To The Moon

Ending Last Week On Friday (19 July), we saw a major IT outage, stemming from a $CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc.(CRWD)$ update, affected several financial firms including JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Bank of America (BAC), and Nomura Holdings (NMR). The outage disrupted trading and banking operations, leading to significant operational challenges.

There have been also major disruptions reported globally at airports, emergency management systems, media companies, and various other businesses, affecting their normal operations.

With this technical update go wrong, CrowdStrike (CRWD) stock price suffered a significant setback declining 11.1% to $304.96.

The problematic update affected Microsoft's (MSFT) operating system, causing a 0.7% decline to $437.11. IT managers worldwide scrambled to fix the issue after CrowdStrike rolled back the update.

Market Lackluster Day. Little Conviction From Buyers

This widespread incident contributed to a lackluster day for the stock market. Market was also weighed down by negative earnings reports from Netflix (NFLX) dropping -1.5% to $633.34, American Express (AXP) declining -2.7% to $242.52, also weighed heavily on the market.

Mega-cap stocks struggled to maintain gains, with the Vanguard Mega-Cap Growth ETF (MGK) ending down 0.6%, a 4.0% decline for the week. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index faced selling pressure, dropping 3.1% today and 8.8% for the week.

Despite losses in major indices, there was no widespread selling outside the semiconductor group and certain individual stocks. Buyers showed little conviction.

At the NYSE, decliners outpaced advancers by a 9-to-5 margin, and at Nasdaq by a roughly 13-to-7 margin.

9 Out Of 11 S&P 500 Sectors Ended Lower

The lackluster market also saw nine of the 11 S&P 500 sectors ended lower, with real estate decline by 0.1% to information technology losing 1.27% and energy lost 1.29%.

The sectors that show relative strength came from health care sector with +0.5% gain and utilities gaining +0.11%. The equal-weighted S&P 500 and the market-cap weighted S&P 500 both declined 0.7%, while the Russell 2000 fell 0.6%.

Note Yield Increased Despite Lackluster Market

The 2-year note yield rose five basis points to 4.51%, and the 10-year note yield increased five basis points to 4.24%.

Stocks To Watch

GamesStop (GME) options trading volume is again seen with significant increase which indicate increased volatility. Short interest has surged on Beyond Meat (BYND) and Kohl's (KSS).

Tesla Motors (TSLA) experienced a significant IT outage due to a glitch in CrowdStrike’s (CRWD) cybersecurity platform Falcon Sensor, affecting operations at its Austin, Texas and Sparks, Nevada factories. The update also caused widespread disruptions across various sectors including airlines, banks, and hospitals. Microsoft (MSFT) cloud services were heavily impacted as well.

$Starbucks(SBUX)$ shares surged 7% following a Wall Street Journal report that activist investor Elliott Management has taken a substantial stake in the company. Elliott has been discussing strategies with Starbucks to enhance its share price amidst profit pressures from wages and promotional activities.

From the technical, Starbucks is showing potential on continual upside, so this might be a good time to load up Starbucks, as there might be more upside as Starbucks work to increase their profit.

MACD and KDJ have given signal that it is beginning its upside movement, and we could be seeing this upside trend continuing.

Disney (DIS) announced that Oracle (ORCL) CEO Safra Catz will step down from its board, reducing the board size to 11 directors from 12. This move comes as Disney continues to navigate through various strategic changes.

Shares of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) continued their decline, marking seven straight sessions of losses. The semiconductor sector faced a collective market loss of nearly $500 billion after potential new U.S. export control measures were reported. AMD shares have lost over 14% in the past six sessions.

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) saw a significant rebound, climbing 15.9% for the week, driven by optimistic market sentiment following an assassination attempt on former President Trump. His choice of a pro-crypto vice presidential running mate also boosted the cryptocurrency’s outlook.

At time of the writing, Bitcoin is trading above the $68,000 and I would believe we could look at some potential crypto stocks today (22 July).

$Marathon Digital Holdings Inc(MARA)$ $Coinbase Global, Inc.(COIN)$ $MicroStrategy(MSTR)$

Summary

As I expect the sector rotation to continue, there are still potential in other areas than tech, one of the significant area would be crypto as Bitcoin continue to rally ahead of Ethereum ETF launch coming.

So I think we need to remain cautious and continue to monitor the price action. Not forgetting Biden dripping out of 2024 race, would Trump stocks make a comeback?

How about semiconductor stocks? Not forgetting Tesla

Appreciate if you could share your thoughts in the comment section whether you think we would see another mixed trading session today (22 July) or this week?

@TigerStars @Daily_Discussion @Tiger_Earnings @TigerWire appreciate if you could feature this article so that fellow tiger would benefit from my investing and trading thoughts.

Disclaimer: The analysis and result presented does not recommend or suggest any investing in the said stock. This is purely for Analysis.