Mar 21, 2025
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“When you see only problems, you’re not seeing clearly.” – Phil Knight
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
For the first time since the S&P 500 peaked in mid-February, there’s a chance that we will get by with a positive week. The S&P 500 heads into the last trading day of the week with a gain of 0.42%, but futures are lower, so it’s hardly a done deal. The Nasdaq has also been down for the last four weeks, but unless it rallies 0.35% today (it’s on pace to open 0.4% lower), the streak will extend to a fifth week. If there’s any silver lining, the Nasdaq’s streak of four weeks in a row of 2%+ declines looks likely to end. The Russell 2000 also came into this week riding a streak of four straight weekly declines of at least 1%, but heading into the day, it was up over 1% on the week, so barring a lousy Friday (anything is possible these days), that streak is likely to end.
The tone overnight in Asia has been negative. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index dropped over 2% for the second day in a row, capping off the worst two-day decline for that index since October. Japan was down fractionally, and Chinese stocks fell over 1%. European stocks are also closing the week on a down note as the STOXX 600 trades down 0.68%, even as it still hangs on to gains for the week. Travel stocks in Europe are leading the declines today as a fire near Heathrow Airport has shut down all air traffic for the rest of the day. The German upper house of Parliament also passed the country’s 500-billion euro spending package for defense and infrastructure, but that was widely expected.
Here in the US, there’s nothing on the economic calendar, so it would make sense to expect a quiet day, especially with the NCAA tournament this afternoon, but you never know when you know who will decide if they have something to say.
Looking at all the red candles in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) chart shows that the market has primarily only been seeing problems lately. In looking at the ETF’s recent intraday performance, we came across a fascinating trend (at least to us it was). On a trailing four-week basis (20 trading days), SPY closed below its opening price 14 times. Over the last 20 years, that high frequency of down days in four weeks has been uncommon, and there has only been one other period (January 2008) when there was a higher frequency of down days.
Since 2005, there have been 17 periods when SPY was down from the open to close 14 times in 20 days, so it occurs an average of about once every 14 months. What’s unique about the last year is that this is the fourth different period in the last year that the rolling 20-day total of declines from the open to close reached 14. Since 2005, there’s never been a one-year period with four separate periods. The only other period with even three was back in 2005. We’re living in unique times!
Mar 20, 2025
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“What’s your hurry? Because now is the only time there ever is to do a thing in.” – Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
From the FOMC’s interest rate announcement through the end of Chair Powell’s press conference, the S&P 500 steadily rallied higher. Almost exactly when Powell stopped speaking, though, stocks started to weaken, and they closed well off the intraday highs. The post-presser weakness has continued this morning as S&P 500 futures are down about 35 bps while the Nasdaq is down half a percent. There’s not much in the way of a catalyst to point to for this morning’s weakness, but overnight Asia was lower, and European stocks are also in the red. ECB President Lagarde commented that 25% tariffs on US imports of European goods would knock 0.3 percentage points from Eurozone economic growth in the first year of their implementation while an escalation would only exacerbate those impacts.
There are several economic reports on the calendar this morning, including jobless claims and the Philly Fed report at 8:30 followed by Leading Indicators and Existing Home Sales at 10 AM. On the sentiment front, the weekly survey from AAII showed that bearish sentiment came in at 58.1%. That marks the fourth straight week of readings above 55% which has never happened in the survey’s history (since 1987), and it’s only the seventh time that bearish sentiment has been above 50% for four or more straight weeks.
It’s not often that you get a setup where just about all of the major US indices rally more than 1% over the last week and yet every single one remains in oversold territory. After the plunge in stocks during the first two weeks of March took all the major index ETFs into ‘extreme’ oversold territory as of last week, the rally we have seen since last Thursday’s close has only been enough to move them merely into oversold territory, and based on where futures are trading now, they’re on pace to remain oversold today.
The last four trading days were a welcome respite from the barrage of selling, and it was the first time since the February peak that the S&P 500 traded higher three times in a four-trading day span. With that pause in the selling, the S&P 500 is looking to find some semblance of stabilization from what has practically been a straight down leg lower. Stabilization doesn’t mean immediately reversing and trading in a straight line higher. Usually, it takes a period of back-and-forth churning before the market can gain enough energy to stage a rally. Looking at the chart, bulls hope that is exactly what the S&P 500 is doing now, but only time will tell.
With such a steep drop lower in the last month, it’s hard to remember that the S&P 500 had another leg lower from late 2024 and into early 2025 when the S&P 500 pulled back just over 4%. Back then, it seemed like a meaningful pullback, but not so much now.
Mar 19, 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.
“The world keeps ending but new people too dumb to know it keep showing up as if the fun’s just started.” – John Updike
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
To view last night’s CNBC segment which covered Nvidia’s (NVDA) AI conference and the broader market weakness, click on the image below.
As investors wait on the FOMC’s interest rate decision (or lack thereof), the Summary of Economic Projections (SEP), and the press conference from Chair Powell, US equity futures have a modestly positive bias heading into the opening bell.
Besides the FOMC, there are no major economic or earnings-related reports on the calendar, but one newsworthy item just coming across the tape is comments from Bank of America (BAC) CEO Brian Moynihan saying that as of Monday, consumers have put 6% more dollars into the economy this year than they did over the same period last year. Wait. What? Haven’t these recent consumer sentiment surveys been suggestive of the consumer falling off a cliff? As Moynihan commented, “the economy is holding up better than people think”.
Uncertainty is everywhere you look as any index that attempts to measure it has surged in the last couple of months. Within today’s FOMC statement and SEP, we’re likely to see more of that. The Fed releases its SEP four times a year, and in the last release back in December we started to see some of that.
