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“The jungle is dark but full of diamonds” – Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

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

Futures are pointing to another positive session this morning, even as the market has received earnings reports from Amazon.com (AMZN) and Apple (AAPL) tepidly. Overnight in Asia, major averages finished the week on a higher note as Japan and Hong Kong traded up more than 1% while China was closed. Even though its markets were closed, Chinese officials said they are assessing whether to conduct trade negotiations with the US after they say the Trump administration has reportedly reached out multiple times to start talks.

After yesterday’s holiday, European stocks picked up right where Asia left off as the STOXX 600 rallies more than 1%, putting it on pace for a weekly gain of 2.5%. The region’s Manufacturing PMI for April came in higher than expected at 49.0 versus forecasts for a reading of 48.0. It’s still in contraction territory, but a better-than-expected report is a better-than-expected report. On the trade front, the EU commissioner of trade commented that the bloc could buy more US goods to narrow the trade deficit between the two regions.

Here in the US, while futures are higher, where we close will depend on the April Employment report. After a weaker-than-expected ADP report and an uptick in jobless claims yesterday, there are some heightened concerns of a weaker report. The actual print came in better than expected, though. Non-Farm Payrolls were stronger than expected (177K vs 133K) while the Unemployment Rate was right inline with expectations at 4.2%. Average hourly earnings rose slightly less than expected (0.2% vs 0.3%), but average weekly hours came in slightly higher than expected (34.3 vs 34.2). In response to the report, both treasury yields and equity futures have moved higher.

The equity market’s historical comeback continued yesterday as the S&P 500’s 0.63% rally propelled it back above its 50-day moving average (DMA) for the first time in over two months and a streak of eight gains in a row. While the index’s short-term downtrend has been broken, it still faces upside resistance at the 200-DMA and the mid-March high when it last failed to rally back above that long-term moving average.

See what’s driving market performance around the world in today’s Morning Lineup. Bespoke’s Morning Lineup is the best way to start your trading day. Read it now by starting a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium.  CLICK HERE to learn more and start your trial.

“AI is transforming everything we do” – Mark Zuckerberg

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

We had to earnings reports from mega-caps after the close last night, and both Meta Platforms (META) and Microsoft (MSFT) delivered. Both stocks are trading sharply higher in response to the reports, as META rallies over 6% and MSFT is on pace to gap up over 9%, which would put the stock on pace for its most positive gap higher in reaction to earnings since 2009.

The pace of earnings isn’t the only thing picking up, either. It will be another busy morning for economic data with jobless claims at 8:30, followed by the ISM Manufacturing report and Construction Spending at 10 AM.  Given the weakness in soft economic data and the April regional Fed manufacturing surveys, don’t expect much positive from the ISM Manufacturing report. Still, claims will be an important report to watch as they have been very well-behaved up until now. This morning’s release, however, came in higher than expected on both an initial and continuing basis, with most of the increase in initial claims coming from New York. One week does not make a trend, but this will be even more important to watch next week.

There’s been a lot of talk about the potential for permanent damage to ‘brand America’ given the President’s brash tone towards long-time allies and the haphazard implementation of his tariff policy.  The jury is still out on that one, but when it comes to investor sentiment, we were surprised to see today that the weekly survey from the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) showed an increase in bearish sentiment this week (55.6% up to 59.3%), even as the survey week came just as the S&P 500 was up over 1.5% on back to back to back days and has also been riding a seven-day winning streak. Normally, bearish sentiment declines as the market recovers, but for now at least, investor sentiment seems to be scarred (or scared) from the sharp declines earlier in the month.

Wednesday’s session was a fitting end to a dramatic month. Just as the S&P 500 recovered from a decline of over 10% intra-month and almost erased it all by month end, in yesterday’s trading, the S&P 500 erased an intraday decline of more than 2% to finish the day in positive territory. The last time that happened was at the bear market lows in October 2022.

From a technical perspective, yesterday’s reversal occurred right where it was supposed to. After breaking its downtrend from the February highs last Friday, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) pulled back to that former trendline and bounced. Now, if it can maintain that momentum in the next couple of days and break back above the 50-day moving average, the technical picture would look much more encouraging. With futures up over 1% this morning, that 50-DMA will likely come into play today.

Reversals like yesterday’s aren’t all that common. Since its inception in 1993, there have only been 44 other days when SPY was down at least 2% intraday but finished the day higher. As shown in the chart below, these types of reversals occurred frequently during bear markets, with several during the dot-com bust and even more during the Financial Crisis, and even a few during the 2022 bear market. They haven’t been exclusive to bear markets, though, as there were more than a few scattered throughout bull markets and shallower market corrections.