coram:Or a swing trade entry. Or a swing trade entry. Because sometimes, yeah, you can enter these for a very small, hey, I'm just going to kind of get the pop. And look, if you get enough cushion, maybe you turn it into a position trade. But when you're doing a swing trade entry, a lot of times what you're going to do is you're going to really limit that loss as much as possible. You really want it to move pretty quickly. And that's why I believe we put this one on Swing Trader. And that's the way we're handling it. And so far, we did kind of get the move that we wanted. We immediately saw some progress.

14:17Alissa Coram:And what we did, we took a quarter off into the strength. And that's what we're going to probably continue to do, just sell this into strength.

14:27Justin Nielsen:Okay, so now that we've had dinner, we're going to go to a movie at Cinemark, up 5 % today, moving out of a short consolidation, Justin, and some pretty compelling growth on a quarterly basis for this stock.

14:46Alissa Coram:Another thing that just kind of says that the consumer is still alive and well, and they're going out to the movies. Cinemark, one of the things that they have, they do have a lot of IMAX theaters, and I haven't seen it yet, so don't spoil it. No spoilers. You know, the Odyssey, of course, a lot of folks talking about that and how it was, I guess, really good to see in IMAX. I guess it's really hard to get tickets to IMAX theaters showing the Odyssey. But Cinemark, yeah, it's folks are going to the movies. Now, this one is, I think, a little bit more easy to get into. It's not just sticking straight up there.

15:24Alissa Coram:This does have kind of a shelf that it's created, a little tight area and a break above that. Now, I also want to just point out real quick this two little dots that you see. We call them ants. So for folks that aren't familiar with our charts, this is something that David Ryan created decades ago. worked with Bill O 'Neill, the founder of Investors Business Daily on that. And of course, David Ryan was one of his protégés, a three-time U.S. investing champion. And it just really kind of shows you when there's power. Now, I personally don't use this as a buy signal, but I do love to see it to kind of show me, hey, this is something showing power.

16:04Alissa Coram:Now, can it give me an entry? Can it give a pause? And I love how Cinemark did that very beautifully. It just kind of tightened up right there. It let the 21-day moving average line catch up to it after that big move it had. And now it's, you know, kind of breaking that downtrend, breaking that kind of resistance area. So very interesting look to me. Composite rating, you know, again, we aren't just going off the technical action here. This does have some strong fundamentals behind it as it goes from some some losses to now profitable. And you see some pretty, pretty nice gains over the last few quarters.

16:43Alissa Coram:And also on the sales and revenue side, you know, margins improving. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see if this is something that continues. But for now, again, this is something where you can really limit your risk. Because if you just take the lows of either this week or last week, you really kind of can say, okay, if it goes beyond here, it's not doing what I expected. And if it does go up from here, then you can build a position that you can add to it. And here again, you see the relative strength looking very nice on this as it's, you know, looking much better than a lot of stocks out there.

17:20Justin Nielsen:Yeah. And not at all time highs. I love how we can manipulate these charts, go so far back, but it's now at its highest levels in a couple of years here, Justin. So building a little, that little base here right above that high from 2024. So a notable level there on the chart to point out. There's so much,

17:44Alissa Coram:yeah, there's so much information you can get just by looking to the left, you know, and getting that history. I absolutely agree with you, Allie. That's one of the great things about the kind of the panning and zooming part where you can get, again, further back if you need to, to see, hey, are we at an area that is of an inflection point of particular interest? Are we at a point of support or resistance from from the past? Because you often see those same areas get hit over and over again. So, yeah, I think it's very, very interesting exactly where it paused, exactly where you'd kind of like it to pause.

18:22Alissa Coram:And now that we're seeing evidence that there's some buying coming in, I think it just looks that much more.

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