Big Gains From Nvidia, Tesla and Salesforce Obscure Market's Weakness

Market breadth was about two-to-one negative on Tuesday, but big gains from Nvidia (NVDA) , Tesla (TSLA) , and Salesforce (CRM)  helped to cover up a little of the weakness. The Nasdaq 100/Invesco fund (QQQ)  continues to outperform everything else, but it still fell 0.3%.

The most interesting action on my screen was increased volume in quite a few of the stocks that are being added to the Russell indexes on Friday. An example is Performant Financial Corporation (PFMT) , which had more than double its average volume on Friday and today. There isn’t any news there, but it is an addition, and it is being accumulated.

The other notable aspect of the action today was that the indexes are staying sticky to the upside. There is underlying support, and the bears were unable to build on early weakness. All the indices closed off their lows. Late-day strength is a symptom of institutional accumulation, and that is still occurring.

There is quite a bit of churning, which may just be consolidation after a good run, but it can easily develop into something negative if we start to see some lower lows. The bears are tremendously frustrated at this market’s resiliency, but their overconfidence is helping to hold things up.

FedEx Corp (FDX)  earnings hit after the close, and the stock is trading down about 4% on mediocre guidance. FDX is an important economic bellwether and could trigger some additional concerns about slowing economic growth. We will see what analysts have to say in the morning.

Have a good evening. I’ll see you tomorrow.