Yahoo Finance

U.S. stocks move higher as markets assess Nvidia's earnings report as well as more tariff uncertainty. And Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre joins us now with the trading day takeaways. Jared.

Thank you, Josh. That is my first point after those Nvidia earnings, tariffs, tariffs kind of rule. Uh, but not in a big way. In fact, we saw the major markets. They kind of gapped up on the news. This was before the, the latest tariff news, and then they drifted down, but still the major average is closed in the green. And this is our semiconductors board, and I didn't mean to do that. Uh, let's check out Nvidia here closing the day up 3.25%, and that is the highest since February. Uh, not too far off those record highs, and it's just a quick stroke to get back to those. Got a few sticking points perhaps, but the earnings catalyst in the rearview mirror. And let's just check out the NASDAQ here because, uh, my eye has been on that. It's been kind of consolidating. This is a year to date. So we've seen breakouts in Nvidia. We've seen breakouts in a lot of stocks over the last few days, but not the major indices and they all kind of look just like that. So maybe we need another catalyst, but even tariffs not dragging it down today.

But as you said, we finished in the green today. Yes. Not a disaster, right?

No. But, and so my point is volatility is going down. It is waning here. Let's just check out the VIX real quickly. Uh, I got a lot of volatility charts, but we're only going to hit a couple here. Here's the VIX. It was down a whopping 30.13 points today. This is a year to date, so we're well off those highs and we've kind of settled back down below the 20 level. That's important. But what I want to show you is realized volatility. That is what is actually happening in the market rather than the VIX saying this is what we think is going to happen. Realized volatility is still pretty, pretty elevated here. So just something to consider. It is a trader's market and still a lot of things can trip you up if you're a day trader.

What have been the plays recently?

Uh, so that is in the defensive area. And it was really interesting today because defensive sectors were doing well. And then we also have the defense and aerospace, which is completely separate. That was doing well, uh, in addition. So let's check out the sector action real quickly. And for the leaderboard, we got real estate, energy, utilities, healthcare, all of those defensive. Oh, through say, uh, throw staples in there too. That's another defensive one. Yes, energy is defensive at times, not always, but you can put it in that basket. So there are the defense sector, their defensive sectors. And here, let's check out defense because the ITA ETF, and that covers all of this industry, has been hitting record highs. It was least affected by the tariff tantrum two months ago. And a lot of these stocks, just check out GE for instance, this has been hitting record highs day after day, after day after it surpassed them in May. Those were the old records, these are the new ones. And like I said, a lot of charts look like this. So we're seeing a lot of strength in these names. Even Boeing coming back recently, Josh.

Any famous lines on defense you want to leave the audience with?

Uh, there's one by Vince Lombardi. The best defense is a good offense. And so that means you need, you can't just have a portfolio filled with dogs with fleas. That's my point.

Wise words. Wise words. Thank you, Jared. Appreciate it.