It has been a while since there has been any selling momentum but we are experiencing it today. The pot stocks were in a frenzy in the early going with Tilray (TLRY) and Cronos Group (CRON) reversing hard, but also Amazon (AMZN) , Apple (AAPL) and Advanced Micro (AMD) went from green to red.
This sort of intraday reversal tends to trigger profit taking and stops. Since the indices are technically extended and there is much talk about negative seasonality, it is a good excuse to cut back some positions. I'm not concerned that this is a major top but I'm not going to be in too much of a hurry to buy dips.
Adding to the negative environment is the Congressional hearing dealing with Facebook (FB) and Twitter (TWTR) . The participants in the hearing are doing a nice job of highlighting all the problems that the social media giants face but there doesn't seem to be many solutions. "Promote healthy conversations' sounds like a pretty empty platitude.
When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared before Congress back in April, it hit a low and then trended up for months. There really was nothing accomplished by the hearing back then and there is unlikely to be anything major accomplished this time. Once the hearing is over it seems to be a return to business as usual.
Both Facebook and Twitter are under pressure today which may be due more to technical action in the Nasdaq rather than something negative from this hearing. The entire technology sector is under pressure right now and it doesn't help to have this hearing at this time.
I'm inclined to buy Twitter rather than Facebook on the weakness that is occurring but there isn't much good technical support for either stock right now. Facebook suffered badly after its last earnings report and still needs to prove to the market that it can regain operational footing. Twitter, on the other hand, looks to be producing better growth but there are concerns that this crisis over face news, etc. will be a headwind. I'll be looking to possibly buy Twitter around the $32 level but have no interest in Facebook at this time.
(Amazon, Apple and Facebook are holdings in Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS member club. Want to be alerted before Jim Cramer buys or sells AMZN, AAPL or FB? Learn more now.)
