Nov 26, 2024
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.
“I think I’ve discovered the secret of life — you just hang around until you get used to it.” – Charles Schultz
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
US equity futures are mixed this morning. The Dow looks to open lower due to a 7% decline in Amgen (AMGN) after the company reported disappointing data related to its weight loss treatment. S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures are firmly in the green, but the Russell 2000 is indicated to open slightly lower after missing a record close yesterday by less than a point.
Treasury yields have barely budged from yesterday’s levels, crude oil is up less than 1% but below $70 per barrel, and gold is modestly higher. In a sign that some of the froth may be settling in the market, Bitcoin is down 3% this morning and trading near $92K after trading just under $99K yesterday. MicroStrategy (MSTR) calls its stock a leveraged play on Bitcoin, and that’s been the case both up and down. After trading as high as $543 per share on Friday, the stock is trading down near $380 this morning for a 30% decline. That’s a big move for a company that briefly had a market cap of over $100 billion last week!
Overnight, most major benchmarks were modestly lower in Asia, likely in at least part due to President-elect Trump’s statement that he would levy an additional 10% tariff on all goods imported from China. Europe was left out of the latest tariff talk, but stocks in the region are also lower across the board with modest gains as the STOXX trades down 0.4%.
Circling back to the US, it’s been a relatively busy morning for earnings, especially from retailers. Of the ten companies reporting, six topped EPS forecasts, seven beat sales forecasts, but two – Best Buy (BBY) and Kohl’s (KSS) – lowered guidance. Those two stocks are being punished accordingly with the former down over 7% and KSS down more than 15%. While the drop in KSS is large, in May it fell nearly 23% in reaction to earnings.
With Americans starting to get on the road for Thanksgiving today and tomorrow, one thing to be thankful for is lower pump prices. According to AAA, the national average price of a gallon of gas is just $3.067 per gallon. Over the weekend, it was as low as $3.056 which was the lowest national average price since June 2021 and nearly $2 below the peak from June 2022.
While the national average is still above $3 per gallon, just over half of US states have a national average below $3 per gallon, including Oklahoma which has the lowest average price at just over $2.50 per gallon. Nothing wrong with that!
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Nov 25, 2024
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.
“If you place your head in a lion’s mouth, then you cannot complain one day if he happens to bite it off.” – Agatha Christie
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
Investors have a lot to be thankful for this year, and a holiday-shortened week after what has been an eventful year so far is no doubt one of them. The economic and earnings calendars are relatively light this week, but Tuesday will be a relatively busy week for earnings, while Wednesday will be a busier day for economic data as government agencies look to get the reports out ahead of what, for many, will be a long weekend.
In Asia, Japan and India were both up over 1% while Chinese stocks saw modest losses. In Europe, it’s been a mixed tone, with the STOXX 600 basically unchanged. Here in the US, equity futures are higher, and treasury yields are lower in part due to Scott Bessent’s nomination as Treasury Secretary.
The last week of November has historically been positive for equities, and recent history hasn’t deviated from that trend. The S&P 500 has notched gains in the last week of this month in six of the previous seven years. The only down year was in 2021 when the S&P 500 fell over 2.6% as investors feared a resurgence of Covid from the Omicron wave and Fed Chair Powell sent a message to the market that the Fed was no longer not even thinking about thinking about raising interest rates. While the S&P 500 was near record highs heading into the week, both factors sent stocks plunging, and the S&P 500 fell 2.6% for its fifth worst last week of November in the post-WWII period and the worst since 1987. Outside of 2021, though, you have to go back to 2005 to find another year when the S&P 500 dropped over 1% in the last week of November.
Overall, the S&P 500’s median performance during the last week of November since 1945 has been a gain of 0.32% with positive returns 58.2% of the time which is nearly twice the average for all one-week periods since 1945. That’s the good news. The bad news is that in years when the S&P 500 has been up 20%+ YTD heading into the last week of November, the median gain has been more in line with the historical average (0.19%). When the S&P 500 was overbought (1+ standard deviation above its 50-DMA) heading into the last week of the month, the median performance was a decline of 0.20% with gains less than half of the time. Additionally, when the S&P 500 was up 20%+ YTD and overbought, the median performance during the last week was also a decline of 0.18% with gains half of the time.
None of these trends suggest that declines this week are likely, but for a week that has historically been considered one of the most positive weeks of the year, the setup this year is not necessarily as bullish.
Nov 22, 2024
To read our weekly Bespoke Report newsletter and access everything else Bespoke’s research platform offers, start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium. In this week’s report, we focus on the rotation in stocks across different sectors, some possible trends to be concerned about, and much more.
