Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 2/26/26 – To the Moon!

Feb 26, 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.

“Bang! Zoom! To the moon, Alice!” – Jackie Gleason

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

Equity futures have moved fractionally into positive territory off their overnight lows as shares of Nvidia (NVDA) turned positive with a gain of nearly 1%. The 10-year yield is down 1 bps to 4.04% while crude oil trades down 2% to $64 per barrel. Gold prices are also down by about 0.5%, while silver plunges nearly 5% and Bitcoin drops over 1% to just over $68K.

Asia was mostly positive overnight. The Nikkei finished higher by a modest 0.3%, and Hong Kong declined more than 1%.  South Korean stocks, however, continued to surge as the KOSPI rallied 3.7%, taking its YTD gain to 49.7%! Nearly 50%! Japanese PM Takaichi nominated two dovish candidates for roles within the BoJ, and the yen is weakening as markets now price the odds of a rate hike in April down to just 50%. This comes even as Leading Indicators in Japan came in better than expected.

European stocks are positive again this morning, with the STOXX 600 up 0.2%, with France’s 0.9% gain leading the way higher. February Business and Consumer Confidence unexpectedly declined, although Confidence in Italy bounced.

In the US this morning, the only reports on the calendar are Jobless Claims at 8:30, followed by the KC Fed Manufacturing report at 11. At 10 AM Eastern, Fed Governor Bowman will also testify in front of a Senate panel.

Jackie Gleason, best known as the hot-tempered bus driver Ralph Kramden from the 1950s sitcom The Honeymooners, would have turned 110 years old today. Ralph’s most iconic line from the show was “To the moon, Alice”, and that’s the way things seem to be going for semiconductor stocks. While Nvidia’s (NVDA) stock price, despite surging profits and revenues, has been rangebound for months now, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) hit another record high yesterday, taking its YTD gain to just under 20%.

Along with the index itself, breadth in the sector has also been strong. Yesterday alone, nine of the index’s 30 components hit 52-week highs, even as NVDA closed nearly 8% below its respective high.

While semis have been strong, software stocks continue to try digging out from the AI-pocalypse. The latest setback for the sector was earnings from Salesforce (CRM) last night. CRM exceeded EPS forecasts on inline revenues. Guidance was mixed with the company raising Q1 EPS forecasts while keeping full-year forecasts in line with expectations. Despite a somewhat positive report at the surface, CRM is down more than 2% in the pre-market.

As software stocks have been cratering in recent weeks, investors have been asking where company managements are with respect to purchasing their stocks. If the declines were a major overreaction, as CRM CEO Benioff and others say, shouldn’t they be buying back stock hand over fist?

CRM addressed that last night when the company announced a $50 bln buyback. CRM’s market cap is $180 billion, so $50 billion represents more than a quarter of the company’s entire market cap. Ideally, investors would like to see company executives putting their own actual money where their mouths are, but a $50 billion stock buyback is a step in the right direction.

Semis and software are two of the market’s largest sectors, and each one moving in the opposite direction has contributed to the ping pong action at the overall index level. As we noted on X yesterday, the S&P 500 has now crossed its 50-day moving average on a closing basis ten times in the last 50 trading days. That’s the longest streak since March 2018 and one of only a handful of periods with that many crosses in such a short period of time. As we’ve all said to someone close to us multiple times, make up your mind already!

Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 2/25/26 – Stuck to the 50-DMA

Feb 25, 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.

“To devastate is easier and more spectacular than to create.” – Anthony Burgess

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

Equity markets are looking to build on yesterday’s turnaround Tuesday gains and are on pace to erase much of Monday’s losses, but whether these gains stick through the end of the week could depend on Nvidia’s (NVDA) report after the close. It’s widely assumed that the results will be strong, but will they be strong enough? And ff they’re too strong, will that also be interpreted as further future disruption in the software space?

Crude oil is higher this morning, trading just above $66 per barrel, even as Reuters reports that OPEC+ is considering a 137K barrel increase to daily production. Gold is also fractionally higher, back above $5,200 per ounce as silver surges 4% and platinum spikes 8%. Even bitcoin, yes bitcoin, is higher by more than 2%.

Asian stocks finished the day higher across the board, with the Nikkei up over 2% and South Korea up just under 2%. Chinese stocks also traded higher even as the Ministry of Commerce threatened to impose countertrade measures in response to the new tariff policies of the Trump Administration.

In Europe, stocks are also broadly higher but at a more restrained pace. The STOXX 600 is up 0.5%, led higher by 1% gains in Italy and the UK. Eurozone GDP fell more than expected (-0.6% vs -0.5% forecast) and German GDP was in line with expectations, growing 0.3% q/q.

Besides some important earnings reports after the close from NVDA and Salesforce (CRM), it’s a quiet day for data, but we will hear from many Fed speakers, including Barkin, Schmid, and Musalem.

Given the ongoing weakness we have seen in certain areas of the market, which investors now think will be devastated by AI, it’s still hard to believe how range-bound the S&P 500 has been. Yesterday, the S&P 500 closed less than 0.1% below its 50-day moving average. You can’t get much closer than that! And it wasn’t just yesterday. The rangebound morass has been going on for months now, as there hasn’t been a day in the last three months where the S&P 500 closed more than 2.5% above or below its 50-day moving average.

Periods where the S&P 500 has been so closely anchored to its 50-DMA haven’t been all that common throughout history. The chart below shows streaks when the S&P 500 closed within 2.5% of its 50-DMA (above or below), and the current streak, which reached three months (63 trading days) yesterday, is the longest since the first Trump administration in August 2017. Since WWII, there haven’t been many other extended periods where price was consistently so close to its 50-DMA.

What makes the current streak even more incredible is that most sectors haven’t been showing the same pattern. As of yesterday’s close, just three of eleven S&P 500 sector ETFs – Health Care (XLV), Communication Services (XLC), and Technology (XLK) –  closed within 2.5% of their 50-DMAs, and most sectors aren’t even close. Six are more than 5% above their 50-DMAs, and another is more than 5% below its 50-DMA.  Like a sleeping volcano, the S&P 500 looks placid from above, but underground, the molten lava bubbles.