Stocks Week Ahead: Powell, Jobs Data on Tap as Nasdaq 100 Eyes 18,450 Hurdle

investing.com:

A lot is happening this week with key data and earnings in the offing. Powell, the ECB, and Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO) earnings have the potential to be market movers.

As discussed on Thursday, the Nasdaq 100 was able to gap higher on Friday, move above resistance at its Bollinger band, and appears to be heading towards the upper trend line of the rising broadening wedge, which comes around 18,450.

We will have to see what happens once we arrive there. That will be the third touching point in the pattern on the uptrend line, and it means either the pattern breaks out and the advance continues or it will mark a turning point where the index heads back to 17,450.

The XLK has a similar pattern, and it hit resistance on Friday.

So, the ETF needs to gap higher on Monday, and resistance needs to be taken out. Otherwise, it seems obvious that we would like to reverse at some point and start the process of filling the gap at $199.

We used to care about Broadcom because it was a signal to Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and the other Apple suppliers. Now Broadcom has seen its Market Cap rise to $650 billion, and surpass Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA). Yeah.

Seeing what Broadcom says when they report on Thursday after the close will be interesting. The company is expected to see fiscal first quarter 2024 earnings climb by 85 bps, yes 0.85%, as in

For the second quarter, the company is expected to see earnings grow by 8.8% to $11.22 per share, with revenue growth of 37.1% to $11.9 billion. The growth isn’t driven by the chip side (AI) of the business, because semiconductor solutions is growing by 8.3% to $7.7 billion this quarter, and by 12.7% next quarter to $7.7 billion.

The growth comes from their software business, rising by 124.6% to $4.0 billion and