Advanced Micro Devices is having a bad case of deja vu.
A massive 139 percent rally this year has pushed AMD’s stock to its most overbought since before even the dot-com bubble, a peak before its shares crashed.
One trader says it could burst again.
“It’s had this great run but I do think it’s going to take a little bit of a pullback here,” Matt Maley, equity strategist at Miller Tabak, told CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Tuesday. “Every single time the RSI chart has gotten above 80 we’ve seen a significant pullback on the stock, so the fact it’s up to 85 makes me very concerned.”
AMD’s weekly relative strength index, which measures momentum, topped 85 earlier this week, said Maley, a level even worse than during the dot-com bubble when it reached a top of 84.6. From their June 2000 peak to their October 2002 lows, the shares plummeted 94 percent.
Its RSI scaled back to 84.4 on Wednesday. Any reading above 70 is typically seen as overbought territory.
Big swings on higher-than-average volume also have Maley nervous. On Monday, for example, the stock rallied and then pulled back on volume of around 330 million shares. That volume is 450 percent higher than its average this year, said Maley.
“That’s telling me it’s a buying climax,” Maley added.
Chad Morganlander, portfolio manager at Washington Crossing Advisors, is also wary of the big moves in AMD.
“I would actually fade this trade. I would be concerned about the high momentum. The whole sector has been absolutely white-hot,” said Morganlander on “Trading Nation” on Tuesday. “Look no further than Nvidia as well, trading at over 10 times revenue. That’s a danger point for us when it comes to valuation.”
Nvidia has a price-to-sales ratio at around 12 times forward revenue, while AMD trades with a three times multiple. Both also have a price-earnings ratio at more than 35 times forward earnings.
“If you’re looking for a value play in the chips sector, we would look no further than Qualcomm. We think that Qualcomm will have over 5 to 7 percent revenue growth over the course of the next 12 to 18 months and that valuations at a P/E multiple of 15 times make better sense,” he said.
Qualcomm is up 9 percent so far this year, well below AMD’s 139 percent increase and Nvidia’s 43 percent run.
Disclosure: Chad Morganlander’s firm owns Qualcomm.
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