Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Friday morning. It’s Stephen Whiteside here from theuptrend.com. In the pre-market this morning, stock index futures are up across the board. We don’t have any economic numbers coming out before the market opens that are going to change the direction of the market. So so far it looks like we’re going to see some buying at the open. Commodities are mixed with crude oil down while gold is higher on Friday morning, and we’ll take a look at the Canadian gold sector in a few minutes. Now, the VIX is still on a buy signal, and that’s reflecting options traders in Chicago thinking that the overall market isn’t that healthy. And that is certainly true. And we’ll take a look at that in a few minutes. But it is still those big cap tech stocks that are leading the market higher, and the rest of the market is not really following suit at the moment. So for the VIX, we’re looking for a close below 13.11 to change things on Friday. Now, there was a couple of stocks that led the market higher on Thursday. The first one was Taiwan Semiconductor. Earnings came out.
I don’t think their earnings impressed anybody, but I guess their future forecast really got people’s attention. So that helped push the SOX index higher, and some of the major chip stocks Made new highs yesterday, including AMD, Marvell, and NVIDIA. Now, Apple was also in the news yesterday, got a big upgrade, and buyers came back. People who were short the stock, including me, were going to have to cover, so that push the stock higher. We’re trading up, starting to push our way into that open gap. The top of the open gap is still higher from here. Our next mathematical target is 193.75, but before we get there, there’s the top of the open gap at 191.73. Then Boeing is still in the news, and it had a great day yesterday, but still nowhere near a buy signal. It pushed up into the open gap. Their top of the open gap is 217.04, so we’ll have to see if we’re able to push above that level. That would be the first sign that something new is going on here. Again, we’re nowhere near a daily buy signal coming into Friday’s trading action. Now, some of those other big cap tech stocks did well on Thursday.
There’s Metta with a new high, new high for closing high for Microsoft. What didn’t work on Thursday, Tesla. Tesla making a new low for 2024. Looking at the major indices, the Dow is still on a signal. That could change on Friday, and that would join the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq still on buy signals. New closing high for the Nasdaq on Thursday. What’s not working, the rest of the market’s not working. We’ve got the next generation tech stocks trading up to the lower channel line. We’ve got the iShares for the Russell 2000, just making a new low for 2024 on Wednesday. Moved up on Thursday. We had microcaps closing slightly lower on Thursday, so no joy there. The rest of the market basically looks like that, and that’s what options traders are concerned about. Now, the biggest winner on the Nasdaq 100 and the S&P 500 on Thursday was FAST. The big home hardware company, it gapped higher after being on a buy signal since Tuesday. Next up, let’s take a look at the Canadian stock market. There’s several ways to look at the market. If we look at the major indices, that’ll tell us how the market is doing by market cap.
So we know that the TSX Composite index, which has over 200 stocks, is back on a sell signal. Then within that, if you take out the 60 biggest cap stocks, that’s on a sell signal. Then if we look at the rest of the stocks in the TSX or what are considered the mid-cap stocks, we’re on a sell signal. And then if you move out of the TSX composite index, we’re looking at small caps and then micro cap stocks on the Venture Exchange, which are now back on a daily sell signal as of Thursday’s close. Now, at the same time, we’ve got some sectors that are still working, and the leader on Thursday was Consumer Staples, followed by Industrials, and the biggest winner in Industrials right now is Thompson Reuters. I don’t know why it’s in the industrial index. It is really an information technology company. They’re a data company, so not sure why they’re in the industrials, but they’re helping the industrials move higher. Then we’ve got Communications Services or telecom stocks. Bell is in the news this morning. They’re apparently getting rid of most of their or half of their Source retail stores and doing a deal with Best Buy, so that could be interesting for the stock.
Then we’re looking at Consumer Discretionary, still on a buy signal, no change there. Then we saw some weakness in Health care, some weakness in the Energy sector. And bank stocks were up slightly on the day, but no joy. We’re still on a sell signal there. And gold stocks made a new low for this move. There is some hope. We’re still holding 257.81, so two days at that level. Yesterday’s low was actually 257.73 before recovering. Now, we are trying to hold the lows from back in November. If those break, 250 would be our next mathematical target. If we switch back to a weekly chart, you can see 250 is a major level of support. If 250 were to happen to break, then 218 75 would be our next major area of support. You can see through all of 2023, we did not go down to those levels, so we’re having to go back to look for support in 2022. Just be aware of that. But gold is up in the pre-market this morning, so we may not be breaking down on Friday morning. And there’s Barrick, the biggest gold company. It is trying to hold support at the November lows.
So far, that is working. And we’ll just have to see if we can get any bullish enthusiasm for the gold sector down at these levels. Okay, folks, that is all for this morning’s presentation. It looks like we’re going to see some buying at the open. Have a great day. Have a great weekend. Next time you’ll hear my voice is on Monday morning.
Stephen Whiteside
TheUpTrend.com
Friday, January 19, 2024
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