May 8, 2026
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“There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.” – Harry Truman
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
As shown below, we’re entering the last trading day of the week with all of key US index ETFs still in overbought territory:
Gas prices continue to spike with the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded up to $4.55/gallon nationally. Ten days ago near the end of April, prices were at $4.17/gallon, so they’ve seen another meaningful pick-up recently.
Just before the Iran War, gas prices had fallen down into the $2s. Now they’re closer to $5/gallon than $4.
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May 7, 2026
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“I shall seize Fate by the throat; it shall certainly not bend and crush me completely.” – Beethoven
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
Today is the last super-busy day for earnings this season, so we’ll be providing a nice summary of all the results in tomorrow’s Bespoke Report newsletter.
In Monday’s Chart of the Day, we pointed out that Datadog (DDOG) was reporting earnings Thursday morning with a 100% historical EPS and sales beat rate. As a member of the Software group, DDOG took it on the chin from November through March, but it has recovered nicely in the last two months and broken out of its downtrend in the process.
DDOG has historically been a triple play beast, and it delivered once again this morning with another beat on EPS and sales and raised guidance. Shares are up 22% pre-market. The pop highlights that not all “software” stocks are the same, and when names get “thrown out with the bathwater” – the AI Doom trade in this case – opportunities arise.
McDonald’s (MCD) is another name that reported this morning, and the company reported a nice EPS beat on roughly inline revenues. Same-store sales growth was up just under 4% in both domestic and international markets.
As shown below, MCD has had a rough run since the Iran War began as investors worried about both consumer demand and higher input costs. This morning’s earnings assuages some of those fears, and shares are up 3% pre-market.
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May 6, 2026
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“Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.” – Will Rogers
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 up 1% this morning due to more gains from semis and a headline from Axios that the US and Iran are “closing in on a one-page memo to end the war.”
Notably, while the S&P 500’s price is still looking quite overbought, underlying breadth is neutral at best. As shown below, just over 50% of stocks in the S&P are above their 50-DMAs and 200-DMAs, and the S&P’s 10-day advance/decline line is still close to oversold territory.
So while price is extended to the upside, internals suggest that the rally still has room to run before we’d categorize it as overheated in the near term.
The semis are a different story, however. They’re currently experiencing one of the most epic runs in history, and the group is about as overbought as it gets.
As shown below, stocks like Intel (INTC), Seagate (STX), Micron (MU), and Advanced Micro (AMD) are up anywhere from 10-33% over the last week, and they’re set to open up sharply again this morning. When the opening bell rings, all four of these stocks will be more than 50% above their 50-DMAs.
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May 5, 2026
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“If you don’t use your experience, your past is wasted” – Alan Shepard
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
Yields are behaving themselves this morning as the 10-year US Treasury yield is unchanged at around 4.44%, and near the highest levels since last summer.
While rising yields haven’t had much of an impact on the overall equity market yet, the same can’t be said for homebuilders. In early February, the iShares US Home Construction ETF (ITB) was near 52-week highs and above $115. Yesterday, it closed at $91.28, or more than 20% below those levels from two months ago. While the S&P 500 is up over 13% from its March lows, ITB has only rallied 3%.
Rising yields have been more painful for housing-related stocks. Home Depot (HD) is a perfect example. Yesterday, the world’s largest home improvement retailer closed at a 52-week low of $312.42. The stock is down over 20% from its February high and over 26% from its 52-week high.
Looking more broadly at housing-related stocks. The snapshot below from our Trend Analyzer shows the 20 largest components in the SPDR S&P Homebuilders ETF (XHB), and the majority are not only underperforming the S&P 500 on a YTD basis, but they’re also down. The last week has been especially painful for the group, as all but six of them are down just as yields have started to spike.
There are some bright spots in terms of performance this year. Stocks like Modine Manufacturing (MOD), Trane Technologies (TT), Carrier Global (CARR), and Johnson Controls (JCI) are all up over 20% YTD, and they’re the only overbought stocks on the list. The rally in these four stocks really has nothing to do with housing, though. They’re all rallying due to the massive demand for cooling in AI data centers.
