Mar 10, 2026
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“I think we’re at a bottom. I really do.” – Mark Haines, CNBC, 3/10/09
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 dramatic reversal late in yesterday’s session on hopes that the war in Iran would be ‘complete’ soon, futures were higher for the overnight session and into this morning. As the opening bell approaches, though, futures have been drifting lower, and all of the major averages are on pace to open fractionally lower. Treasury yields are little changed, and crude oil has been volatile, sitting under $90 per barrel. While that seems low relative to Sunday night, it’s still much higher than anything seen in the months leading up to the war in Iran. Gold prices are up over 1.5%, and silver is surging 5% as it’s currently trading at the same price as WTI! Bitcoin has been quietly grinding higher over the last few days, and this morning, it’s above $70K.
Earnings season is largely in the rearview mirror, but after the close, we’ll hear from Oracle (ORCL), which could be a major catalyst tomorrow for different parts of the AI ecosystem. The only economic reports on the calendar today are small business optimism from the NFIB, which came in weaker than expected (98.8 vs 99.5), and then at 10 AM, we’ll get Existing Home Sales for February.
Asian markets followed the lead of the late-day reversal in US equities and traded sharply higher overnight. It wasn’t enough to entirely erase Monday’s losses, but the Nikkei rallied just under 3% while South Korea surged over 5%. Chinese stocks rallied a more modest 0.7%, and while February exports surged 39.6% y/y, exports to the US declined 17%. Those lost exports to the US were scattered across Europe and Southeast Asia, and many of those likely ended up finding their way into the US in a roundabout way. In Japan, GDP rose 0.3% q/q, which was higher than expected, and in South Korea, growth contracted less than expected.
European stocks are also sharply higher this morning as the US reversal occurred after those markets closed for trading yesterday. The STOXX 600 is up 2.3%, and Germany, Italy, and Spain are all up over 2% as well.
When you looked at page two of the Morning Lineup to see where sectors closed out last week relative to their trading ranges (image below), you may have done a double-take at seeing that the S&P 500 was in ‘extreme’ (2+ standard deviations) oversold territory and more oversold than any sector. In fact, the only other sector in extreme oversold territory was Health Care (after being in extreme overbought territory a week earlier), and just four other sectors were oversold while five were still above their 50-DMAs.
We were curious to see how often it is that the S&P 500 trades in ‘extreme’ oversold territory and is also more oversold than any other sector. Since sector data begins in 1990, there have only been 49 other days when this was the case, and a lot of them occurred during the dot-com bust from early 2000 to late 2001, but as the chart below illustrates, it’s hardly just a bear market phenomenon.
Mar 9, 2026
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“There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.” – Sun Tzu, The Art of War
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 there’s ever a day that feels like a Monday, today is it. As much as we may like daylight savings time for the later sunsets, we could do without the later sunrises after already missing an hour of sleep. Couple that with triple-digit oil prices and much lower equity prices, and we almost wish our alarms didn’t go off this morning.
Equity futures are down over 1% across the board this morning, treasury yields are higher with the 10-year yield now up to 4.17% (it was below 4% less than two weeks ago), and WTI crude oil is up over 10% to $102 per barrel. Incredibly, that’s down around 15% from just under $120 overnight. There’s been no flight to safety in gold either, as prices are down over 1% there too.
Equities in Asia plunged overnight, with the Nikkei down over 5%, while South Korea fell 6.0% after circuit breakers were triggered during the session. In China, CPI for February rose much more than expected, rising 1% after an increase of 0.2% in January. And that was before the spike in oil prices. European equities are also down more than the US. The STOXX 600 is down 1.6% with France down over 2% and Spain down just under 2%. We can try to read into different catalysts for the weakness, but it’s pretty much all oil. Until those prices stop rising, equity prices will continue falling.
The economic calendar is quiet today, and there will be no Fedspeak as the blackout period ahead of next week’s meeting started this weekend. The economic calendar will be very busy, though, with CPI on Wednesday, Jobless Claims, Housing Starts, and Building Permits on Thursday, and Personal Income and Spending, as well as GDP, among others, on Friday.
The war in Iran hasn’t had much of a benefit on any sector, except, of course, Energy. Since the fighting broke out just over a week ago, Energy has rallied over 1% while every other sector is in the red, with nine down more than 1%. Four sectors declined by over 4%, with Materials leading the losses at 6.65%, followed by Consumer Staples, Health Care, and Industrials. Health Care’s losses have taken that sector into ‘extreme’ oversold territory after trading in ‘extreme’ overbought territory just over a week ago. War has a way of changing market conditions very quickly!