In addition to updating their forecasts for GDP Growth, the Unemployment Rate, Inflation, and the expected level of the Fed Funds rate in the coming years, in each SEP, members of the FOMC also note their level of uncertainty about each of their forecasts along with whether the risks to their projections are weighted to the upside, downside, or not at all.
Back in December, FOMC members noted big increases in the level of uncertainty about PCE inflation on both a headline and core basis and almost unanimously agreed that the risks to inflation were to the upside. That was a big shift to September when most participants thought inflation risks were ‘broadly balanced’. Since those projections back in December, the country’s tariff policy has only grown murkier, so don’t expect any improvement in these readings today.
Back in December, levels of uncertainty regarding GDP Growth and the Unemployment Rate weren’t nearly as high. For most members of the FOMC, risks to GDP growth and the Unemployment Rate were ‘broadly balanced’. However, given the plunging levels of sentiment in various measures of consumer and business confidence plus the rapidly declining levels of forecasted growth in models like the Atlanta Fed GDP Now, it’s hard to imagine that FOMC members are any more confident about expected economic growth and the state of the jobs market going forward.
Mar 18, 2025
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“Though the people support the government; the government should not support the people.” – Grover Cleveland
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 lower this morning, but since the S&P 500 is coming off its first back-to-back positive days since the February peak, bulls can’t get greedy – although a three-peat would be nice! In that two-day rally, the S&P 500 gained 2.8% for its best two-day gain since the days after the election. That was when the markets had a much more optimistic view of what Trump 2.0 would mean for stock prices. Ironically, the S&P 500 closed the day before Election Day 2024 at 5,712, and yesterday it closed at 5,675, so the market has essentially gone nowhere despite all the highs and lows during the last 4.5 months.
The chart below shows the S&P 500’s performance during the current bull market that began in October 2022 with red dots showing each two-day gain of over 2.5%. Early in the bull market, these types of moves were common, but their frequency over the last 18 months has been much less common.
Mar 17, 2025
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“I’ve had great success being a total idiot.” – Jerry Lewis
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
Shhhhh. Don’t tell anyone, but as we type this the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are indicated to open slightly higher today. That doesn’t mean the day will finish that way (or even that the market will open higher at 9:30). Still, if, somehow the S&P 500 manages to close higher today, it would be the first time in President Trump’s second term that the index closed higher on the last trading day of one week as well as the first trading day of the next!
There are a few important economic reports on the calendar this morning with March Empire Manufacturing and February Retail Sales both hitting the tape at 8:30 while Business Inventories and Homebuilder Sentiment will come out at 10 AM. Retail Sales will be a key report to watch for clues as to whether the President’s herky-jerky tariff policy, which has weighed on sentiment, has impacted consumer activity. The Empire Manufacturing report will be one of the first clues as to whether business sentiment has gotten worse in March.
In Europe this morning, stocks are broadly higher with the STOXX 600 up 0.5%. That follows a positive night in Asia as China reported better-than-expected growth figures in terms of Retail Sales and Industrial Production. As expected, Chinese authorities also announced a “Special Action Plan” to stabilize the stock market and increase domestic consumption.
St Patrick’s Day is often associated with luck, although that hasn’t necessarily been the case for the market. Over the last 50 years, the US equity market has been open for trading on St Patrick’s Day 36 times, and its median performance on those days has been a gain of 0.23% with positive returns 61% of the time. The best St. Patrick’s Day performance during that stretch was in 2020 when the S&P 500 rallied a hair under 6% (5.99%) while the worst performance was in 1980 when it fell 3.01%. More recently, performance has been stronger with the S&P 500’s median performance since 2009 being a gain of 0.66% and positive returns 73% of the time.
Looking at the S&P 500’s performance during St. Patrick’s Day week, there has also been a modestly positive tone. For this analysis, we calculated the S&P 500’s performance from the Friday before St. Patrick’s Day to the Friday after, and in those years when it fell on a Friday, we used the performance from the Friday before to that Friday. Over the last 50 years, the S&P 500’s median performance during the week has been a gain of 0.80% with positive returns 58% of the time. The ‘greenest’ week for the market during this period was in 2003 (+7.5%), and the second strongest week was in 2022 (+6.2%). To the downside, the two weakest St Patrick’s Day weeks were both in the last ten years. In 2020, the S&P 500 fell just under 15% even as it rallied almost 6% on St. Patrick’s Day. Talk about volatility! 2018 was another year where the luck of the Irish wasn’t evident in the market as the S&P 500 fell 5.95%.
Mar 14, 2025
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“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” – Albert Einstein
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
At least it’s Friday. Less than eight hours from now, investors will get a 48-hour window where the market can’t trade lower, and boy, could we use it! Check out the image below from our Trend Analyzer through yesterday’s close. Of the 14 index ETFs in the snapshot, they’re all down YTD, every one of them was down at least 3% since last Thursday’s close, they’re all at least 6% below their 50-day moving averages, and each one is also at ‘extreme’ oversold levels (2+ standard deviations below their 50-DMA). If this isn’t a correction (or worse), we don’t know what is.
There’s a positive tone in the futures market this morning, but that has been the case multiple other times in the last few weeks, only to see the gains disappear during the regular session. The only economic report on the calendar today is the University of Michigan Sentiment Index, which has shown some notable weakness lately. Results of the survey have also been highly skewed based on the political leanings of each respondent, as Americans increasingly experience different realities based on their political leanings.
Besides the Michigan report, we’re also likely to get any number of headlines out of Washington regarding trade. Thankfully, the threat of a government shutdown doesn’t loom now that Democrats in the Senate will allow the Republican funding bill to come to a vote on a simple majority basis.
