J.D. DURKIN: A very good Friday morning, members, one and all. AAP team member Bruce Kamich is with me today for his take on the market and of course for a look at a few of the top portfolio holdings. Bruce, Happy Friday. Thanks for being here.
BRUCE KAMICH: My pleasure.
J.D. DURKIN: Great to have you here, as always. I do want to kick things off by picking your brain a little bit on the broader market, if we could take a small step back and talk the big picture stuff. Since you and I last spoke, we've had several weeks of volatile trading, to say the least, a banking crisis, and of course, we can consider Wednesday's FOMC meeting a bit of a cherry on top. Bruce, looking at this week's trading, what stood out to you, and more importantly, what does it tell you about what might happen next?
BRUCE KAMICH: Well, the nature of the trading was a little bit different in the past week. There were some rallies intraday and things like that. But the sell offs have become much more steep and much more rapid. There is a much more quicker move to the door where people want to get out of things, and that's starting to see-- you're starting to see a little pickup in the VIX and a little more panic.
And Wednesday action, in particular, was a key reversal day on Fed day. You made a new high for the move up, and you turned around and closed very weak. So that was a pivotal day. The tone of the trading and the tone of the media coverage has shifted over to a realization, I believe, that the banking crisis is more than just one or two banks around the country or overseas.
It's a growing realization, I believe, that the economy is going to weaken, earnings are going to come down, and that should be the last decline in this bear that started in late 2021. First big move down was valuation repricing on interest rates, and I think we'll be seeing a repricing of the averages on an earnings downgrade.
J.D. DURKIN: Bruce, are there any key resistance levels that you think our members should have on their radar?
BRUCE KAMICH: I would probably zoom in-- not that there was a lot of price action in the area. Usually if there's more price action in an area, there are more people that want to react to that level again. But it's not like a big resistance area, but I would focus on 4,050, 4,080 area on the S&P 500. That's the area just above Wednesday's reversal. I think if you got through there there, might be shorts that want to cover that point because that was a good location to put on a short, let's say, on Wednesday's high. But I think strength above that, 1% or 2% above that, Wednesday's high, would be a pivot point for short term technically-oriented traders.
J.D. DURKIN: Earlier this week over on Real Money you noted, Bruce, that even technical analysts can get it wrong from time to time, especially as the outgoes and the media can turn anything into a market moving event. With all the noise-- and there is no shortage of noise these days-- what kind of signs do you look for, Bruce, when deciding whether a particular piece of data is more than just a potential blip on the radar?
BRUCE KAMICH: Well, I think the real technical clue-- there's only two things that come out of the marketplace as far as the technician is concerned-- is price and volume. And price we could have four points-- open, high, low, and close. We could deal with a lot of other points in between, but there's basically four points of price data and volume. Those are the two things that really come out of the marketplace.
So I would focus on volume. Most people tend to ignore it. There's not volume visible in every market, for instance, in currency trading. We don't know real trading volume because it's not an organized central marketplace. And maybe we don't the volume of trading in the gold market in London. But other than that, we know volume in a real time basis, and that to me is how traders are voting with their feet.
And that's a differentiation, I think, that traders should pay attention to. So if a stock makes a new high and volumes decline, that's not a vote of confidence. Old time technical analyst, like me I'd like to see volume expand in the direction of the trend, and on some stocks, that has not happened. The stock made a new high, and volume did not expand.
Apple is one example. Microsoft might be another example of a stock that made a new high in the past week and where was the buying? Where was the strength? So that's what I would concentrate on.
J.D. DURKIN: All right, thank you for that. Let's conclude here, Bruce, on a few of the AAP holdings that you recently took a look at over on Real Money. Let's start with Apple, which you talked about there a moment ago. On Tuesday, you noted that shares of Apple are at a pivot point. What did you mean by that, and do you still feel that way?
BRUCE KAMICH: Some traders use pivot points. They're like high, low, and close divided by 3. There's a whole math thing behind pivot points, but I use it in maybe the broader sense of a pivot. So Apple made a new high for the move up. This mountain chart that you have displayed doesn't show the indicator, but momentum is an indicator.
It's the-- it's today's price minus the price X days ago. Now I'll give you just a quick example of how this would work. Let's say we are looking at a one-day momentum study-- today's price minus the price yesterday. And we did it on Apple, let's say. And we'll just do the closing changes.
So one day, Apple closes up $2, the next day another $2, the third day $4, then $5, $7, $10. It's going up rapidly. Then the next day, it goes up $7, and it goes up $5, and then in the next day $3 and then $1. It's still going up we're happy we're making money in our account. Our P&L is going in the right direction, but the pace of the rally is slowing.
It's going up at a slower pace and that slower pace can be driven by people that are long Apple, that are scale up sellers. It could be driven by the fact that at $145, it costs one chunk of money to buy 100 shares, and at $160, it takes a bigger chunk, and money is finite. So it could be slowing for that. It could be slowing because of profit taking, so Apple gets up to a level that somebody was looking for fundamentally or technically, but the pace of the advance is slowing, and but something beneath the surface different is going on.
We don't know what. We might find out later, but as a technical analyst, we rarely care about what. We want to act on the movement and let somebody else write some narrative. So the pace of the decline was slowing an Apple, and to me, that's a pivotal moment. I think it's trading down in early trading today.
J.D. DURKIN: All right, we'll continue to follow it. Let me ask you about Ford here. You took a look at that company following yesterday's news that that company is set to lose $3 billion on its EV unit this year alone. What does the chart for Ford tell you?
BRUCE KAMICH: So over the last 12 months, the chart you have up on the screen, it's made higher lows-- excuse me, lower highs. My bad there on that. And it had roughly equal lows around $11 a share. This is going back an entire year. So every rally has been weaker and has failed at a lower high.
Long term, looking at this kind of pattern for me for the past 50 years, this is a bearish pattern. Supply is-- sellers are becoming more aggressive. Each low-- each high is lower, and the same buyers are showing up around $11. Historically, this matter will break down as the buyers at around $11 get exhausted.
They are overwhelmed by the more aggressive sellers first at $16, then at $15, then at $13. So this pattern is bearish. From a technical standpoint, you would look for the stock to break down and go lower in the weeks and months ahead.
J.D. DURKIN: All right, let's conclude here with Axon which you think has room to run. What has you so confident in that name, Bruce?
BRUCE KAMICH: So the name, I had to Google what they did for business. I saw the stock. I was impressed by it. It's bottomed out in May and June. It's been going up when the rest of the many parts of the stock market are struggling. Here's a name that's a nice looking chart.
You want to buy every dip, every pullback towards the popular moving averages. This might pull back to $200 in this weak market environment, but it's ignored the broad market weakness. It has decent support around the round number of 200.
I have higher upside targets for-- from the point and figure basis, and unfortunately, their products seem to be in strong demand. They produce tasers for police departments and military and body cameras. So unfortunately, that's the world we live in. Their products are now in high demand. And the chart is attractive looking. It's what you want-- what to find. You have a nice story, and you have a good looking chart.
J.D. DURKIN: A nice story and a good looking chart, I like it for a Friday. Thanks so much for taking the time to join me, Bruce. Great to have you. Enjoy your weekend.
BRUCE KAMICH: You, too.
J.D. DURKIN: Absolutely, and as we wrap up here, folks, be sure to check out all of your alerts for Chris Versace's latest take on the crisis unfolding at Deutsche Bank and what it means for his larger view of the economy as a whole. And with that, members one and all, Chris and I will be back on Monday morning to get you ready for a busy week ahead. Have a great weekend. We'll see you then.