As bad as the US markets have been since the war broke out, it’s peanuts compared to the losses in the rest of the world. Below, we show the performance of various regional ETFs last week. While the S&P 500 was down nearly 2% last week, every other region of the world was down at least 6% and, in most cases, even more. Europe was down 6.6%, emerging markets were down over 8%, and stocks in the Asia Pacific region were down over 9%. As much as higher oil prices are a pain for US consumers and businesses outside of the Energy sector, other areas of the world are much more dependent on external sources for energy than the US.
In terms of the US vs. the rest of the world trade, the Developed World Ex US ETF was down nearly 7%, or five percentage points more than the S&P 500, in a week! As much as the US outperformed the rest of the world last week, it’s still significantly underperforming the rest of the world on a YTD basis (-1.4% vs +4.5%).
With the S&P 500 on pace to gap down 1% at the open for the fourth time in six days today, volatility has been on the rise, and the VIX is trading above 30 for the first time since last spring during the tariff-tantrum. Back then, though, the VIX briefly breached 60 before pulling back. So far during the current war, the highest the VIX has traded is 35.3. Last week may seem like a rough period for the markets, but relative to other points in just the last year, it could be a lot worse. The longer this conflict lasts and oil supplies remain disrupted, the more likely it is that conditions will worsen.
Mar 6, 2026
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“I never worry about the problem. I worry about the solution.” – Shaquille O’Neal
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
Did you know that there’s an employment report today? With geo-politics in the forefront, economic data has largely taken a back seat this week, but the data will keep coming (unless there’s a shutdown, of course!), and heading into this morning’s report, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are indicated to open down by between 0.75% and 1.0%, continuing a week of lousy market action. Treasury yields are higher, crude oil is surging, and gold is fractionally higher.
In Asia, most major indices were flat to lower, but still finished the week sharply lower, with the Nikkei down 5.5%, China down 2.1%, and South Korea down more than 10%. In Europe, the losses are even larger, with the STOXX 600 down over 1%, taking its decline for the week to over 5%. Across the continent, every major benchmark is down over 5% this week.
Besides the Employment report, Retail Sales also hit the tape at 8:30. The employment report was a disappointment across the board as Non Farm Payrolls fell 92K versus forecasts for an increase of 55K, and the Unemployment Rate increased to 4.4% versus forecasts for 4.3%. Average hourly earnings were slightly higher than expected, rising 0.4% versus forecasts for an increase of 0.3%. As bad as that report was, it will be interesting to see if there were any weather-related impacts. While the jobs picture was weaker, Retail Sales came in better than expected.
When markets opened for trading on Monday, and crude oil prices rallied a bit over 5%, it was viewed as a surprisingly muted reaction to a monumental event in the Middle East. It looked like we got off easy. As the days have gone on and the conflict has continued, crude oil prices rose every day this week with a 4.7% gain on Tuesday, a 0.1% gain on Wednesday, an 8.5% gain on Thursday, and what’s shaping up to be a 6.5% gain today. The frogs in the market pot had no idea what was coming.
Adding them all together, WTI is on pace for a 27.6% gain this week, which would rank as the third-largest weekly gain since at least 1985. The only two larger gains were 31% in early April 2020 during Covid and 28.4% in August 1986 when OPEC announced a surprise production cut. One-week rallies of this magnitude aren’t very common.
With oil prices up so sharply, it’s not surprising that equities have been under pressure, but looking at past moves shows that the inverse relationship isn’t as strong as you would think. The chart below compares the weekly change in crude oil to the S&P 500 going back to 1985, and there’s little correlation between the weekly direction of crude oil prices and the S&P 500. If anything, the correlation is slightly positive.
The shaded area includes each of the prior weeks when crude oil prices were up 20%, and of the seven occurrences, the S&P 500 was up three times and down four. For all seven weeks, the S&P 500’s median decline was 1.2%. Based on where futures are trading right now, guess how much the S&P 500 is down this week? 1.2%!
Mar 5, 2026
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“The world makes much less sense than you think.” – Daniel Kahneman
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 S&P 500 crept into positive territory for the week, which was incredible given the circumstances, but futures are set to erase those gains at the open. Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are indicated to open down by 0.25%. The biggest driver of weakness is crude oil, where prices are up another 3% to $77. It’s simple at this point: the more crude oil rises, the bigger a headwind it will be for equities.
In Asia, stocks were higher across the board, with the biggest gains coming from South Korea, where the KOSPI rallied 9.6% following the 12% decline on Wednesday. Talk about a rational market! In Europe, the tone is less positive. While markets in the region started the day higher, they have been giving up those gains as the UP open approaches and are now all broadly looking at modest declines.
It’s been a busy morning for economic data, and most of it was better than expected. Initial jobless claims were slightly weaker than expected, and continuing claims were modestly higher. Import Prices were lower than expected, while both Non-Farm Productivity and Unit Labor Costs came in higher than expected.
