Jun 20, 2025
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“There, where I have passed, the grass will never grow again.” – Attila the Hun
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 quiet Friday morning so far, so below is an updated look at where the mega-caps stand heading into this final trading day of the week. While seven of eight are all more than 5% above their 50-day moving averages, Apple (AAPL) remains stuck in a downtrend and is 2.6% below its 50-DMA.
The last six months have been a struggle for Apple (AAPL), which is sitting below $200/share after peaking just below $260 on the day after Christmas 2024.
Jun 18, 2025
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“As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.” – James Madison
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 June “Fed day” is here, and US equity futures are currently just a hair above the flat line as of 7 AM ET. The typical Fed day sees the S&P 500 open higher by roughly 20-30 basis points. Below is a chart showing the S&P’s average intraday path on Fed days since Powell became Fed Chair back in 2018 (red line). The blue line shows the S&P’s average path over just the last ten Fed days. Powell Fed days over his entire tenure and the last ten meetings have looked very similar, with the S&P sitting on decent gains going into the 2 PM ET rate announcement. We then typically see a rally from 2-3 PM ET followed by a sharp sell-off in the last hour of trading. As we noted in yesterday’s Chart of the Day, anything but a last-hour selloff will be atypical for a Powell Fed day.
Jun 17, 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.
“A man has cause for regret only when he sows and no one reaps.” – Charles Goodyear
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
After a strong bounce-back day yesterday following Friday’s 1% drop, US equity futures are down slightly ahead of today’s open on relatively little news. As shown below, market internals remain overbought, but not by much.
Looking at sectors, Energy now has the highest percentage of stocks above their 50-day moving averages at 91.3%, and the Energy sector’s valuation relative to the last ten years is on the low side compared to the rest of the market. Financials and Technology currently have the highest valuations relative to readings over the last ten years.
Jun 16, 2025
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“When the lambs is lost in the mountain, he said. They is cry. Sometime come the mother. Sometime the wolf.” – Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
US equity futures are bouncing back pre-market to start the new trading week after a 1%+ drop last Friday. As shown below, the S&P has stabilized with less volatility over the last few weeks, giving it a chance to re-charge for an eventual breakout to new highs. The index needs to gain about 2.9% from its current level to make a new all-time high.
Jun 13, 2025
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“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” – WB Yeats
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
If you were planning on a slow summer Friday, renewed tensions in the Middle East have damaged those plans this morning. Equity futures are off their overnight lows, but the S&P 500 is still indicated to open down by about 1%. The real action is obviously in the energy markets as crude oil trades sharply higher.
The US Oil Fund ETF (USO) is trading up over 7.5% in the pre-market, which would put it on pace for the sixth-largest opening gap to the upside since the ETF’s inception in 2006. It would also be just the 24th time that USO gapped up over 5%. In terms of the prior 7.5% gaps higher, USO continued higher from the open to close for a median gain of 2.1% and positive returns four out of five times. However, by the close of the following day, USO was down a median of 1.6% from the initial gap higher with declines three out of five times, and a week after that opening gap, it was down four out of five times for a median decline of 2.2%. Historically, at least, these sharp gaps higher haven’t had a lot of follow-through.
As far as the price of oil is concerned, this morning’s gap higher has helped to confirm what was already a break of the downtrend that had been in place since mid-January. It also cleared what could have been a formidable level of resistance in the $75 range.
As luck would have it, today is also Friday the 13th, and while the day has unlucky connotations, in terms of market performance, it has been anything but. Since its launch in 1993, the S&P 500 ETF’s (SPY) average daily change has been a gain of 3.9 bps, with gains 53.6% of the time. Fridays, however, haven’t been as positive as SPY’s average performance is unchanged, with gains 52.1% of the time. On the 53 prior Friday the 13ths, though, SPY’s median gain was 20 bps with gains 60% of the time, and on the four prior times that there has been a Friday the 13th in June, SPY’s median gain was 57 bps with gains three out of four times. Will investors buy the dip again and keep the positive June Friday the 13th vibes going?
Jun 12, 2025
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“I will never apologize for the United States of America. Ever. I don’t care what the facts are.” – George H.W. Bush
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
After some modest losses on Wednesday, US equity markets remain weak this morning as S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures are indicated to open down by about 0.5%. In comparison, the Dow is even weaker with declines of about 0.70%. The added weakness in the Dow stems from an 8%+ decline in Boeing (BA) following news of an Air India 787 crash shortly after takeoff. Whether the tragedy was a Boeing issue is far from certain, but given the company’s troubles over recent years, investors aren’t waiting for details over what happened.
After yesterday’s weaker-than-expected CPI, investors are now focused on the May PPI and weekly jobless claims. PPI came in weaker than expected, but more concerning was jobless claims. Initial claims came in at 248K which was unchanged from last week’s revised reading and was the highest level since last October. Continuing Claims were more concerning as they shot up to 1.956 million and was the highest level since 2021. In response, equity futures have seen little in the way of moves, but yields have moved lower.
Investor sentiment has improved as stocks have recovered in the last several weeks, but based on the results of the AAII weekly sentiment survey, complacency has yet to set in. In this week’s survey, bullish sentiment improved from 32.7% to 36.7%, which is hardly an elevated reading. At the other end of the spectrum, just over a third of investors are still bearish (33.6%)/
In looking at the 52-week high list the last couple of days, we thought we stepped into a time machine seeing IBM on the list. The stock broke above resistance last week and continued to run higher all week, consistently closing higher than it opened.
With the gains this week, yesterday was IBM’s 9th straight day of trading higher. A nine-day streak may not sound all that impressive, but over the last 50 years, there have only been seven other streaks of nine or more days. Strangely enough, though, of the now eight streaks of nine or more positive days in a row, four have occurred in the last two years, while the prior 48 only had four!
The chart below shows where each of the prior streaks occurred on IBM’s historical chart. While two of the streaks were followed by steep declines in the days, weeks, months, and even years ahead, these streaks haven’t been indicative of any definitive forward trend.