Nov 22, 2024
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“Of course it’s the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.” – Margaret Thatcher
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
After an eventful month and week, markets are looking to slide into the weekend on a quiet note as US equity futures are little changed on either side of the flatline. Despite a weak batch of flash manufacturing PMI reports from Asia and Europe, global equities are closing off the week on a more positive note. The Nikkei closed 0.7% higher finishing down 0.9% for the week, but in China, both onshore and offshore indices finished down sharply putting them both into the red for the week. European stocks have traded more uniformly positive with the STOXX 6000 trading up 0.5% putting it into the green for the week as the flash PMI manufacturing index slid into contraction territory at 48.1 from 50.0 in October. That weaker-than-expected reading has increased the odds of a December rate cut, pushing the euro to its lowest level in two years at 1.04 versus the dollar.
While the odds of a December rate cut in Europe rise, the odds here in the US have been on the decline. At the start of November, the market was pricing in an 80% chance of a 25 bps cut in December, but as of this morning, the odds have slipped to 60%.
The first rate cut was just over two months ago, so we wanted to see what, if any, change there has been in sector performance before versus after the September cut. The chart below shows the performance ranking of the eleven sector ETFs on a YTD basis through 9/17 (x-axis) versus each one’s performance since then. If there had been no shift in sector performance in the pre-and post-rate cut periods, you would expect to see all the dots on a 45-degree upward-sloping line, but as shown in the chart below, that has hardly been the case.
While several sectors are grouped relatively close to that line, others have seen big shifts. At the lower right side of the chart, Consumer Discretionary, and Energy were two of the worst-performing sectors on a YTD basis leading up to the first rate cut, but they’ve been the two best since then. Normally, you would expect Energy and Consumer Discretionary to move in opposite directions, but that hasn’t been the case this year. At the other extreme, Utilities and Consumer Staples were two of the better-performing sectors on a YTD basis heading into the September cut, but they’ve been laggards ever since then.
Looking at the charts of Consumer Discretionary and Energy, both sectors got a boost from the rate cut in September, but both rallies stalled out in late October before getting turbo-charged after the election, so it hasn’t been just a rate cut story. Energy’s rally is particularly surprising given it was the worst-performing sector during Trump’s first administration.
The Consumer Staples sector had been in a steady uptrend all year right up until September, but the rate cut almost served as a bell for the peak as the longer-term uptrend turned on a dime into a two-month downtrend.
The reversal in the Utilities sector hasn’t been as abrupt as the one in Consumer Staples, but as longer-term yields rose after the first cut, momentum slowed significantly, although the election results earlier this month have provided a boost on expectations for a weaker regulatory environment.
Nov 21, 2024
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.
“Nobody owes nobody nothing.” – Rocky Balboa
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
Asian stocks traded mostly lower overnight with the Nikkei down close to 1% while Hong Kong and India saw declines of about half that pace. There were reports that the Chinese government plans to stick to its 5% growth target for 2025 even as the market had been expecting a reduction in the target closer to 4%. Keeping it at 5% would make the need for further stimulus more likely. In Europe, the tone is more positive with most major benchmarks trading higher and the STOXX 600 trading fractionally higher. Comments from an ECB official, Villeroy de Galhau, suggested an expectation for inflation still being on pace to return to the 2% target. This view would boost the odds of a 25-bps cut at the December meeting.
In the US, futures were also modestly higher ahead of jobless claims (initial lower than expected, continuing higher) and the Philly Fed (weaker than expected) at 8:30 and then Existing Home Sales and Leading Indicators for October at 10 AM. Treasury yields are modestly lower. Crude oil is up over 2%, along with gold, which is up about 0.5%. The real story, however, is Bitcoin, which is up over 3% and within 3% of $100,000.
All that hype, and all we have to show for it is a fractional gain in the pre-market. Anticipation of Nvidia’s (NVDA) earnings report last night started last week, and expectations were for a big move. Options markets were pricing in the possibility of an 8% move today in reaction to earnings which would equate to $300 billion in market cap. There aren’t even 30 companies in the United States with $300 billion market caps! NVDA finally reported last night, and after reporting better-than-expected earnings and revenues as well as raising guidance, the stock traded down as much as 5% but is now trading fractionally higher. The options market was only off by a factor of nearly ten!
Where NVDA finishes the day today is anyone’s guess, but a key level for the stock in the short term is $150, which it has had trouble getting above multiple times in the last two weeks. Since first trading above $140 in June, NVDA really hasn’t done much of anything, even though the rest of the market has rallied.
NVDA is the largest component of the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) and the largest company in the world, and its massive rally this year has been more of an exception within the semiconductor space than anything else. As shown in the chart below, the SOX is down over 15% from its record high in June.
Of the 30 stocks in the SOX, their average YTD performance has been a gain of 13.7%. However, that number has been skewed by a few big winners. The median performance of the 30 stocks in the index has been a gain of just 1.46%, and only seven stocks in the index are outperforming the S&P 500 on a YTD basis. For a sector that’s typically been considered a leading indicator for the overall market and the economy, the semis are no longer a green light.
