May 15, 2026
The S&P has continued to leg higher in a picture-perfect breakout that now looks less like a “V” and more like a checkmark.
The market continues to follow the post-Netscape pattern, and more and more investors are starting to embrace the comparison. Is now the wrong time to be rooting for that comparison?
We cover everything going on across markets and the economy in this week’s Bespoke Report newsletter.
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May 15, 2026
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 always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.” – Walt Disney
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 may be Friday, but investors are in no mood to celebrate as equity futures are sharply lower. The Nasdaq is leading the losses, declining 1.28% while the S&P 500 is poised to open down by just under 1% (-0.90%). Treasury yields continue to march higher as they have all week, and in the commodity space, WTI crude oil is spiking 3% to just under $104 per barrel while gold is down over 2.5%. Bitcoin is also lower, falling by just 1%.
The weakness in US futures follows a lousy night in Asia. The Nikkei fell 2%, China was down over 1%, and South Korea plunged over 6%. Following these declines, all of Asia’s major indices finished the week lower. Higher yields contributed to the negative tone, and in South Korea, a potential labor strike at Samsung pressured that stock.
Weakness in Asia worked its way into Europe, and stocks are likewise lower across the board with declines of more than 1%. Here again, the primary culprit is higher yields, although CPI in Italy rose less than expected.
Getting back to the US, there’s not much in the way of earnings reports this morning, but at 8:30, we’ll get the release of the May Empire Manufacturing report, followed by Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization at 9:15.
With inflation headlining the week’s economic data, and much of it surprising to the upside, yields have been an unavoidable and uncomfortable focus for investors. Almost across the entire yield curve, we’ve seen yields move higher this week, pushing the prices of the underlying bonds lower.
The snapshot of Treasury ETFs across the yield curve shows the story. Except for the shortest duration treasuries, prices have moved lower over the last five trading days (since last Thursday’s close), and the magnitude of the declines increases the further you go out on the curve. The magnitude of the declines hasn’t been extreme, but any treasury ETF with a duration of more than a year is currently oversold and will only get more oversold at the open today. YTD, it’s also been a year to forget, with declines nearly across the board.
Of all the points on the yield curve, the 30-year is probably at the biggest crossroads. For nearly three years now, right above 5% has been a level the 30-year has flirted with multiple times, but each time it got there, the sellers didn’t have the firepower for a meaningful breakout. This week has been the third major test of that level as the yield pushes up towards 5.10% this morning. Will the third time be the charm or a strikeout?
The iShares 20+ Year Treasury ETF (TLT) is the opposite of the 30-year yield. Prices plunged during 2022 and into early 2023 as the Fed hiked rates and inflation surged. As price pressures eased, yields and treasury prices stabilized, and while there was a rally off the 2023 lows into mid-2024, momentum quickly stalled out. Ever since then, prices have been stuck in the mid-80s, and this morning, TLT is trading down over 1% and testing support right around $84. It’s been a multi-year bear market for fixed income in the post-COVID era, and if these support levels don’t hold, the sector could be in store for a new leg lower.
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May 14, 2026
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.
“Chinese restaurants in America today outnumber the five largest fast food chains in the US all combined.” – Donald Trump
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 futures are in rally mode this morning as strong earnings from Cisco (CSCO) push that stock to record highs. The S&P 500 is on pace to open higher by about 0.3% while the Nasdaq is up 0.2%. Dow futures are leading the way, gaining 0.81%, which would put the index back above 50,000. The picture for US markets is positive now, but there’s a busy schedule of economic data on the calendar, kicking off with jobless claims and Retail Sales at 8:30.
Treasury yields are pulling back a bit with the 10-year yield down 4 bps to 4.44%. Oil prices are modestly lower, but WTI remains above $100. There have been no major developments out of the Middle East. Both gold and Bitcoin are little changed.
Asian markets were mixed overnight, with Japan down 1%, while Chinese stocks fell 1.5%. South Korea, meanwhile, bucked the trend, rallying 1.8%. The meetings between Trump and Xi and their entourages are obviously the major story of the day, and investors will be looking for any headlines coming from those meetings. In Europe, equities are higher across the board with the STOXX 600 up 0.6%, led higher by a 1.5% rally in Germany.
With all the attention shifting to China over the last 24 hours, investors rotated into Chinese stocks yesterday as the KraneShares China Internet ETF (KWEB) rallied just under 5% on strong volume for its best day since late January. Despite the rally, the stock finished yesterday’s session just below the downtrend line that has been in place since last October. KWEB has clearly stabilized since early April following steady losses over the preceding six months, but for bulls to get excited, they’ll need to see that downtrend get broken.
