Jun 10, 2025
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.
“Too many people miss the silver lining because they’re expecting gold.” – Maurice Sendak
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’re not sure if it’s the summer doldrums setting in early or that investors needed a breather after the craziness of the last several months, but for the second morning in a row, the action in futures has been quiet. This morning, S&P 500 futures have been moving on either side of the unchanged line while the Nasdaq is set to open slightly higher.
US and Chinese officials are in London again this morning for the second day of trade talks, and the economic calendar is quiet with NFIB Small Business Sentiment being today’s only report. That came in better than expected, rising from 95.8 to 98.8 in May. Overnight, in Asia, Australia and Japan were higher while Hong Kong and China declined.
When it comes to the mega-cap stocks in the S&P 500 with market caps of more than or around a trillion dollars, an increasingly evident trend is that the group no longer trades as a block, where each member’s performance is no longer in line with the others. This can be seen in the year-to-date performance of the nine stocks listed below. While the average performance of the nine stocks on a YTD basis is basically unchanged (-0.01%) and the median is a gain of 5.37%, the performance of each stock ranges from 18.5% (Meta Platforms-META) to a decline of 23.6% (Tesla–TSLA). Even over the last 12 months, while all nine stocks have experienced positive returns, the magnitude of the gains ranges from 4.3% for Apple (AAPL) to a gain of 69.6% for Broadcom (AVGO). Even with every stock trading higher, they have hardly traded in unison.
Where we have seen a group of stocks trade much more in unison is at the other end of the market cap scale. The table below shows the nine stocks in the S&P 500 with the smallest market caps and how each has performed YTD and over the last 12 months. On a YTD basis, all nine stocks are lower with an average decline of 20.7% (median: -19.35). Just as notable is that the range of returns has been much closer than the largest stocks in the S&P 500. Whereas more than 42 percentage points separates the best and worst performances of the nine largest stocks in the S&P 500, for the nine stocks with the smallest market caps, the spread is just 23 percentage points. So, while the rising tide hasn’t impacted each of the nine largest stocks equally, the nine smallest stocks have been weighed down by a more similar anchor.
In terms of performance, while there may have been some concerns over the performance of the mega-cap stocks in recent months, they’re still doing much better than the nine smallest stocks.
Even on a relative strength basis, the nine stocks with the smallest market caps in the S&P 500 have consistently underperformed. Earlier this month, they even made a new low relative to the mega caps.
Jun 9, 2025
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Jun 9, 2025
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 I have to go around telling everyone how great I am, then there’s something wrong with my act.” – Les Paul
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 a generally quiet morning in markets ahead of what could be a busy day, depending on how a trifecta of potential catalysts play out. First, US-China trade talks will resume in London in London, and then we could also get an update from the Senate with its version of the reconciliation bill and what changes it made to the House’s version. To round out the trifecta, Apple (AAPL) will be holding its annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). In last Wednesday’s Chart of the Day, we looked at how the stock typically performs leading up to and after the conference, so make sure to check that out, if you haven’t yet.
The S&P 500 closed above 6,000 for the first time since 2/21, and with a gain of just over 2%, it’s firmly back into positive territory for the year. Overall breadth on the year has also been strong as eight sectors are up YTD, and just three – Consumer Discretionary (-6.8%), Energy (-3.4%), and Health Care (-2.6%) are in the red. The only other sector that’s underperforming the S&P 500 this year is Technology (1.1%), and because it’s easily the largest sector, that’s why so many sectors are outperforming, including five sectors that are up over 5%. The best performing sector, though, is Industrials which finished last week up just shy of 10% for the year.
The technical picture for Industrials also looks positive. For about the last month now, the sector has been trading right around its highs from late last year, and while it was acting as resistance, just last Friday, it broke out to new highs just as the rising 50-DMA looks like it’s on track to cross back above the 200-DMA. Late last year, we were positive on the Industrials sector given the trend of onshoring and less regulation in a second Trump administration, and that has, so far, played out this year.
