The story of this market all week has been a disconnection between the indices and many of the secondary stocks. Again today, the DJIA, S&P 500, and Nasdaq are in negative territory but breadth is running 3800 to 3350 positive, and the Russell 2000 ETF (IWM) is up around .5%. It is the triumph of stock picking over market timing.
The FATMAN stocks have been the primary problem for the indices and they are still struggling to find support. Microsoft (MSFT) is hitting its lowest point since July and its cohorts look in danger of sinking even more.
If you shift your screen to smaller stocks it is quite a different story. There is very strong trading in numerous biotechnology, SPAC, EV and other names. These stocks are not suffering from negative sentiment created by the big indices that so many people in the business media think is the only thing that matters.
A good example of some of the strong action is Lithium Americas (LAC) . LAC was my stock of the week on August 30 and has been running on big volume into Tesla's (TSLA) battery day next week.
Today I added to gold miner Kinross Gold (KGC) and to SPAC play Fortress Value Acquisition (FVAC) which is involved in rare earth mining.
The indices are struggling further as I write and that is having some impact on the pockets of momentum but it has been impressive to see the rotational and stock picking action while the FATMAN names go through a correction. A less healthy market would see much broader selling and would not be kind to stock pickers. That could still change but for now this market remains quite good despite what the indices may indicate.
(Microsoft is a holding in Jim Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS member club. Want to be alerted before Jim Cramer buys or sells MSFT? Learn more now.)
