Buyers were very quick to jump on Wednesday morning's gap-down open. Breadth is now positive with 3,700 gainers to 2,950 decliners, but this feels more index-driven than stock-driven. The bears had some ammunition to work following poor reports from Caterpillar Inc. CAT and Boeing Co. BA plus the Department of Justice (DOJ) antitrust investigation of big tech, but these news bits were quickly shrugged off.
Semiconductors are leading the market higher as the VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF (SMH) goes parabolic. Banks and financials, as represented by the Financial Select Sector SPDR (XLF) , also are pushing to new highs and weakness in the big-cap tech names targeted by the DOJ is fairly mild. Small-caps are exhibiting some relative strength and that is probably the most positive thing as we have lacked a speculative appetite for individual stocks.
The big earnings reports after Wednesday's close are from Facebook Inc. (FB) and Tesla Inc. (TSLA) . But, as we've seen, this market is quite happy with the numbers that have been put up so far. Perhaps it is due to confidence that central banks will stay extremely dovish, but this market is buying the earnings news rather than selling it.
I tend to focus on smaller-cap names and the action on my screens is mixed and random, but I am adding a few things such as Sea Limited (SE) and Asure Software Inc. (ASUR) . It has been the big-caps that are driving this market, but there are some interesting small-cap charts developing into earnings.