Jun 6, 2025
As the S&P 500 flirts with closing 20% above its April 8th closing low, there have been several strong performers helping to drive the gains, and very few losers, with only 56 stocks in the index trading lower. While the rally has been broad, the largest stocks in the index have been driving the gains. Even as the index is up just over 20%, the average performance of the 500 individual companies has been four percentage points lower at 16.1%.
Of the S&P 500’s biggest winners since 4/8 as of Friday afternoon, 19 stocks in the index have rallied 50% or more. A 50% rally over a year or two is incredible enough, but a surge of 50% in less than two months is rare, especially for a large-cap stock. The table below lists each of the stocks that have rallied 50%, and if there’s one theme that immediately stands out, it’s that Technology has been driving the surge. Eight of the 19 stocks listed are from the Technology sector, including three of the top four. The best-performing stock off the April low has been Seagate Technology (STX), which has nearly doubled. After Technology, the next most heavily represented sectors are Industrials and Utilities (yes, Utilities!) with three each.
Of the 56 stocks that are lower since April 8th, only 14 have declined by double-digit percentages. Leading the way to the downside, UnitedHealth (UNH) has plunged over 45%. Along with UNH, Humana (HUM) is down close to 20% and just two others are down over 15%. While Technology has been popular on the leader board, Health Care accounts for more than half (8) of the 14 biggest losers. Looking through the names listed, they’re primarily defensive, so you wouldn’t expect them to outperform during a period like the last two months, but double-digit declines? Someone get these stocks a doctor!
Jun 6, 2025
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.
“The greatest discovery of the 21st century will be the discovery that Man was not meant to live at the speed of light.” – Marshal McLuhan
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
Given all the drama coming out of DC, you can’t be faulted for forgetting there’s an employment report today, but that is probably what should receive the most focus this morning from the markets. Whether it does is another story altogether. Heading into the report, US equity futures have bounced from Thursday’s close as they look to erase much of yesterday’s losses. European stocks are pretty much unchanged, while Asian equities were mixed with modest gains and losses. In the Treasury market, yields are little changed, as is the case with crude oil, even as gold, silver, and Bitcoin see modest gains.
Yesterday’s spat between Elon Musk and President Trump sucked all the oxygen out of the room when it comes to news and overshadowed every other major geo-political event that the market had been focused on heading into the day. The argument also sucked a lot of the market cap from Tesla (TSLA) stock as it fell more than 14% for its third double-digit percentage decline this year! While the declines have been painful, TSLA has also experienced two double-digit percentage rallies this year, including a 22.7% gain on 4/9, which was its largest one-day gain since May 2013. In other words, the stock has been volatile, even by the standards of TSLA.
Yesterday, on an intraday basis, TSLA plunged 11.7%, which was just the 14th time since its IPO in 2010 that the stock declined by double-digit percentages from the open to close and the second time this year. We’d also note that the 21.1% rally from the open to close on 4/9 was the stock’s second-largest open-to-close rally in its history.
While TSLA has been volatile, it hasn’t made a lot of headway. With the stock closing yesterday at $284.70, it was 3 cents–yes, CENTS–higher than where it opened after Election Day last November. There have been some major moves within those six months, but for all the talk about how Musk’s support of Trump was just a sinister ploy to buy influence and enrich himself, the stock’s performance says otherwise. While the stock hasn’t done much since the election, over the last year, shares have rallied just under 60%, which is nearly six times the 11% gain of the S&P 500.
YTD performance within the mega-cap tech space looks like a pack of FruitStripe gum. At the top of the performance list, Meta Platforms (META), Broadcom (AVGO), and Microsoft (MSFT) have all experienced double-digit percentage gains this year, while TSLA, Apple (AAPL), and Alphabet (GOOGL) have seen double-digit percentage declines. In between, Nvidia (NVDA) and Amazon.com (AMZN) have modest gains or losses.
From a shorter-term perspective, the disparities are nearly as wide. While AAPL and TSLA are both modestly below their 50-DMAs, AVGO headed into last night’s earnings report nearly 30% above its 50-DMA while NVDA, META, and MSFT were all at least 10% above that level. While often thought of as a monolith with the stock market, when it comes to performance, mega-cap tech has been in as much unison as political discourse at a holiday dinner.
