Markets Live Recap: Unemployment Totals Top 30 Million

Another 3.8 million Americans filed for unemployment this past week, bringing the total unemployed to over 30 million people.

The consensus estimate was for 3 million job losses, but coronavirus surprised to the upside yet again.

Stocks traded about 1% lower in early trading and found little support throughout the trading day, closing around the same level.

Here's what our experts - Chris Johnson, Tom Gentile, D.R. Barton, Jr., and Shah Gilani - saw in the markets today and how they think investors should be positioning themselves as we head into Friday trading.

Chris Johnson (8:45 a.m. EDT)

  • Chris noted the companies outperforming during the lockdown.
    • He thinks strong results from Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB), Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA), and others are putting the Nasdaq in range to short soon.
  • Facebook will likely meet resistance around the $220 level, and that could be a good time to buy puts.
  • With Tesla shares up 8% in pre-market trading, Chris noticed a potential "double top" forming in the stock and said investors could make money shorting it.
    • He was right again. TSLA closed down about 1.5% by day close. That's a -10% move intraday.
  • Chris thinks investors should be tightening up their positions ahead of the weekend.
    • That's because more than 70% of stocks are currently overbought. Once we see this rally level off, it would be a good time to get more defensive and purchase October SPY puts. Then you're betting the market will retest its March lows.

Tom Gentile (11 a.m. EDT)

  • Tom has noticed a pattern in Big Tech stocks: They're still moving higher despite reporting average or below-average earnings this season.
    • That's what happened with Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL).
    • And he thinks the same could happen with Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Amazom.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) when they report later today.
  • Tom is still long-term bullish on Bitcoin because of the upcoming "halving" scheduled around May 12.
    • That's when the reward for new bitcoins mined per 10 minutes decreases from 12.5 to 6.25. Within 16 months following the last two halvings, Bitcoin increased up to an average of 6,085%.
  • Tom has a special event, and he's inviting you. He will be revealing how to build your own trading system and back-test it so you can start making money with the patterns you see in the market.
    • It's an invite-only event, and you'll need the unique link that Tom will put in the live stream chat tomorrow. So be sure to tune in then.

D.R. Barton, Jr. (1:30 p.m. EDT)

  • D.R. is concerned about the jobs number.
    • The coronavirus curve doesn't appear to be flattening around the world just yet. There are now over 3.25 million cases worldwide.
  • Along with Tom, D.R. is also bullish on Bitcoin.
    • He noted CoinBase CEO Brian Armstrong's tweet that showed about a 4x increase in the number of $1,200 purchases of the cryptocurrency after the first round of stimulus checks were sent out two weeks ago.
  • D.R. is not waiting for life to return to normal, and neither should you.
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Shah Gilani (3:45 p.m. EDT)

  • Shah thinks a disappointment from Amazon would likely send the market lower tomorrow.
    • The stock beat on revenue, missed on EPS, and was down 5.5% in after-hours trading.
  • Shah thinks TLT has a little more upside because the Fed has made it clear that it's trying to keep rates at zero. They could even go negative.
    • If rates are lower for longer, that's simply a positive for the price of bonds, and TLT should rise.
  • Shah thinks gold has the potential to go higher over the next few months or quarters because it's a hedge against not only the coronavirus crisis, but governments around the world printing money to try and solve all the problems it's causing.

Catch us tomorrow - starting LIVE again at 8:45 a.m. EDT with Chris Johnson right here.

If you missed our live streams today, you can now replay them on our YouTube channel, here.

Got a question you want our experts to cover? Send us a note.

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