Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 4/28/26 – Water, Water, Everywhere

Apr 28, 2026

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“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.” – Harper Lee

Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.  

Sentiment surrounding AI is really something these days. On one day, you can have stocks surging on the idea that companies can’t get their hands on enough compute, and then the next day, they sell off sharply because there’s not enough demand. It’s like the line from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, “Water, water, everywhere/Nor any drop to drink”. This morning, the Nasdaq is leading futures lower on a report in the Wall Street Journal that OpenAI missed year-end user and revenue targets, raising questions over whether all of the investments in the sector will eventually pay off. These are legitimate questions to ask, but if the article is based on year-end 2025 targets, a lot has changed between now and then regarding OpenAI’s growth (Codex) and the sector.

Nasdaq futures are currently down more than 1% while the S&P 500 is indicated 0.65% lower, while oil prices have surged more than 5%, taking WTI back above $100 per barrel. The impact of that increase in oil prices can’t be overstated either. While oil prices surge, gold prices are sharply lower (-2.6%), while Bitcoin is down less than 1%.

In Asia, stocks were mostly lower, with South Korea being the only exception (+0.4%). Japan and Hong Kong were both down 1% while China declined only 0.2%. The BoJ left its policy rate unchanged, but it was a fractured vote with three of nine voters pushing for a rate hike.

In Europe, it’s a mixed picture. With much less tech exposure than the US, the STOXX 600 is unchanged on the session while Italy leads the way higher (+0.9%) and Germany lags (-0.2%).

In the US today, it’s a relatively quiet day for data with the FHFA House Price Index at 9:00, and the Richmond Fed and Consumer Confidence reports for April hitting the tape at 10 AM.

The S&P 500 hit both a new intraday and a closing high yesterday as the bull market continues to reconfirm itself with six closing record highs since 4/15. The index has had a parabolic run this month, and while a pullback or consolidation wouldn’t surprise anyone, the index should find decent support at the prior highs from late last year/early this year.

Over the last several years, whenever the market hits new highs, we look to see what’s driving the move higher. Is it the mega-caps or the rest of the index? Starting with the mega-caps, it’s been a strong month for the group, and while the group rallied nearly 1% yesterday to provide some positive momentum, it remains well below its prior all-time highs from last fall. At yesterday’s close of $67.08, the MAG7 ETF (MAGS) is still nearly 3% below its prior peak.

The equal-weight S&P 500, which more accurately reflects the performance of the “S&P 493”, traded down fractionally yesterday, so while it didn’t contribute at all to yesterday’s rally, it is actually much closer to all-time highs than the MAG7 ETF. In any event, though, it’s interesting to see that both the S&P 500 Equalweight and the MAG7 ETF closed more than 1% below all-time highs yesterday, even as the index itself hit a new one.

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Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 4/27/26

Apr 27, 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.

“Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.” – Voltaire

Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.  

Nasdaq futures are up once again this morning as semis rally another 1.5% in pre-market trading.  As a reminder, the Philly Sox semis index is on an 18-day win streak and hasn’t had a down day this month!  Meanwhile, traders continue to sell software stocks with the ETF that tracks the group (IGV) down about half a percent ahead of the open.  One day soon we expect the long semis/short software trade to unwind; it’s just a matter of when.

As we noted in Friday’s Bespoke Report (read it here if you missed it on Friday), even though the cap-weighted large-cap index ETFs like SPY and QQQ have broken out to new all-time highs, the S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (RSP) looks quite different.

As shown in the lower left chart below, RSP attempted to break out but failed at resistance.  On Friday, SPY rallied 0.8% even though breadth was -146 and the average stock in the index was down 0.2%.

While the Tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) rallied more than 2% last week, the S&P 500 (SPY) was only up 0.5%, and there were actually more sectors down (6) than up (5).

Health Care (XLV), Communication Services (XLC), Financials (XLF), Real Estate (XLRE), and Consumer Discretionary (XLY) were all down more than 1%.

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Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 4/24/26 – SOX 10,000

Apr 24, 2026

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“Let chaos reign, then rein in chaos.” – Andy Grove

Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.  

The rally continues to roll this morning as the S&P 500 looks to gap up 0.50% at the open, while the Nasdaq is up nearly triple that amount on the back of strong earnings, specifically from Intel (INTC). There’s also been some positive news out of the Middle East on reports that both the US and Iran will return to the bargaining table. Along with higher stock prices comes lower oil prices as WTI crude trades down 1.5% to $94.45 after trading as high as $97 earlier.  Gold prices are unchanged, and Bitcoin is up nearly 1%.

Overnight, Asia was mixed. The Nikkei finished the last session of the week with a gain of 1%, doubling its week-to-date gain, while South Korea was little changed, keeping its weekly gain at just over 4.5%. China was slightly lower on the session and finished the week up less than 1%.

In Europe, stocks are generally lower, sitting out the tech-fueled rally that US stocks are likely to see at the open. The STOXX 600 is down less than half a percent, but will finish the week down over 2% even as the S&P 500 looks to finish the week higher.

Getting back to the US, it’s a quiet day for economic data with Michigan Sentiment the only report on the calendar. Earlier this month, the flash reading came in at a record low. That’s noteworthy because if those preliminary levels hold, it would be the first time that this index ever hit a record low in the same month that the S&P 500 hit an all-time high. There seems to be a disconnect somewhere.

It’s time to dust off the 10,000 hats again, not for the Dow but the SOX. For the first time, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) closed above 10,000 yesterday, and this morning, the Transports of the 21st Century are on pace to trade another 2.8% higher. We’ve been discussing it a lot recently, so excuse us for beating a dead horse, but the SOX is now on pace to trade higher for a record 18 straight trading days. The only other streak that was anywhere nearly as long was in June 2014, when the index traded higher for 15 straight days.

Just as incredible as the 18-day winning streak is the magnitude of the gain during this streak. If the current gains hold through the end of the day, the SOX will have rallied 45% in the last 18 trading days.  We’ll say that again, 45%! Even for a volatile index like the SOX, there has only been one other 18-day period in the index’s history when it gained more, and that was coming out of the dot-com crash lows in Q4 2002, when the index was 97% lower than it is now!

We mentioned the term “dead horse” above, and surprisingly, it’s been stocks that were considered left for dead driving most of the gains. For starters, during yesterday’s session, Texas Instruments (TXN) rallied 19.4% on the back of its Q1 earnings report. Since 1990, there has only been one other day when the stock rallied more, and that was in October 2000.

As mentioned above, today’s driver of the semis rally is Intel (INTC). After an earnings triple play yesterday, the stock is trading up over 26% in the pre-market, which would rank as the stock’s best day since at least 1990. While the old guard of semis has been rallying, the AI bellwether of the group, Nvidia (NVDA), continues to lag, at least relatively speaking. Since the 3/30 low for the SOX, NVDA is up “only” 20%, or less than half as much as the index, in which it is easily the largest component by market cap.

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