'Warning Flags': Expert Says Nvidia In 'Bubble-ish Territory,' Points To Potential Market Pullback

Benzinga

Piper Sandler MD Craig Johnson joined PreMarket Prep on Monday, cautioning investors on market "warning flags." Johnson noted several discouraging market indicators, asserting that there is "nothing wrong with taking profits."

Transcript

00:00All right, Craig Johnson, CFA, CMT, Managing Director, Chief Market Technician at Piper

00:07Sandler.

00:08Craig, I know you joined us early here.

00:11You are officially in charge of just reeling us in this morning.

00:18In terms of this market, we got to back up and talk big picture, okay?

00:21Because Dennis, I'm not going to really walk you off the ledge because I'm sort of at the

00:26ledge, okay?

00:27Oh, crap.

00:28We're in the same spot.

00:30When I look at this market, there's clear warning flags out there for me, okay?

00:35All this work that we've done at Piper for years, looking at breadth indicators, looking

00:40at AD lines at the sector level, looking at all these different pieces.

00:44I've got my 26-week new highs indicator, Dennis.

00:47It's in a sell position, meaning that it has contracted over 15% from the recent highs.

00:54I also look at our 40-week technique, which measures how many stocks are above a simple

00:5940-week moving average.

01:01Again, that is also just last week flipped into a sell position.

01:06Do you have those handy, Craig?

01:08I know you got a lot going on and I didn't ask you beforehand, but I was just wondering

01:12if you could illustrate it.

01:14If not, that's fine, too.

01:16I just wonder.

01:17Sometimes a picture is not good.

01:19Let me throw some of these out here for you, okay?

01:21Yeah, sure.

01:22It's green.

01:23I'm going to go up to the beginning here so that you can see this whole entire piece of

01:27the equation.

01:29As we go through, this is our weekly piece.

01:31We literally just published it within the last hour, so really pretty fresh.

01:35Caught off the press.

01:36Caught off the press.

01:38One of the other indicators, and I'll hit on this one first because I have it right

01:41here.

01:42If I just look at this market and I look at how many of our stocks and how many of our

01:46industry groups that we're following are in an uptrend or a downtrend, I've got more industry

01:51groups in downtrends and uptrends.

01:55I don't love that.

01:57Our 40-week measures, again, how many of these stocks are in ... The 40-week measures how

02:02many stocks are above a 40-week moving average.

02:05When I go through and I look at this indicator right here, I'm starting to roll over.

02:11I am basically at about a 50 and change percent reading with our 40-week.

02:15This has been a pretty good tool to help us figure out some market timing for things.

02:22As I look at this, it is now flipping over into a sell position.

02:26Our new highs indicator gives us buy sell signals, has flipped over too.

02:31We're talking about a market.

02:33If you're buying like Dennis, you said, buying the new highs list, that's fantastic, but

02:38there's a lot of things out there that are not working.

02:42You got a larger percent of this market that is not working than working at this point

02:48in time.

02:49Again, that's the bigger challenge for me.

02:51I'm not going to ignore these breadth indicators.

02:53We've looked at them for a long time.

02:55In fact, when I think about the relative performance of the S&P, when you do have this 40-week

03:01slip into a sell signal, your relative performance is not that great in coming weeks.

03:07My point to people is, you got to have a warning flag out.

03:10Be careful.

03:11Be looking at some of these things that you want to come back and sort of avoid.

03:16My key bullet points for people were right here as follows.

03:20I look at this divergence.

03:22I look at the new highs, the new lows, the 40-week.

03:25All these are underperforming.

03:27Where do I want to be positioned?

03:29Well, selectively in tech, small, mid.

03:33I'm sort of into that sort of range.

03:35Services, those are weakening on us, but I'm seeing improving trends in some of these

03:41industrial names, and I am seeing okay things in financials.

03:45But when I go through and wrap this all up, I got a lot more concern today.

03:49And you guys know how positive I've been on this market at points in time.

03:53Now is not one of them.

03:58So let's just take that.

03:59Obviously, there's a lot of weak things here.

04:00Would you be a seller of the strong things here too?