We’re less than a week into the war in Iran, but it’s never too early to see what trends within the equity market may be starting to emerge. At the sector level, you would expect to see a rush into defensive areas as investors rein in risk at the expense of cyclicals. So far, we’ve seen nearly the opposite play out. While the S&P 500 is up so far this week, which is surprising in itself, the four sectors outperforming the market are Technology, Consumer Discretionary, Energy, and Financials. If you had asked most people what sectors would outperform the market following a full-scale breakout of war in the Middle East, the only one of those four sectors that would come to mind is Energy.
The sectors you would expect to outperform in the event of war would be defensives like Utilities, Consumer Staples, and Health Care. But guess what? They’re three of the four worst-performing sectors with declines of at least 1% each! While the S&P 500 is surprisingly higher this week, the rally is primarily due to the 1%+ gain in the Technology sector. On an equal weight basis, the index is down 1.04%, and 60% of its components are down MTD.
At the individual stock level, the list of winners is mostly devoid of defensive stocks. Instead, it’s littered with stocks that were recently considered some of the hottest growth stocks in the market before falling on hard times in late 2025 and earlier this year. Of the 15 top-performing stocks in the S&P 500 since the war broke out, their average YTD change in the first two months of the year was a decline of 22.2%, and ten of them were in the red. The two top-performing stocks – Coinbase (COIN) and Palantir (PLTR) – were both down over 20% in the first two months of 2026. While PLTR, with its military contracts, benefits from geopolitical instability, it’s hard to look at most of the other non-Energy stocks and see the obvious reason as to why they would benefit.
While the list of winners is mostly stocks that were down sharply YTD, all but one of the stocks on the list of losers were up YTD heading into March. Their average YTD gain was 8.1%, and seven were up by double-digit percentages. Leading the way lower, AES was up 20%+ YTD heading into March, but it has given most of that back in the first few days of March. Behind AES, cruise operators Norwegian Cruise Line (NCLH) and Carnival (CCL), along with Paramount Skydance (PSKY), are the only other stocks down by double-digit percentages. The declines in NCLH and CCL make sense given the geopolitical uncertainty, but the drop in PSKY is company-specific and tied to the merger with Warner.
Looking both at sector and individual stock performance since the war broke out, it seems as though investors have taken a back-to-basics approach, focusing on what had been working rather than what was working at the time that hostilities broke out. Whether that’s due to trade unwinds and short-covering given the heightened uncertainty or a reversion to tech remains to be seen, but in the early going, market performance and internals have done what they always do – surprise nearly everyone.
Mar 4, 2026
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“In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” – Winston Churchill
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 been an up-and-down overnight session for US equity indices, and as we type this now, both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures are basically flat with moves of less than 10 bps to the upside. Treasury yields are slightly higher, crude oil is flat, and gold is up less than 1%. Pretty quiet day, huh?
Iran will have the potential to continue dominating market action for the day, but don’t forget about the ADP Employment report, ISM Services, and then Broadcom (AVGO) earnings after the close. Earlier this week, the ISM Manufacturing report had the highest Prices Paid reading since 2022, so that will be a key metric to watch in today’s report for the services sector.
The bottom fell out of Asian stocks overnight as the Nikkei fell 3.6%, and every other major benchmark index in the region fell at least 1%. The real damage, though, was in South Korea, where the KOSPI fell over 12% for its worst day on record. There have been major market panics over the last 40 to 50 years, but none of them featured a day when South Korean stocks had a worse one-day decline. Fallout from the war in Iran was the primary driver of the declines, but Chinese PMI data for the Manufacturing and Services sectors also came in weaker than expected.
European stocks are following a different path than Asia, as the STOXX 600 is up over 1%, and the only major country up by less than 1% is the UK. Spanish stocks have managed a gain of 1.4% despite threats from the Trump Administration to cut off trade with the country. Service sector PMIs for the Eurozone and individual countries were basically in line with or slightly better than expected.
After two full sessions of trading since the war in Iran started, the overall market reaction has been subdued, but there have been some larger moves among individual industry groups. While the S&P 500 is down less than 1%, 16 out of 25 industry groups are up or down more than 1%.
This morning, we wanted to focus on some of the extremes. Starting with the winners that have continued winning, the only two groups that were up YTD heading into the conflict and have continued higher since are Energy and Telecom Services. Along with those two groups, the only others that are up this week are Software & Services (3.0%), which took the opposite path of South Korea by going from worst to first, Commercial Services (0.9%), and Banks (0.2%).
To the downside, some of the worst-performing sectors this week were some of the best YTD performers heading into the conflict. Household & Personal Products, Food Beverages & Tobacco, and Materials were all up over 15% YTD heading into the week, and they’re all down over 3% this week. As painful as the declines may feel this week, they’re coming off of a high base. It’s also worth noting that while Software stocks have bounced, Autos and Real Estate Management- the second and third worst performing groups YTD heading into the conflict have continued lower.
