Jun 23, 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.
“At some stage therefore, we should have to expect the machines to take control.” – Alan Turing
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 can all give good rationalizations of why futures have seen such a muted reaction to the Iran news over the weekend, but isn’t that the way hindsight always works? If you had asked anybody to predict how markets would react to a US bombing of targets in Iran, no one would have said a gain of less than 1% in crude oil and no change in S&P 500 futures.
This morning’s muted reaction to the weekend’s events is also a microcosm of the market’s YTD performance. Heading into the final week of the first half, there has been no shortage of market catalysts and subsequent volatility, but here we are with the S&P 500 little changed (up less than 1.5%) on the year. Since WWII, 2025 ranks as just the 12th time (out of 81) that the S&P 500 has been up or down less than 2% heading into the final week of the first half.
The chart below shows the S&P 500’s performance during the last week of the first half in each year since 1945. Overall, the median performance has been a decline of 0.13%, with positive returns just 51% of the time, so it hasn’t typically been a positive week for stocks. More recently, performance has been even weaker with negative returns in nine of the last eleven years and a median decline of 0.29%.
Jun 13, 2025
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 cover everything happening across financial markets after another wild week.
Jun 13, 2025
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“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” – WB Yeats
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
If you were planning on a slow summer Friday, renewed tensions in the Middle East have damaged those plans this morning. Equity futures are off their overnight lows, but the S&P 500 is still indicated to open down by about 1%. The real action is obviously in the energy markets as crude oil trades sharply higher.
The US Oil Fund ETF (USO) is trading up over 7.5% in the pre-market, which would put it on pace for the sixth-largest opening gap to the upside since the ETF’s inception in 2006. It would also be just the 24th time that USO gapped up over 5%. In terms of the prior 7.5% gaps higher, USO continued higher from the open to close for a median gain of 2.1% and positive returns four out of five times. However, by the close of the following day, USO was down a median of 1.6% from the initial gap higher with declines three out of five times, and a week after that opening gap, it was down four out of five times for a median decline of 2.2%. Historically, at least, these sharp gaps higher haven’t had a lot of follow-through.
As far as the price of oil is concerned, this morning’s gap higher has helped to confirm what was already a break of the downtrend that had been in place since mid-January. It also cleared what could have been a formidable level of resistance in the $75 range.
As luck would have it, today is also Friday the 13th, and while the day has unlucky connotations, in terms of market performance, it has been anything but. Since its launch in 1993, the S&P 500 ETF’s (SPY) average daily change has been a gain of 3.9 bps, with gains 53.6% of the time. Fridays, however, haven’t been as positive as SPY’s average performance is unchanged, with gains 52.1% of the time. On the 53 prior Friday the 13ths, though, SPY’s median gain was 20 bps with gains 60% of the time, and on the four prior times that there has been a Friday the 13th in June, SPY’s median gain was 57 bps with gains three out of four times. Will investors buy the dip again and keep the positive June Friday the 13th vibes going?
Jun 12, 2025
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“I will never apologize for the United States of America. Ever. I don’t care what the facts are.” – George H.W. Bush
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 some modest losses on Wednesday, US equity markets remain weak this morning as S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures are indicated to open down by about 0.5%. In comparison, the Dow is even weaker with declines of about 0.70%. The added weakness in the Dow stems from an 8%+ decline in Boeing (BA) following news of an Air India 787 crash shortly after takeoff. Whether the tragedy was a Boeing issue is far from certain, but given the company’s troubles over recent years, investors aren’t waiting for details over what happened.
After yesterday’s weaker-than-expected CPI, investors are now focused on the May PPI and weekly jobless claims. PPI came in weaker than expected, but more concerning was jobless claims. Initial claims came in at 248K which was unchanged from last week’s revised reading and was the highest level since last October. Continuing Claims were more concerning as they shot up to 1.956 million and was the highest level since 2021. In response, equity futures have seen little in the way of moves, but yields have moved lower.
Investor sentiment has improved as stocks have recovered in the last several weeks, but based on the results of the AAII weekly sentiment survey, complacency has yet to set in. In this week’s survey, bullish sentiment improved from 32.7% to 36.7%, which is hardly an elevated reading. At the other end of the spectrum, just over a third of investors are still bearish (33.6%)/
In looking at the 52-week high list the last couple of days, we thought we stepped into a time machine seeing IBM on the list. The stock broke above resistance last week and continued to run higher all week, consistently closing higher than it opened.
With the gains this week, yesterday was IBM’s 9th straight day of trading higher. A nine-day streak may not sound all that impressive, but over the last 50 years, there have only been seven other streaks of nine or more days. Strangely enough, though, of the now eight streaks of nine or more positive days in a row, four have occurred in the last two years, while the prior 48 only had four!
The chart below shows where each of the prior streaks occurred on IBM’s historical chart. While two of the streaks were followed by steep declines in the days, weeks, months, and even years ahead, these streaks haven’t been indicative of any definitive forward trend.
Jun 11, 2025
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“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.
There have been some positive developments in the US-China trade talks as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that both parties agreed to a consensus in trade talks that now only have to be agreed upon by President Trump and Xi. The President just truthed that the deal is ‘done’. Despite the positive headlines, futures have been drifting lower as the terms of the deal really only bring us back to where we were after the Geneva meeting, so this drama is anything but done, even if things are moving in the right direction.
Markets are also a bit anxious heading into the release of the May CPI report. Will this be the month that the impact of tariffs starts to show up in the data, or will we once again hear that it’s a ‘next month’ story?
The S&P 500 closed within 2% of an all-time high yesterday, and overall breadth has likewise been strong. Let’s start with the cumulative advance/decline. The S&P 500’s cumulative A/D line has already hit a new high since “Liberation Day”, and after a brief dip in late May, it has rebounded right back within a hair of its high. If the market takes out its February high, it would be good to see breadth confirming the move.
One big contributor to the strong breadth in the market is the Technology sector, which has already taken out its late May high in the last few days, reaching a new high yesterday.
While the S&P 500 and Technology have seen new highs in terms of breadth as they wait for new highs in price to follow, the Industrials sector has been the opposite, as price has already made a new high, while breadth remains just shy. Back in late May, the sector’s cumulative A/D line just barely missed making a new high, and after a brief dip in late May, is now back on the rebound as it looks to take out those highs once again.
