Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 10/13/25 – Rebound

Oct 13, 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.

“Riches don’t make a man rich, they only make him busier.” – Christopher Columbus

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 a bout of ferocious selling on Friday for stocks and into the weekend for cryptocurrencies, investors took some time to think things through over the weekend, and they’re taking a more optimistic tone. Futures on the S&P 500 are 1% higher, while the Nasdaq trades up more than 1.5%. Bonds are closed for Columbus Day, but gold is sharply higher with a gain of over 2% and trading just under $4,100 per ounce. Crude oil is also bouncing back with a gain of 1.5% but is still trading below $60.  It certainly could be worse, but even with this morning’s gains, the S&P 500 is still down well over 1% from Thursday’s close. The President may not like to see the stock market trade lower, but all the talk with China seems to have taken the shutdown off the front page of the business section.

S&P 500 futures are still up over 1% but off their highs from earlier in the session. We looked at all prior periods when the S&P 500 SPDR ETF (SPY) fell 2% in a session and then gapped up at least 75 bps at the open the following day. We originally looked at 1% upside gaps, but with SPY now teetering on a 1% gain, we widened the band. The overall results of both analyses were very similar, though.

The long-term chart of SPY below shows every prior occurrence when SPY gapped up at least 75 bps after a 2%+ down day since its inception in 1993. While there were plenty of similar occurrences during the bear markets of 2000 to 2002 and 2008 into early 2009, there have also been plenty of other occurrences at various points in the market cycle.

Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 10/10/25 – Tech and Utilities Lead the Way

Oct 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.

“If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” – Orson Welles

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 modestly positive this morning following comments from potential Fed chair-in-waiting Christopher Waller, who said he expects the Fed to cut rates further this year, but at a ‘careful’ pace. Long-term treasury yields are notably lower as the 10-year yield trades down nearly 5 basis points to 4.10%. After dropping below $4,000 per ounce yesterday, gold is up nearly 1%, trading at $4,010. Crude oil prices are down over 1% on the prospects of peace in the Middle East, and crypto trades modestly higher at just about $121K.

With the government still shut down, the only economic data on the calendar is the University of Michigan Sentiment report, and Chicago Fed President Goolsbee will speak at a bank conference shortly after the open. Speaking of economic data, the BLS has recalled furloughed staff this morning to ensure that the September CPI report gets released by the end of the month.

Asian markets were weak overnight, with the notable exception of South Korea, which rallied 1.7%. Japan, Hong Kong, and China, however, were all down 1% or more. Japanese PPI increased 0.3% m/m, triple the rate of consensus expectations, solidified market expectations for another rate hike this year. Despite Friday’s decline, the Nikkei finished the week 5.1% higher while Hong Kong traded down 3.1% and China was up fractionally.

In Europe, equity markets have been much tamer this morning. The STOXX 600 is little changed, and no major country’s benchmark index is up or down more than 0.3%, and most are on pace to finish the week with modest gains or losses.

The last five trading days have been full of divergence at the sector level. The S&P 500 is fractionally higher, but seven out of eleven sectors have traded lower, including four sectors – Real Estate, Consumer Discretionary, Communication Services, and Materials – that are down over 1%. The only two sectors with gains of more than 1% are the formerly strange bedfellows of Utilities (3.05%) and Technology (1.4%). Both these sectors are also the only two trading at Extreme Overbought levels.

It wasn’t long ago that Utilities was considered the most defensive sector in the market, while Technology was considered the most risky sector.  Like everything else now, it seems, AI has upended prior norms, although given the power-intensive nature of AI-related applications, the moves make sense.

Yesterday was a down day for the S&P 500, but in the seven trading days this month, there have already been five record closes, taking the YTD total to 33. If the year were to end today, 33 record highs in a year isn’t particularly noteworthy as it ranks tied for the 19th most since 1954.

What’s been more impressive is that the 33 record closes followed last year’s total of 57. With 90 record closing highs in the last two calendar years, there have only been five other two-year stretches when the S&P 500 had more record closing highs, and not to jinx anything, but there’s a legitimate chance that by the end of the year, the last two years could end up ranking well into the top five.

Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 10/9/25 – 18 Years

Oct 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.

“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.” – John Lennon

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 flat with a negative bias this morning as the relentless rally in gold takes a pause, and oil prices see a marginal pullback. Stocks in Asia were higher overnight as China reopened for trading, and shares of Softbank surged more than 10% after announcing a deal to acquire the robotics units of ABB for $5.4 billion.  In Europe, trading has been listless with the STOXX 600 down 0.04%.

The S&P 500 closed at another all-time high yesterday, just like it did 18 years ago today on 10/9/07. That new high in 2007 followed a late-summer peak-to-trough correction of nearly 12%. It was a time of stress in the financial system as the subprime housing market was in the process of imploding, but the Fed was cutting rates, and the damage ‘appeared’ contained. From a technical perspective, the S&P 500 had traded above resistance to new highs, and the 50-DMA, which has been sloping downwards, turned higher just above its 200-DMA, which was also rising. The one caveat was that the breakout to new highs wasn’t especially convincing, as the S&P 500 had only made a marginal new high.

Investors breathed a sigh of relief on 10/9/07, but in the days that followed, the S&P 500 couldn’t follow through on its breakout, and within days, it was back below its summer 2007 highs. Shortly after that, the wheels came off, and the crash began. A year after the October 2007 high, the S&P 500 cratered more than 40%. As loud as the sighs of relief were in October 2007, they had nothing on VIX screamings towards 80 a year later as the entire banking system was on the verge of collapse.

The experience of October 2007 should serve as a reminder that even in the best times, investors should always be prepared for the possibility that the light at the end of the tunnel is a freight train steaming right at us. It’s only fitting this morning that on the anniversary of the 2007 peak, JP Morgan (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon is in the news, warning of a correction in the market at some point in the next six months to two years. At first glance, that statement seems like something you would hear coming from Captain Obvious. Of course, there will be a correction in the next six months to two years! Stock market corrections occur on average about once a year, so there may actually be two!

If you read more into Dimon’s comments, though, he’s talking more about a serious bear market than a 10% correction. Even still, six months to two years isn’t really a precise forecast. While Dimon’s comments may not be of much use to investors or traders looking for any direction on where the stock market is going, they are exactly the kind of comments you want to hear from the CEO of America’s largest bank. That’s why JP Morgan Chase is just about the only major bank where the name on the CEO’s door is the same now as it was then. Dimon has earned the right to worry!

As bad as the declines were following the October 2007 high, as we always say when it comes to the market, time heals. It took several years, but eventually the market went on to make new highs, and this morning, the S&P 500 will open more than four times higher than it was when it closed at that peak 18 years ago.