Outside of the US, we’ve also seen some major reversals this week. In yesterday’s Chart of the Day, we noted the outperformance of US stocks relative to the rest of the world. Nowhere has this reversal been more evident than in the performance of South Korean stocks. On Monday, the iShares MSCI South Korea ETF (EWY) fell more than 10% for its largest one-day decline since the Covid crash (South Korea’s KOSPI last night had its worst day on record). As shown in the chart below, declines of this magnitude have only been seen during periods of major crises like Covid, the Financial Crisis, and the dotcom bust.
Besides Monday’s decline, EWY continued lower yesterday and is indicated down by another 3% this morning. That takes its decline this week to over 15%, and as sharp as that may sound, the ETF is still up over 7% in the last four weeks. It’s been a rocky few sessions, but if someone told you four weeks ago that you’d have a 7% gain in a month despite a major war in the Middle East, who wouldn’t have signed up for that?
From a longer-term perspective, EWY still looks extremely extended relative to its historical range. After breaking out above its 2021 highs late last year, it is still up over 32% YTD, making it the top-performing major country ETF, so it’s hardly oversold.
Mar 3, 2026
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“The hardest hits are yet to come from the U.S. military,” – Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State
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 off their overnight lows, but the optimism from the close yesterday evaporated quickly. The S&P 500 is indicated to gap down 1.4% at the open, while the Nasdaq will open down closer to 2%. These are even larger downside moves than at yesterday’s open! Treasury yields continue to move higher as the 10-year yield is back to 4.10%, and oil is on pace for its second day in a row of 6%+ gains. Unlike yesterday, though, there’s been no bid for gold or other precious metals as they’re all sharply lower. Bitcoin is also down 3%.
In Asia, markets are lower again this morning as the Nikkei fell 3.1%, China was down over 1%, and South Korea, after being closed on Monday, tanked 7.2%. It’s the same sea of red in Europe as well. The STOXX 600 is already down 3% on the day, on some of the most negative breadth we have seen in quite some time (24-1 to the downside and every group is down over 1.55%). As bad as US futures look this morning, the losses are a scratch relative to the gash in international markets. From an energy perspective, the US is much more insulated than the rest of the world is to Middle Eastern oil and gas. Therefore, the longer the conflict drags on, the more US assets should catch a bid, at least on a relative basis.
After an impressive turnaround from the morning lows yesterday, the ink was barely dry on the closing prices for the day when US Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefed the press with a statement that included the quote above. That, along with Iranian drone attacks on the US embassy in Riyadh, comments from the IRGC that the Strait of Hormuz was “closed” and any ships that attempted to traverse through it would be set ablaze, and a directive from the State Department for all personnel in Bahrain, Iraq, and Jordan to evacuate those respective countries, has caused a sharp reversal in sentiment as to the scope and duration of the current war situation in the Middle East.
At points yesterday, there was growing confidence that the operation against Iran would be quick, but this morning, we’ve seen some warnings from analysts that it already looks as though the US is getting involved in a prolonged quagmire (even though it hasn’t even been four days to this point). The next several days promise to feature multiple swings in sentiment as the situation unfolds, but remember this: no one knows exactly how this will all play out. The comments from Rubio above and the ones from the IGRC regarding the Strait of Hormuz sound dire, but what else do you expect them to say in the middle of a war?
We’ve only had one day of trading since the war began, and already the market action has been a roller-coaster. After gapping down more than 1% at the open yesterday, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) bounced throughout the trading day to finish marginally higher, in what was only the 60th time since its launch 33 years ago that the ETF gapped down at least 1% and finished the day higher. With futures trading sharply lower again this morning, SPY is on pace to gap down more than 1% again today, and of those 59 prior reversals, SPY only gapped down more than 1% the following session six other times
This type of volatility only occurs under one condition – massive uncertainty. As shown by the red dots in the chart, the prior back-and-forth reversals were in December 2002, coming out of the dotcom bust, late 2008 following the collapse of Lehman, January 2022 when inflation started to spike, and last April during the tariff-tantrum. What’s somewhat unique about the current period, however, is the level of the VIX. In the six prior occurrences, the average level of the VIX was 40, and it was never below 30. As of this morning, the VIX is trading just under 26. Also, while the S&P 500 remains close to 52-week highs, all of the others, except the one in January 2022, occurred closer to 52-week lows.
While these types of reversals have been rare for SPY, the Nasdaq 100 is inherently more volatile, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they have been more common in QQQ. Today’s reversal will be the 19th such reversal. As shown in the chart below, most of these reversals occurred during the dot-com bust, with 12 between the March 2000 peak and the October 2002 lows. As the Nasdaq has ‘matured’ since then, occurrences have been much less frequent, with three during the financial crisis, one in early 2019, another in January 2022, and most recently in April of last year.