04:03Do you get out of your invidious that eventually everything's going to roll over here or do

04:07those stocks just keep emerging?

04:09Because it's the tale of two markets.

04:11I mean, the Q's are at all time highs here, seemingly up every day.

04:16And there's obviously a dozen stocks that are really responsible for the majority of

04:20that.

04:21But is this a sign that maybe we're just bubblicious in these stocks and that the real economy

04:26is trying to tell us something else, Craig?

04:29Okay, so when I look at it, when I look at the chart of Invidio, why don't you pull it

04:33up on your guys' screen.

04:34Okay.

04:35Yeah.

04:36And I'll stop sharing here for a minute, okay?

04:39But when you pull up a chart of Invidio, I mean, the stock is up like 140 change, 140

04:46change percent sort of year to date, okay?

04:49I know when I added this into our model portfolio and portfolio of the So Top Us fund that we've

04:53got, you know, it was about a 16 fold return that we've had in it.

05:01I don't know about you, but I don't need to be overly greedy on a stock that has clearly

05:06gone parabolic.

05:07It doesn't mean that it's over yet, but everybody's got the same approach out there, which is

05:12I am going to wait until things roll over and then I'm going to sell.

05:16Oh, I'm going to be watching this and I'll be able to get out before everybody else does.

05:20Really doesn't work that way.

05:21No.

05:22Right?

05:23When the selling starts, people don't want to sell.

05:24They're like, oh, I'll wait for the next move up, then I'll sell.

05:27And then they keep saying that all the way back down.

05:29I've already taken profits on the NVIDIA.

05:31I said 16 fold is enough.

05:34I didn't exit the semiconductor trade.

05:36I bought Micron MU because that's making a multi-year new high.

05:41And I also bought Taiwan Semiconductor.

05:44I think those two are also plays.

05:47I was just going to say, I mean, in terms of like the scope of the drawdown, do you

05:51think it'll be, you know, around there, 10 percent?

05:54Or do you think we could see, I mean, even going back to like 2022 when we had the sell

05:58off in a lot of the big tech stocks and Mag 7, I mean, some of those stocks drew down,

06:02you know, 40, 50 percent.

06:04You look at like Metas Charger, even NVIDIA has went, you know, down a lot.

06:08Do you think we'll see something similar or do you think it'll be a little bit more of

06:11a muted downturn?

06:13You know, to the downside, it's hard to always put the exact finger on what that level is

06:18going to be, to be completely honest with you, I've been doing this for years.

06:21What I will tell you is, is that when you can start to see things getting bubbly, things

06:26starting to get ahead of itself.

06:29But in the 2000 period, I wouldn't have guessed that the drawdown would have been as large

06:34as it was. In 2007, ahead of the great financial crisis, you can see these divergences

06:40happening in the market. You knew something was wrong.

06:42You knew it was time to protect capital, but you didn't know that it was going to be a

06:45market that was going to get cut in half.

06:48You never know how low it's ultimately going to go.

06:50This market is so concentrated in so few stocks right now.

06:56And you've got so many factors out there.

07:00People have been piling into private equity for a long time and private equity isn't the

07:04most liquid vehicle out there.

07:06But if there are going to be capital calls or other things, you're going to have to sell

07:09what is most liquid in front of them, which is probably going to be public equities.

07:13So again, that could magnify the impact to the downside.

07:17I just say to people and all your listeners, again, it's fun when the market's going up.

07:23It is great, but it's becoming more concentrated.

07:27It's becoming narrower.

07:28It's a warning flag for me.

07:30There's a lot of people I talk to that say, I'm not going to sell anything.

07:33I don't want to pay the taxes right now, et cetera, et cetera.

07:36And usually that kind of commentary is, you know, probably a little miss.

07:43It's probably correct for some people, but for a lot of this, you know, it never hurts to

07:48take a profit. And I've sold some of these stocks that have gone parabolic.

07:52I did some of that back in March.

07:54I'm running a 10 percent cash in the model and actually the Sotoplus fund.

07:59And I'm probably looking to go higher than 10 percent cash.

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