The United States economy is full of innovation. It has to be. Manufacturing industries that dominated the economy decades ago - textiles, televisions, even automobiles to a large degree - have moved overseas, where labor and materials costs are lower. Yet the U.S. economy, even during the pandemic and the current period of high inflation, has expanded to record levels. If U.S. corporations weren't innovating, creating new products (such as vaccines and AI) and services (such as Zoom calls) and moving into new markets, the domestic economy would not be growing, and capital would not be flooding into the country. The current high level of the U.S. dollar relative to currencies around the world attests to the confidence that global investors have in the durable and innovative U.S. economy.

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Back on October 9, we started to talk about Information Technology waking up after three months of technical basing by some in the sector. We wrote the following. 'Technology was led by a few major semiconductors, including NVDA (+4%) and AVGO (+3%). NVDA has been tracing out a bullish continuous inverse head-and-shoulders, while AVGO has been forming a complex double bottom since the middle of June. Both are very close to completing these patterns and possibly breaking out to all-time highs. One concern about jumping back on the semi train is that we are not seeing other stocks completing bases and many are nowhere near highs. That can be rectified, but the strongest industry moves occur when the majority of stocks are participating.' Little did we know how prophetic those last two sentences were and in no way did we expect the obliteration that some of the semis got on October 15. ASML was destroyed, plunging over 16% after providing disappointing 2025 guidance. It was the company's worst day since the pandemic and, prior to that, during the IT wreck in 2002. KLAC plummeted 15%, and LRCX and AMAT both plunged 11%. Volume was huge and it almost felt like a capitulatory selloff. But those usually come after an extended selloff. Because the three largest semis held in there (NVDA, TSM, AVGO), losing only between 2.6% and 4.5%, the major semi ETFs (SOXX, SMH) fell only around 5%. While the major indices lost between 0.7% and 1.4%, NYSE breadth was only slightly negative at -157, this as the selling was concentrated in Information Technology, Energy, Healthcare, and Industrials. In addition, NYSE advancing volume/declining volume was neutral at 50%.

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