Fed liquidity trumps rising Covid worry - Marc Chaikin joins Alpha Trader

This week's Alpha Trader podcast features hosts Aaron Task and Stephen Alpher talking with Marc Chaikin, founder and CEO of Chaikin Analytics. Prior to the chat with Chaikin, Task and Alpher discuss the remarkable run in Tesla (TSLA), and the beginning of Q2 earnings season, with many of the country's largest banks set to report results this week. For Tesla, it appears poised to enter the S&P 500 as soon as this month, and at its current capitalization north of $300B, it would be a top ten market cap stock in that index. As for the banks, Q2 is widely expected to be their worst quarter since the financial crisis. They've been pretty well sold already though. The question before the court: Has what's sure to be an ugly Q2, and what might be a soft outlook been priced in yet? Market momentum fueled by Fed liquidity and bearish market sentiment is a better guide than trying to parse the Covid-19 statistics, says Chaikin. At this point, Chaikin - noting daily record highs in the Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) and a lagging S&P 500 (SP500) - isn't too worried about narrowing breadth and the sort of tech outperformance we haven't seen since 1999. This time is different, says Chaikin, fully aware of the meaning of that phrase. So much money today, he says, is pegged to strategies that force money into the mega-cap growth stocks leading the Nasdaq 100. Chaikin's tech favorites - Adobe (ADBE), Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), Nvidia (NVDA), and his stock of the week, Qualcomm (QCOM). There's plenty more, including why Chaikin likes high-quality biotech like Regeneron (REGN), why he's not bottom-fishing in roughed up sectors like financials (XLF) and energy (XLE), and why it pays to lighten up whenever a stock spikes higher on earnings.