Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 6/1/26 – The Year of Semis

Jun 1, 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.

“People talk about AI reducing jobs – complete nonsense. It’s causing more software engineers to be hired.” – Jensen Huang

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

It’s a new month, but the market rally continues to roll on. S&P 500 futures are priced to open 0.2% higher, while the Nasdaq is fractionally higher. Treasury yields are unchanged right around 4.45% while crude oil trades back above $90, as there don’t seem to be any signs of an imminent peace deal or ceasefire. Gold prices are down 1.4% but still above $4,500 per ounce, while weakness in Bitcoin persists as prices fall to their lowest level since April.

Asian and European markets have been mixed to kick off the month, as manufacturing PMI indices have started to hit the tape. Here in the US, we’ll get the S&P 500 and ISM reads on the manufacturing sector at 9:45 and 10:00 AM, respectively.

In a speech from Taiwan overnight, Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang called 2026 “the year of agents”. In the evolution of AI, that’s definitely been the case, and the side-effect of that trend in AI is that in the stock market, 2026 has been the year of semiconductors. With a year-to-date gain of 81.1% through the end of May, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) has easily had its best start to a year in its history.

Before 2026, the best start to a year for the SOX was its first full year in 1995, when it rallied 52.8%, or nearly 30 percentage points less than this year’s gain. An 81% gain to start the year is impressive under any circumstances, but when you consider the size of the sector, 81% is almost unbelievable.

Besides having a monster gain at the index level, the rally in semis has been broad. Of the index’s 30 components, eight have more than doubled, including three that are up over 200%. The average gain of all 30 components has been modestly better than the index itself (+87%), indicating that, unlike the S&P 500, it hasn’t been just the biggest stocks in the index driving the gains. Participation has been so broad, in fact, that every stock in the SOX has outperformed the S&P 500 so far this year.

What really stands out about the chart below, though, is NVDA’s performance relative to all the other members of the SOX. With a gain of 13.2% YTD, it’s easily the worst performer in the index and outperforming the S&P 500 by less than three percentage points. So, while all of the major financial outlets are focusing endlessly on last night’s announcements from NVDA out of Taiwan, investors have been looking elsewhere.

Relative to the rest of the semis space, NVDA has been giving up ground for nearly a year now. The chart below shows the stock’s relative strength versus the SOX since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. While the stock saw blistering outperformance in the first two years after ChatGPT’s launch, it moved sideways relative to the SOX for nearly a year, and since last August, it has been steadily giving up ground to the index’s other 29 components.

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Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 5/29/26 – Nine For Nine

May 29, 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.

“In a crisis, be aware of the danger–but recognize the opportunity.” – John F. Kennedy

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 modestly higher this morning following a mostly positive session in Asia, where South Korea rallied 3.6% to take its weekly gain to 8%. The Nikkei also rallied 2.5% for a weekly gain of nearly 5%. Asia’s positive moves have flowed through to Europe this morning, and the STOXX 600 is up 0.6%, led higher by Spain, Italy, and France.

Outside of equities, treasury yields and crude oil are modestly lower on reports that the Iran-US ceasefire will be extended, and gold is bouncing after briefly trading below its 200-DMA yesterday.

An AI compute deal between Anthropic, Alphabet (GOOGL), Broadcom (AVGO), Apollo (APO), and Blackstone (BX) was reported on by Bloomberg last night. The deal has a lot of moving parts to it, and raises concerns over complex transactions and whether it’s just a lot of smoke and mirrors. We broke it all down in the commentary section of today’s Morning Lineup and explained why it’s nothing like the transactions that took place leading up to the Financial Crisis, so make sure to check that out.

In our experience, we’ve seen enough to know never count anything out, but with the S&P 500 up over 1% already this week, it’s looking likely that the S&P 500 will finish higher this week, extending its weekly streak of gains to nine. The last time the S&P 500 traded higher for nine straight weeks was in December 2023, and the last time there was a longer streak of weekly gains was way back in 1985!

The chart below shows S&P 500 winning streaks in the post-WWII period, and while there have been eleven other nine-week streaks, only four made it to a tenth week or longer. In 1985, the S&P 500 went 12 straight weeks without a decline, and in 1957, the index went 13 weeks, or 3 months, without a weekly decline.

The chart below shows each prior streak on a long-term chart of the S&P 500.  Besides the fact that none of these prior periods occurred right near a major top in the market, it’s also interesting to note that they didn’t really occur early on in bull markets coming out of extended bears.

While the S&P 500 keeps chugging along, gold prices have been under pressure for months now, which is a stark contrast to earlier this year when the metal could do no wrong. From the peak in late January, gold prices briefly dropped into bear market territory (on an intraday basis) before rallying intraday. In the process of that decline, gold prices also briefly dipped below the 200-day moving average (DMA) for the first time in 2.5 years.

While the streak of trading without a breach of the 200-DMA on an intraday basis ended yesterday, the streak of closes above that level remains intact, and at 638 trading days, it ranks as the second-longest streak on record, trailing only a 729 trading day streak that ended in December 2011. In order for the current streak to break the record, gold would have to stay above its 200-DMA through the summer months and into late October, but it has been an impressive streak.

The decline in gold since its January high, however, should serve as an important reminder that the tide on a trade that can seemingly do no wrong can quickly go out.

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