Jul 31, 2020
This week’s Bespoke Report newsletter is now available for members.
Just when they thought Tech was out, they pulled it back in!
Since peaking on July 20th, the Tech sector and FAANG names had been experiencing some downside mean reversion. That downside action came to an end on Friday when Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), and Facebook (FB) all surged on extremely impressive earnings results.
Below is one chart from this week’s Bespoke Report that shows the strength we’ve seen from the mega-caps in 2020. As shown, the five largest stocks in the S&P 500 have collectively added $1.66 trillion in market cap this year. The other 495 stocks in the index have lost $1.61 trillion in market cap!
We discuss this week’s action across financial markets in our weekly Bespoke Report newsletter. To read the report and access everything else Bespoke’s research platform has to offer, start a two-week free trial to one of our three membership levels. You won’t be disappointed!
Jul 24, 2020
This week’s Bespoke Report newsletter is now available for members.
In our Bespoke Report from two weeks ago, we broke the bull market rally off the March lows into three acts, each of which had different leadership characteristics. With the S&P 500 eclipsing its 6/8 high this past Monday, we have provided an update to the three act chart below, and now wonder if we are in the beginning of Act IV.
To summarize each of the acts so far:
Act I spanned 3/23 through 5/13 and was led by Tech and stay at home names which were either the least impacted or even benefitted from the economic shutdown and stay at home orders. Health Care stocks benefitted given the race for a vaccine and treatments, while bombed out Energy stocks bounced.
Act II spanned nearly a month beginning on 5/13 through 6/8. During this phase of the rally, the re-opening stocks rallied along with cyclicals in the Industrials sector as well as Financials as it became clear that the first wave of the Covid outbreak was ebbing.
Act III began in early June as signs emerged that the south and southwest was starting to flare up. As re-openings were rolled back, investors rotated back into tech, work from home, and FANG stocks.
That leaves us where we are now. With the S&P 500 reaching new post-Covid highs this week (before pulling back on Friday), is this the beginning of a new act, and if so, which areas will lead the market going forward? In this week’s Bespoke Report, we break down the latest trends regarding Covid, the market, earnings, and the economy in order to help answer that question. To read the report and access everything else Bespoke’s research platform has to offer, start a two-week free trial to one of our three membership levels. You won’t be disappointed!
Jul 17, 2020
This week’s Bespoke Report newsletter is now available for members.
The US equity market closed out this week right at the line in the sand that has snuffed out two prior attempts at sustaining the post-March rally. That sets up a huge next week as earnings reports start to really flow while the Federal Reserve debates yield curve control and Congress has to reckon with the expiry of large unemployment benefits which may threaten consumer spending. Meanwhile COVID continues to spread in the background, forcing a narrative reckoning across price and policy. We discuss in detail along with reviews of recent sentiment indicators, economic data, political polling, and the start of earnings season in this week’s Bespoke Report.
To read the report and access everything else Bespoke’s research platform has to offer, start a two-week free trial to one of our three membership levels. You won’t be disappointed!
Jul 10, 2020
This week’s Bespoke Report newsletter is now available for members.
The S&P 500 was up 3% on the week, while the Nasdaq 100 was up 6.6% (leaving it up 24.6% YTD). Chinese stocks also had a big week with a gain of 15.9%. Within the US, we continue to see huge performance divergence between the largest and smallest stocks. Within the large-cap S&P 500, the cap-weighted index was up 3% on the week, but the equal-weight index was up just 0.3%. YTD, the cap-weighted S&P is down just 0.28%, but the equal-weight index is still down more than 10%.
Here is a stat for you that highlights strength at the top: the five largest stocks in the S&P added $352 billion in market cap this week alone. That would rank as the 10th largest stock in the index. At the bottom of the index, if the 100 smallest stocks in the S&P 500 each doubled from here, it would only add 2.5% to the index. If only Apple (AAPL) were to double from here, it would add 6% to the index.
To read our full Bespoke Report and access everything else Bespoke’s research platform has to offer, start a two-week free trial to one of our three membership levels. You won’t be disappointed!
Jul 2, 2020
This week’s Bespoke Report newsletter is now available for members.
It looked like the market was going to finish out the week on a positive note, but a late-day sell-off erased much of the day’s earlier gains. Even after the decline, markets finished the day and the week in positive territory. While it was a short week, we have a lot to discuss in this week’s Bespoke Report.
Topics discussed include the strongest 100-day rally since 1933, a discussion of long and short-term performance trends in various asset classes, international equity market performance, still elevated levels of volatility, economic trends, sentiment, seasonal trends, and a lot more.
To read the report and access everything else Bespoke’s research platform has to offer, start a two-week free trial to one of our three membership levels. You won’t be disappointed!
Jun 26, 2020
This week’s Bespoke Report newsletter is now available for members.
It was another bout of Friday selling which took stocks to new two week lows this week, led lower by banks in the wake of Federal Reserve stress tests that limited buybacks and dividends. In the background, surging case counts across the US Sunbelt are driving market concern over how the virus can be contained along with the impact on the economy. We take a look at the outlook for the economy and markets in depth, as well as reviewing the US political and policy outlook in this week’s Bespoke Report.
To read the report and access everything else Bespoke’s research platform has to offer, start a two-week free trial to one of our three membership levels. You won’t be disappointed!