Chinese tech and US stocks have followed interesting paths over the last decade. While the performance was a close race between the world’s two superpowers in the last half of the last decade, in the post-Covid era, the two ETFs have followed diverging paths. Five years ago, the performance of KWEB and SPY in the prior five years was nearly identical. Since then, they have moved completely in opposite directions. As a result, the trailing 10-year performance of SPY is a gain of over 250% compared to a decline of 15% for KWEB! You can debate all you want about which world leader has the upper hand on a diplomatic basis heading into this summit, but from a market perspective, Trump is holding the nuts.
The relative strength of KWEB versus SPY further illustrates the sharp contrast. Chinese tech stocks fell off a cliff (almost literally) in the second half of 2021 and haven’t recovered since. Just in the last two weeks, the relative strength of KWEB versus SPY hit a record low.
At the individual stock/ADR level, Chinese stocks have experienced mixed returns this year. The snapshot below from our Trend Analyzer shows where nine of the largest/most active Chinese ADRs are trading relative to their trading ranges. YTD, some of these ETFs have seen big gains while others are down double-digits.
On a short-term basis, practically all these ADRs are doing well, as Pinduoduo (PDD) is the only one trading below its 50-DMA, while Trip.com (TCOM) is the only other ETF on the list that is not currently at overbought levels.
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May 13, 2026
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“We should keep on going along the path of globalization. Globalization is good… when trade stops, war comes.” – Jack Ma
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
Paul Hickey appeared on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street on Tuesday to discuss markets, semis, and inflation. To view the segment, click on the image below.
It’s hard to call yesterday’s decline (-0.16% in the S&P 500 and -0.71% in the Nasdaq) a dip, but investors have stepped in to buy it this morning as both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are poised to erase yesterday’s losses at the open. Treasury yields are little changed, crude oil is fractionally lower, gold is higher, and Bitcoin is modestly lower but still above $80K.
The positive tone in US futures follows an up night in Asia as the Nikkei rallied 0.8% and South Korea jumped 2.6%. Chinese stocks are up 0.7% as Air Force One is touching down in Beijing as we type this.
In Europe, the tone is mixed with the STOXX 600 up 0.3% as Germany leads (+0.6%) and France and Spain decline fractionally. GDP in the Eurozone increased 0.1%, which was inline with expectations, while employment increased slightly more than expected, although French unemployment unexpectedly increased from 7.9% up to 8.1%.
The only economic report on the calendar this morning was April PPI, and boy, was it a clunker. Headline PPI surged 1.4% – not y/y but m/m while the core reading surged 1.0% versus estimates for an increase of just 0.3%. The headline index was only forecast to increase 0.5%. PPI tends to be more volatile than CPI, but these numbers are hot, hot, hot. As you would expect, the immediate response in the futures market was for yields to spike higher while equities erased half of their pre-release gains.
It was bound to happen at some point. After seemingly going up every day lately, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) declined just over 3% yesterday after falling as much as 6.7% on an intraday basis. Even for semis, swings and declines of that magnitude are notable, but looking at the chart, you can barely see them. Even after that drop, the SOX is still 31% above its 50-day moving average.
We were curious to see how common it is for the SOX to fall more than 2.5% just one day after closing at an all-time high. Since 1995, it’s happened 23 other times. You know when the last occurrence was? Last Thursday! It was also the fourth occurrence this year.
The chart below shows each prior occurrence with a red dot. While there were certainly other occurrences spread sporadically over the years, the only other time they were as frequent as the last five years were during the mid-1990s, right up to the 2000 peak. That’s a parallel that has come up a lot lately, with the trillion-dollar question being where we are in that comparison – 1998 or early 2000.
We’ve discussed the lack of strong market breadth on up days several times in recent weeks, but yesterday we saw the opposite as the S&P 500 declined even as its net advance/decline line was positive. That divergence marked the third straight day and the 28th time this year that price and breadth moved in opposite directions.
The chart below shows the frequency of days by year when price and breadth diverged. Over the last ten years, we’ve seen a steady increase in the number of occurrences, and in both 2024 and 2025, the S&P 500 saw a record number of divergent days. As mentioned above, we’ve already seen 28 occurrences this year. If that pace continues, this year’s total would spike up to 77, far eclipsing the records of the prior two years.
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May 12, 2026
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