May 2, 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 jungle is dark but full of diamonds” – Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman
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 pointing to another positive session this morning, even as the market has received earnings reports from Amazon.com (AMZN) and Apple (AAPL) tepidly. Overnight in Asia, major averages finished the week on a higher note as Japan and Hong Kong traded up more than 1% while China was closed. Even though its markets were closed, Chinese officials said they are assessing whether to conduct trade negotiations with the US after they say the Trump administration has reportedly reached out multiple times to start talks.
After yesterday’s holiday, European stocks picked up right where Asia left off as the STOXX 600 rallies more than 1%, putting it on pace for a weekly gain of 2.5%. The region’s Manufacturing PMI for April came in higher than expected at 49.0 versus forecasts for a reading of 48.0. It’s still in contraction territory, but a better-than-expected report is a better-than-expected report. On the trade front, the EU commissioner of trade commented that the bloc could buy more US goods to narrow the trade deficit between the two regions.
Here in the US, while futures are higher, where we close will depend on the April Employment report. After a weaker-than-expected ADP report and an uptick in jobless claims yesterday, there are some heightened concerns of a weaker report. The actual print came in better than expected, though. Non-Farm Payrolls were stronger than expected (177K vs 133K) while the Unemployment Rate was right inline with expectations at 4.2%. Average hourly earnings rose slightly less than expected (0.2% vs 0.3%), but average weekly hours came in slightly higher than expected (34.3 vs 34.2). In response to the report, both treasury yields and equity futures have moved higher.
The equity market’s historical comeback continued yesterday as the S&P 500’s 0.63% rally propelled it back above its 50-day moving average (DMA) for the first time in over two months and a streak of eight gains in a row. While the index’s short-term downtrend has been broken, it still faces upside resistance at the 200-DMA and the mid-March high when it last failed to rally back above that long-term moving average.
May 1, 2025
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“AI is transforming everything we do” – Mark Zuckerberg
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 had to earnings reports from mega-caps after the close last night, and both Meta Platforms (META) and Microsoft (MSFT) delivered. Both stocks are trading sharply higher in response to the reports, as META rallies over 6% and MSFT is on pace to gap up over 9%, which would put the stock on pace for its most positive gap higher in reaction to earnings since 2009.
The pace of earnings isn’t the only thing picking up, either. It will be another busy morning for economic data with jobless claims at 8:30, followed by the ISM Manufacturing report and Construction Spending at 10 AM. Given the weakness in soft economic data and the April regional Fed manufacturing surveys, don’t expect much positive from the ISM Manufacturing report. Still, claims will be an important report to watch as they have been very well-behaved up until now. This morning’s release, however, came in higher than expected on both an initial and continuing basis, with most of the increase in initial claims coming from New York. One week does not make a trend, but this will be even more important to watch next week.
There’s been a lot of talk about the potential for permanent damage to ‘brand America’ given the President’s brash tone towards long-time allies and the haphazard implementation of his tariff policy. The jury is still out on that one, but when it comes to investor sentiment, we were surprised to see today that the weekly survey from the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII) showed an increase in bearish sentiment this week (55.6% up to 59.3%), even as the survey week came just as the S&P 500 was up over 1.5% on back to back to back days and has also been riding a seven-day winning streak. Normally, bearish sentiment declines as the market recovers, but for now at least, investor sentiment seems to be scarred (or scared) from the sharp declines earlier in the month.
Wednesday’s session was a fitting end to a dramatic month. Just as the S&P 500 recovered from a decline of over 10% intra-month and almost erased it all by month end, in yesterday’s trading, the S&P 500 erased an intraday decline of more than 2% to finish the day in positive territory. The last time that happened was at the bear market lows in October 2022.
From a technical perspective, yesterday’s reversal occurred right where it was supposed to. After breaking its downtrend from the February highs last Friday, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) pulled back to that former trendline and bounced. Now, if it can maintain that momentum in the next couple of days and break back above the 50-day moving average, the technical picture would look much more encouraging. With futures up over 1% this morning, that 50-DMA will likely come into play today.
Reversals like yesterday’s aren’t all that common. Since its inception in 1993, there have only been 44 other days when SPY was down at least 2% intraday but finished the day higher. As shown in the chart below, these types of reversals occurred frequently during bear markets, with several during the dot-com bust and even more during the Financial Crisis, and even a few during the 2022 bear market. They haven’t been exclusive to bear markets, though, as there were more than a few scattered throughout bull markets and shallower market corrections.
Apr 30, 2025
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Apr 30, 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.
“There are no lines in nature, only areas of colour, one against another.” – Edouard Manet
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
April may only have 30 days, but this one feels like it was the longest month in a long time. Liberation Day was on April 2nd, but it seems like months ago. Maybe that’s because we have seen market moves that usually take months to play out compressed into just a matter of weeks. Thankfully, things have started to calm down, but you can never be sure if we’re past the worst or just in the eye of the storm.
Regarding economic data, the month is closing out with a whirlwind, and it started with the ADP Payrolls report which came in weaker than expected. While economists were expecting growth of 125K payrolls, the actual reading came in at just under half that at 62K. ADP was just the first of many, though, with the first read on GDP, the GDP Price Index, Core PCE, Personal Consumption and the Employment Cost Index all coming out at 8:30. GDP showed a slightly larger than expected decline (-0.3% vs -0.2%) and Personal Consumption was higher than expected, but the inflation readings came in much higher than expected which has pushed equity futures sharply lower and yields sharply higher.
As if these reports weren’t enough, we still have Personal Income and Personal Spending at 10 AM. That’s just economic news, too. Don’t forget that we’re in the thick of earnings season, and after the close today, the focus will be on Meta (META) and Microsoft (MSFT).
Did anything happen this month? Heading into the last trading day of the month, the S&P 500 is down less than 1%, five sectors are up, and six are down. At the surface, it sounds like an uneventful month, but it was anything but. The scatter chart below shows the performance of the S&P 500 and sectors on a month to day basis through April 8th and then from the close on April 8th through yesterday’s close. It has been a wild ride!
Along with the S&P 500, six sectors fell more than 10% through 4/8 and then rallied more than 10% since. Through 4/8, all eleven sectors fell at least 6.2% (Consumer Staples) and as much as 17.9% (Energy), and since then, every sector has rallied at least 4.6% (Health Care) and as much as 16.4% (Technology). In most cases, the biggest losers in the first eight days of the month have been the biggest winners since although Energy has been the exception, as its bounce was meager relative to the size of its plunge.
After all the noise, Technology is leading the way higher with a gain of 1.2%, followed by Communication Services (0.9%), Consumer Discretionary (0.8%), and Utilities (0.5%). On the downside, there are still plenty of losers, and the magnitude of the losses is much larger than the winners. Energy has been the big outlier with a decline of over 10% while Health Care (-4.7%), Materials (-2.7%), and Financials (-2.4%) are all still down over 2%. It hasn’t been a great month for the market, but it could have been a LOT worse.
