Table of Contents
Market Overview
Research Unpacked: IBM, HCA, PYPL, ELV, TSM, UNH, ABT, ISRG and NFLX
Earnings to Watch This Week: GM, GEV, GOOGL, IBM, NOW, TSLA, FCX and INTC
1. Market Overview
Don’t burn the gambling house.
At least not yet. The first week of earnings season is in the books. Banks largely delivered, TSM and ASML both beat and raised, and inflation came in cooler than expected. Yet none of it was enough to stop investors from dumping semis. More on the individual names in Research Unpacked.
But before that, let’s revisit two of this year’s biggest IPO stories and see how the roadmap played out:
SPCX
Here is how Barron’s website looks today:
If I based my process entirely on headlines and narratives, I’d probably wait until Barron’s stops talking about it before buying.
Thankfully, that’s not how I trade.
The measured move points to around 94, slightly below the 101.25 IPOx. That’s an area I’d look for some kind of bounce. On the upside, a reclaim of the current POC at 158.25 would look constructive, regardless of P/E.
SKHY
A vicious gap down on Monday delayed the roadmap I laid out in the last Weekly Playbook by one session. After that, a clear rejection at 1.25 IPOx reminded us of the market we’re in: spoiler alert - still not a bear market, just one that keeps turning runners into bleeders.
Overall, the broader KOSPI is starting to look like K-pop. And no, we’re not talking about Korean boy bands here. Still, it would take more than that to prove a bear market in memory chips and semis overall. Far more than that.
People like to think there are only two kinds of markets: bull and bear. Then there’s the traders market. The one where leadership changes much faster, making risk and money management far more important than everything else. The one where you have to be quick in both cutting losses and taking profits, letting Big and Beautiful math do the heavy lifting.
Welcome to the traders market, ladies and gentlemen. Mind your stops.
2. Research Unpacked
Below is this week’s Price Action Playbook: Research dump
Let’s look at the logic behind some of those areas:
IBM 231(214.5)
IBM disappointed investors with weaker-than-expected guidance, citing a combination of execution issues and shifting enterprise spending priorities. Management said customers redirected budgets toward servers, storage, and memory to secure AI infrastructure ahead of anticipated price increases, while delays in closing several large deals further pressured results. Despite the weak outlook, Red Hat accelerated to 11% growth, Distributed Infrastructure revenue jumped 37%, and the company exited the quarter with roughly $500 million in backlog, suggesting underlying demand for AI infrastructure remains healthy even as enterprise IT budgets continue to be reallocated.
231 marks the convergence of a developing POC, the 8000 IPOx, and a reactive weekly UTL, while 214.5 is a highly reactive prior weekly pivot high, with the 7500 IPOx slightly above it and a fresh weekly BSL.
The first area was slightly frontrun by sellers on the way out, not even allowing for a backtest, while the second offered a nice bounce on day one before breaking the following day and offering strong followthrough. Still, the battle for the lower area is far from over, with the resolution potentially coming on Wednesday when IBM reports its actual numbers. That said, given the reaction to the guidance, most of the move might already be priced in.