NVDIA, Apple, Amazon And Tesla Ho-Hum

After days of steady selling, the NASDAQ
NDAQ
-100 finally got some juice back this week although when one formerly hot stock seemed to re-ignite, that spark faded and others in the index barely showed any actual excitement. If the tech sector is to rock and roll once again, more positive action from more components will be required.

NVDIA looked like this on the daily price chart, just ahead of a highly expected earnings report:

Poorly programmed algorithms couldn’t wait to buy at the open and once the dumb machine-learned buys were done, smart sellers moved in and day-traded for easy profits. If you are involved with the coding for “at the open” algos, it might be a good idea to look at the minute-by-minute chart to re-learn how it works when sharper humans anticipate your action.

So, NVIDIA hits a higher high which is then called into question during the rest of the session. If earnings come in at a less than expected level, there might be issues. In the meantime, the stock continues to trade above its 50-day moving average (the blue line) and its 200-day moving average, generally a bullish look.

Here’s the daily price chart for Apple:

No new high for Apple on the rally — far from it. The 3-day up move off of the mid-August low is remarkably mild with an inability to even make it halfway back to the July highs. It remains below the 50-day moving average which has now begun to trend downward. You don’t get that former “hot tech stock” feeling here.

The Amazon daily price chart looks like this:

The stock could not make it to a higher price today even as the NASDAQ as a whole made it to up by .006%. The 50-day moving average seems to be a buy point for whatever algorithm is running things here — a drop below that level might change the tone. Right now, it’s awfully ho-hum.

Here’s the daily chart for Tesla:

The trading session started quite bullishly for Elon Musk’s EV company but then the sellers showed up and that black-ish candlestick pattern is not encouraging. Note that the price remains below the 50-day moving average which has begun to trend downward.

This is the daily chart for the NASDAQ-100:

Just when tech investors began to feel a little better about all of that August selling, here comes a -19% day to spoil all the fun. The index could not make it back above the 50-day moving average.

Maybe tomorrow or the rest of the week will be different. At least now we have a clearly delineated trading range: just above 14500 is the low and just below 16000 is the high.