Bespoke Baskets Update — April 2025
This content is for members onlyBespoke’s Morning Lineup – It’s Over – 4/15/25
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“The Titanic hit the iceberg not because they could not see it coming but because they could not change direction.” – Dean Devlin
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
It’s over. No, not the tariff tantrum, but the 2024 tax season. If you’ve somehow forgotten to get your taxes done (or file for an extension), you’ve got a few more hours left!
Bespoke’s Paul Hickey was invited on CNBC earlier this morning to discuss markets. You can view the clip here or by clicking on the image below.
While the S&P 500 is down 12% from its highs after making a series of lower lows, the index’s cumulative advance/decline line – which is simply a running sum of the daily number of advancers minus decliners – has held up very well. As shown below, even after the post-Liberation Day market crash, the cumulative A/D line remained above its December lows.
Chart of the Day: Triple Plays and Tariffs
This content is for members onlyCountry ETFs Since Liberation Day and Pause Day
The S&P 500 (SPY) rallied 5.7% this week but remains down 5.4% since the close on “Liberation Day” on 4/2. Below is a look at the performance of 45 country ETFs traded on US exchanges since 4/2 and since the close on 4/8 before President Trump announced the 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs for all countries except China.
The average country ETF is down 4% since 4/2, so SPY has underperformed that since Trump’s Rose Garden announcement. Since the close on 4/8 before the pause, the average country ETF has bounced back 7.9%, so SPY has underperformed slightly on the bounce-back as well.
The country ETFs that have bounced the most since the pause are ones you might expect. Asian countries like Vietnam (VNAM) and Thailand (THD) had some of the harshest reciprocal tariffs announced on Liberation Day, and since the pause, these two have bounced back 16.7% and 14.1%, respectively. Thailand (THD) is now down just 1.2% since Liberation Day.
The third best country ETF since 4/8 has been Argentina (ARGT) with a gain of 12.8%. ARGT gained 6.5% on Friday to end this week.
China — the country most punished by Trump’s tariffs — has bounced back for US investors that own the MSCI China ETF (MCHI) since the pause even though Trump hiked China’s tariff rate to 125% on Wednesday. MCHI is up 9.9% since the close on 4/8 versus SPY’s gain of 7.5%. Since Liberation Day on 4/2, MCHI is down 8.3%, though, compared to SPY’s decline of 5.4%.
There are four country ETFs down less than 1% since Liberation Day: South Korea (EWY), Switzerland (EWL), New Zealand (ENZL), and Belgium (EWK). Colombia (GXG) and Hong Kong (EWH) head into the weekend as the only country ETFs still down 10%+ since 4/2.
