Please click the image below to view our February 2025 market calendar. This calendar includes the S&P 500’s historical average percentage change and average intraday chart pattern for each trading day during the upcoming month. It also includes market holidays and options expiration dates plus the dates of key economic indicator releases. Click here to view Bespoke’s premium membership options.
Artificial intelligence continues to permeate throughout the economy, and one such example coming out of the Health Care sector is Tempus AI (TEM). Founded in 2015 and IPO’ing last June, TEM uses AI to analyze medical data in order to help provide diagnoses and treatment options for patients. As shown below, the stock saw a solid rally in the first couple of months after its IPO but quickly gave up those gains throughout the late summer and fall before a failed retest of those highs in November. By December, the stock had fallen through its 50-DMA and continued to erase any post-IPO gains. That is until the past couple of weeks. On January 14, the stock found a bottom which also happened to be the same day that House Rep and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi purchased 50 call options in the stock that was later revealed in a disclosure on January 17. In reaction to the disclosure, the stock saw a one-day jump of 21.5%. There has been further follow through in the days since with the stock now back above its 50-DMA and at its highest level since early December. Since Pelosi’s purchase, TEM has rallied more than 80% from the low $30s to the high $50s!
Pelosi (more specifically, Pelosi’s husband Paul) has garnered a reputation as a successful trader in recent years as the trading activity of politicians has become increasingly scrutinized. Up to this point, most of Pelosi’s trades have been in larger-cap names that didn’t necessarily move when the disclosure came out. TEM is one of the first stocks we can recall that likely rallied significantly because of a Pelosi trade disclosure.
Unusual Whales has created two counterpart ETFs that are meant to track Republican Trading (KRUZ) and Democratic Trading (NANC) based on trading activity disclosures from members of Congress and their spouses. As shown below, the Democratic Trading ETF has outperformed SPY since the ETF’s inception in early 2023 with NANC up 58.9% compared to a 46.6% gain in the S&P 500 (SPY). The Republican Trading ETF (KRUZ) has gained roughly 30%, which means it’s up about half as much as the Democratic ETF. Based on these two ETFs at least, investors have recently been better off following the trading patterns of Democrats rather than Republicans in Congress.
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Looking for deeper insight into markets? In tonight’s Closer sent to Bespoke Institutional clients, we start out with a look into the whipsaw in stocks after tariff news (page 1) followed by a dive into the first estimate of Q4 National Income and Product Accounts (pages 1-3). We finish with a recap of the latest earnings including the results from Apple (AAPL) and Intel (INTC).
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As we said in today’s Morning Lineup, IBM (IBM) is giving the market a blast from the past today as shares surged in reaction to earnings. As of this writing, IBM is trading at an all-time high thanks to an impressive 12.76% gain versus yesterday’s close. That is not only the single best performance of any S&P 500 component today, but the 12%+ gain is on pace to be the third largest daily gain in IBM’s long history dating back almost 60 years! The only two other days in the stock’s history that have seen it rise by more were back in July 1996 and April 1999; both of which were also positive reactions to earnings.
IBM has fallen out of its Tech leadership role over the years. 25 years ago it ranked as the seventh largest stock in the S&P 500, but today it is only the 40th largest. However, IBM isn’t the only leader of the past having come back with a vengeance. In the tables below, we show the seven stocks that were the largest in the S&P 500 25 years ago along with the largest currently (i.e. the Magnificent Seven). Those former megacaps accounted for a significant 20.25% of the S&P 500’s market cap back then, but today’s cohort is even more dominant accounting for over 32%.
As for year-to-date performance in 2025, we would note that the past leaders have been outperforming the current leaders. The seven largest stocks from 2000 have risen an average of 6.6% in 2025. That includes the 17%+ gain in IBM, a 20%+ gain in General Electric (GE), and a high single-digit percentage gain in Walmart (WMT). Regardng General Electric, the company today is a much different entity than the conglomerate from 25 years ago. With that said, even looking at GE’s spin-off companies (not shown below) like GE Health Care (GEHC) and GE Veranova (GEV), returns have been respectable, each gaining well over 14% year to date.
Again, the current leaders of the S&P 500 account for a much larger share of market cap and hence have a much greater impact on the index’s performance. But that is the weaker group of stocks so far this year. On average, those seven names are up only 0.74% YTD (median: 1.93% decline). Four of the seven are down on the year including an almost 12% drop in NVIDIA (NVDA).
