Mar 4, 2025
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“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
Target CEO Brian Cornell appeared on CNBC earlier, and while we didn’t count, throughout an interview lasting just a few minutes, it seemed like the term “certainty” was mentioned dozens of times, as in there is none. The current market sell-off that’s still less than two weeks old has been driven to this point almost entirely by fears and uncertainty as opposed to actual events. Fears and uncertainty over the economy, fears and uncertainty over interest rate policy, fears and uncertainty over US trade policy, fears and uncertainty over tax policy, fears and uncertainty regarding geopolitical stability. We get it. There’s always uncertainty, but this has been a different level. Like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get, except that lately they’re all flavors nobody likes (think Orange Cream, Maple Nut Butter, Cherry Cordial, etc).
This morning, you could say we’re getting some certainty as tariffs with China, Canada, and Mexico take effect. These moves are all expected to have an inflationary impact (Cornell noted that produce prices will start rising this week), but that’s not being reflected in crude oil prices and Treasury yields. Equity futures were looking eerily quiet earlier this morning. However, as we approach the opening bell, the tone has steadily weakened as international markets have also moved sharply lower. There’s not much to speak of in terms of economic data today, so unless there are any impromptu comments from the President during the day, the next potential catalyst will be tonight’s address to Congress tonight.
Heading into last week’s earnings report from Nvidia (NVDA), most investors assumed the company would report better than expected results. Based on the company’s past reporting patterns and the comments from the major hyper-scalers when they reported earlier in earnings season, it was also almost a foregone conclusion that the company would raise guidance, especially because they only provide short-term guidance a quarter out. Whatever impact, if any, DeepSeek would ultimately have, it wasn’t going to change short-term spending plans for the coming three months. Given that, in last Wednesday’s email of the Morning Lineup, we mentioned that “How the market reacts to that report could give us a good idea of the market tone as we head into Spring.”
NVDA’s performance since then hasn’t been a good omen, as the stock is down over 13% since its report. As shown in the chart below, NVDA’s price chart, which was already trending lower, now looks like it’s breaking down, and yesterday, the stock closed at its lowest level in close to six months (9/18/24).
The chart below shows every day since the launch of ChatGPT at the end of November 2022 and how many days had passed since NVDA last closed lower than that day’s close. Since the launch of ChatGPT, NVDA has never closed at a 52-week or even a six-month low, and yesterday was the first time it closed even at a 166-day closing low.
Since it comprises about 7% of the Nasdaq, NVDA’s plunge yesterday also took the Nasdaq marginally below its 200-DMA, which is a place it hasn’t been in more than a year – 333 trading days to be exact. The breakdown below its 200-DMA was only the 11th time the index ran more than a year without closing below that level. This just-ended streak ranked as the 7th longest streak of closes above the 200-DMA of all time.
Mar 3, 2025
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Mar 3, 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.
“We so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.” – Alexander Graham Bell
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
Well, at least it’s March. Anyone with a net long position in the stock market was happy to see February end. Although the S&P 500 finished the month down just 1.42%, the Nasdaq was hit with a decline of just under 4%, and nearly all of it came last week as the index declined 3.5%. Remember, it was only seven trading days ago that the S&P 500 closed at a record high!
This morning, equities are looking to build on last Friday’s gains as investors await the release of the February ISM Manufacturing report. In Europe, the STOXX 600 kicked off the week with gains of close to 1%, driven by a 2%+ rally in Germany. Manufacturing PMI readings for the region generally came in better than expected, but the rally in Germany has also been driven by a 10%+ rally in defense contractor Rheinmetall based on expectations that the EU will increase military spending to support Ukraine.
Getting back to last week’s trading, it was mostly positive at the sector level. As shown in the snapshot below, just four out of eleven sectors finished the week in the red. Technology (XLK) was the big loser, falling close to 4%, along with Utilities (XLU), which fell 1.3%. The two other sectors to finish lower were Communication Services (XLC) and Consumer Discretionary (XLY), which each shed around 1%. The losses in these two sectors were driven by mega caps like Tesla (TSLA) and Amazon.com (AMZN) in the Consumer Discretionary sector and Alphabet (GOOGL) and Meta Platforms (META) in the Communication Services sector. Besides these four sectors, most others were up at least 1%, including Financials (XLF) and Real Estate (XLRE), which gained over 2% each.
Relative to their short-term trading ranges, nine out of eleven sectors remain above their 50-day moving averages (DMA), but then there’s Consumer Discretionary and Technology, which both remain at oversold levels.
Feb 28, 2025
Through yesterday’s close, the S&P 500’s average daily performance during the second Trump administration has been a decline of 0.8%. The magnitude of the declines hasn’t been spread out evenly across each of those days. The chart below shows the S&P 500’s daily performance on every trading day since the inauguration, and we have also highlighted Mondays and Fridays in red. The days surrounding the weekend have been notably weak. Of the nine Friday and Monday sessions since 1/21, the S&P 500 has traded lower eight times for a median decline of 0.5%. These are some pretty weak numbers, but in the early days of this administration, we have seen no shortage of Friday afternoon and weekend headlines that the market has been forced to adjust to.
It’s still extremely early in this administration, so the extreme weakness of the market on Fridays and Mondays could easily shift, but we found it interesting how much these numbers differ from average weekday performance under President Biden. During his four years in office, Friday and Monday were easily the best days of the trading week, with average gains of 9.8 bps and 8.5 bps, respectively. Just like in life, for the markets, no news is sometimes good news, and unlike the first few weeks of the second Trump Administration, weekends during the Biden Administration tended ot be quiet from Friday afternoons through early Monday.
