Three shares to watch this week: Tesla, Qantas and NAB

The Australian share market closed marginally lower ahead of the Easter long weekend. Key economic data revealed that last week had a mixed outlook for the local economy: on the one hand, consumer Sentiment fell by 0.9% month-over-month in April due to the heightened concern over rising inflation, while the unemployment rate remained at a 14-year low.

Rolling into another short week, the market will first see the impact of the minutes from RBA’s April meeting, which hints at the risk of bringing forward the interest rate hike timeline faster if core inflation and wages growth continues to climb up. Besides a deluge of fresh financial data from the world’s top corporations, including Tesla, Netflix, United Airlines, and American Express, will offer global investors a deeper view of their profitability under the elevated inflationary pressure.

Three stocks to watch this week

1. Qantas Airways Ltd (ASX: QAN)

2. National Australia Bank Ltd (ASX: NAB)

3. Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA)

Qantas Airways Limited (QAN)

Australian airports and airlines just experienced the busiest weekend in more than two years. Travel shares are surging at the return of travellers as over a million passengers pass through Sydney airport to embrace the freedom of spending the long weekend away from their homes.

Foreseeing the strong recovery of demands, investors are chasing the travel shares like Qantas, thus pushing its price up by more than 8% during the four-day week.

From a technical viewpoint, the price of Qantas has come to a critical level at around $5.42. Long buyers may hesitate at this level as the weekly chart shows that retracement could be trigged from here as what we have seen in November 2020 and March 2021.

From the daily chart, the price could find imminent support at $5.345 before pulling back to the March high at $5.276. Although a near-term pullback looks likely, the mid-term momentum for Australia’s top carrier stays bull-biased as three key moving averages all sit some distance behind.

National Australia Bank Ltd (NAB)

NAB shares have surged to their highest level since October 2017. During the past four weeks, the share price has jumped 17.26 % and is more than 20% higher since the early days of 2022.

If looking back to the first three months of the year, the Australian bank shares have outperformed the ASX 200 shares when other sectors were struggling to fight the threat of rising inflation rates. The logic behind this is that investors believe that higher interest rates would be a blessing to banks.

The price of Australia’s leading lender has been glued to an ascending channel since early March. Those who are optimistic about the leading bank will hope that the price can sustain the momentum and move towards its five-year high level at $34.06. Sellers may look for a reversal that takes out $32.44. However, the lower boundary of the ascending channel will act as imminent support for this scenario.

Tesla Motors Inc (TSLA)

Electric cars leader and headline generator Tesla will report its Q1 2022 financial results on Wednesday (April 20th, US time) after markets close. Tesla shares are on the rise after the announcement of a recorded delivery of more than 310,000 during the first quarter of this year, a 68% jump over last year's deliveries.

However, like many other automakers, Tesla struggles with lingering supply chain challenges and rising costs, which will be a crucial watch for the upcoming earnings report.

Looking at the share price from the daily chart, it is notable that the recent pullback has helped the price to stand above the descending trend line from early April. The level of $1004 will expect a bit of pressure before challenging the 20-day moving average. The 50-day moving average, which sits near $970, will be the immediate support if the coming report turns out to be a disappointment.

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