Sector winners, meme stocks, gold prices: Market Takeaways

As the trading day draws to a close and the market heads into extended hours, Yahoo Finance markets and data reporter Jared Blikre breaks down the top three market trends of the day.

Blikre analyzes the top-performing and underperforming sectors and the factors driving these shifts, examines the activity within the meme stock market, and discusses the surge in gold (GC=F) prices which have reached record highs in Tuesday's session.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Asking for a Trend.

This post was written by Angel Smith

Video Transcript

Meanwhile, markets snap in their longest rally this year as focus shift to Fed Chair Powell speech at Jackson Hole later this week here with today's trading uh day takeaways is Yahoo Finance's Jared, Jared.

Thank you, Josh.

So somebody hit the sell button today and we got markets more or less just treading water.

We're slightly to the downside and let's just review the uh technical action real quickly.

You take a look at the sectors and it was only defensive sectors in the green.

So what do I say by defensive?

That would be consumer staples?

That's X LP Health Care XL V and XL re to the downside, we had energy that's down 2%.

But I was looking at some of the big guys in the NASDAQ today and guess what?

They're still treading water here.

I'm not going to call that an outsized gain or even a loss even way, either way, NVIDIA down 2%.

What about the, you know, there are folks Jared who say, listen at the kind of rally we had that big fast U turn, take a, take a breather, you know, it's, it's expect maybe it's even healthy but when you look through the charts, did you see anything concerning as you look through it?

You know, I, we're, this is the S and P 500 I'll get to that in a second.

This is a record high two month chart.

We are right back right there.

So, I mean, it's, it's, it's recognizable that the market could take a pause right here.

Probably wouldn't mean that much.

But to your point, there are some pockets of weakness in the market.

But really, and you can see these in our leaders and you see all the way at the bottom, you got cannabis, Chinese stocks, small oil stocks, put it all together.

That's not the most concerning things that I've ever seen.

Now, China is kind of its own animal here.

That's a pretty nasty day.

And, you know, we've had this 11 day run.

They have not participated nearly as much as the US, but that's China.

That's a different story.

So I think uh the US is still in pretty good shape.

I would expect to be talking about record highs, at least in the S and P 500 fairly soon.

Jared.

Let me point number two, meme stocks.

Guess what?

They are roaring back.

You were just conducting an interview.

People apparently rotating from meme stocks into gambling.

Well, that's not what I'm measuring here, but I just want to show you what's happened with meme stocks over the last 11 days and In fact, I'm writing about for the morning brief, uh Wednesday morning.

So make sure you check that out palent here up 34%.

That's an earnings play, Carvana up 14%.

They just had earnings at the beginning of the month, la end of last month.

So the point is, uh, my point is meme talks are jumping here but it's not like the old days in 2021 where it was just weird kind of random action, I will say.

However, beyond meat, I don't know if I can find it here.

But beyond meat had a 40% rally in the middle of the day a few days ago for no particular reason.

So meme stocks still mem sometimes when you look at those moves though did and broadly, do you see that?

Is that a OK, Jerry Bry Risk on signal, I actually qualify, I quantified this going back to 2021.

This is the original meme stop craze and I created something which is beyond the scope of this conversation called the uh five day meme stock volatility trigger.

Now, what was happening in the early days?

These these triggers were just kind of randomly put through the rally and this purple line here is the S and P 500.

So, and then when we had this 2222 bear market, we are seeing meme stocks fire off right at the top.

And so that was actually a reliable, contrary signal.

Now, the reason I highlight that is because today we have kind of the opposite.

We had this recent low here and we had meme stocks firing off along those lows and at the very beginning of the move.

So I'm taking this is not a risk off, move at all.

I don't know if it's risk on.

I mean, you know, they are meme stocks and they are jumping so maybe that's risk on but certainly not risk off.

All right.

Final point.

Jared point number three.

Gold, yellow metal.

Yeah, you got to look at gold here has been hit, hit record highs, but it hasn't been moving.

Uh I guess uh it hasn't been moving in great leaps and bounds and let's see if I can find GC equals F. This is gonna be over the last 11 days and uh let me just point it back to today's price action where we're gonna have this towards the top again.

GC equals F is what I'm looking for.

There we go up 50 basis points today.

Um Let's put a year to day chart and I'll put some candlesticks here and you can see gold has been, it looks like it's trading sideways, but it keeps kind of just like edging higher, making these new nominal highs and then falling off.

So it's not surging higher.

It's just kind of trending higher and that's just fine.

But uh I think it is notable that gold futures are trending higher in this environment because the fed is lowering rates, right?

This is one of those times uh in the business cycle when you expect gold to outperform.

So we'll have to see if that continues.

But in the meantime, just uh yeah, let me get you.

Yes, that's gold.

I wanna get you out of here.

Your take on digital gold.

Bitcoin.

Very good.

You know, Bitcoin has been doing kind of the opposite recently.

Um And I don't take too much stock in that.

It would be nice to see a punch above 60,000 in hold.

But, you know, this is a year to date chart.

Gold has been basically going sideways a little bit down here for a couple of months, but all in all this is kind of trend action.

So, you know, you measure gold at a record high.

Bitcoin, not at a record high.

Yeah, I, I don't weigh too much either way.

All right, Jared.

Thank you, buddy.

Appreciate it.