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“I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.  

S&P 500 futures are unchanged as we type this, indicating an uneventful day for equities, although the persistent bid we have seen for months now could pull things higher throughout the session. The only economic data on the calendar this morning is New Home Sales at 10 AM and preliminary PMI data from S&P for the manufacturing and services sector at 9:45. There’s also a heavy dose of Fed speakers, including Chair Powell shortly after noon.

Overnight in Asia, markets were mixed. While Japan was closed, Hong Kong and China were lower, while the Kospi traded higher to record highs. The tone in Europe is decidedly more positive with broad-based strength pushing the STOXX up by 0.3% even as PMI data for the manufacturing sector showed lower than expected growth.

In terms of market leadership, the largest companies in the market continue to dominate. The table below lists the 20 largest stocks in the S&P 500 along with their YTD performance. All but one of them – Eli Lilly (LLY) – is up on the year, and it’s only down 2%. The median performance of the 20 stocks listed is a gain of 17.1%, with half of them rallying at least 20%, including Palantir (PLTR) and Oracle (ORCL), which are up 137% and 97%, respectively.

Now, contrast the performance of the 20 largest stocks with the 20 smallest stocks. Only four of the 20 smallest stocks in the S&P 500 are up YTD, and their median performance is a decline of close to 17%. It’s basically a mirror image of the 20 largest stocks. In an investment environment where passive flows should be a tide lifting all boats in the S&P 500, investors are actively abandoning ship on the smallest stocks in the index.

While the largest stocks in the S&P 500 have been leading the market all year, yesterday was a notable one in the fact that it was the first time all nine current members of the trillion-dollar club finished the day with a positive YTD performance. Earlier in the year, we got close with eight stocks in the black, but Apple (AAPL) was the holdout. For the first time all year, though, AAPL finished the day with a positive YTD gain yesterday, joining the eight others in the party.