Turning to the markets this morning, futures are higher with the S&P 500 indicated to open up 0.4% and the Nasdaq rallies 0.6%. As mentioned above, yields have been behaved with the 10-year right around yesterday’s close of 4.44%. Oil prices are giving back some of yesterday’s gains, falling over 2% to just under $104 per barrel in WTI. Lastly, gold prices are up about 1%, while Bitcoin is up over 1% and back above $81K.
In Asia overnight, Japan, China, and South Korea were closed, while Hong Kong dropped 0.8%. In Europe, markets are all open and generally higher. The STOXX 600 is up 0.5%, led higher by Spain (1.35%) and Germany (1.0%). The UK is the main laggard, falling 1.3%.
In the US today, we’ll get service sector PMIs from S&P and ISM, along with New Home Sales and JOLTS.
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May 4, 2026
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“Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!” – Audrey Hepburn
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
16-year-old, meet market. If you think the life of a 16-year-old is an emotional roller-coaster where ‘life isn’t fair’ turns into ‘top of the world’ on a dime, the market has been doing a stellar impression lately. From the end of February right through all of March, the S&P 500 declined for five straight weeks. Once March ended, though, the pendulum swung completely in the opposite direction with five straight weeks of gains. There hasn’t been any in between.
It has been very uncommon for the S&P 500 to experience at least five weekly declines followed by at least five weekly gains. Since WWII, there have been 32 other losing streaks of at least five weeks, and there have been 120 streaks of at least five-week gains. However, there have only been five other periods when a five-week winning streak came immediately after a streak of at least five weeks of losses. The last one was way back in 1982, so the teenagers out there (and maybe even their parents) won’t remember that one.
Last week also saw a notable shift in a pattern that has been prevalent ever since the war started. For the last nine weeks, it seemed as though whatever was good for oil prices and the energy sector was bad for all other stocks and vice versa. Last week, though, Energy was the top-performing sector, gaining 3.48%, but the only other stocks to finish the week lower were Materials (-1.10%) and Consumer Discretionary (-0.05%). In fact, four other sectors rallied more than 1%, including Technology (1.03%) and Communication Services (1.02%). The market won’t be able to ignore rising energy prices in perpetuity, but it is a welcome respite.
It’s been a volatile morning for equity futures as conflicting headlines from the Middle East caused a sharp pullback in futures earlier this morning. Reports that Iran fired on a US ship erased earlier gains in equities and a sharp increase in oil prices. US officials have refuted the reports, though, and we’ve reclaimed a decent amount of the earlier losses, and the S&P 500 is now just down 0.2% while the Nasdaq is flat.
In Asia, Japan and China were closed for a holiday, but South Korea surged over 5% while Hong Kong rallied 1.2%. Manufacturing PMIs for both South Korea and Singapore both expanded more than expected.
European stocks returned from last Friday’s holiday with losses. The STOXX 600 is down over 0.5%, led lower by Spain, which is down over 1% while France and Italy are both underperforming. Like Asia, Manufacturing PMIs for countries in the region have generally been stronger than expected.
Looking ahead to the US today, the only economic report on the calendar is Factory Orders at 10 AM. NY Fed President Williams will be speaking at the Yale Club just before 1 PM, and after the bell, Palantir (PLTR) will report Q1 earnings.
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May 1, 2026
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“If The Headline Is Big Enough, It Makes The News Big Enough.” – Citizen Kane
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 are slightly higher this morning as investors look to breathe a sigh of relief after a wild couple of weeks. Besides the massive gains in April, the massive deluge of earnings reports this week in terms of both quantity and market cap had the potential to create waves. But we got through it just about as well as you could ask for, as none of the major mega-caps blew up and Wednesday’s Fed meeting was a non-event despite all the pearl-clutching over the number of dissents regarding, not the policy decision, but the phrasing of forward guidance. The media needs something to talk about, though!
The bigger question is, with the most consequential earnings reports and Powell’s last meeting as Fed Chair behind us, what will be the next catalyst? Iran again? That may be the case, though, as just now reports are crossing the tape that Iran has sent a new proposal to Pakistan.
Treasury yields are slightly lower in the US this morning, with the 10-year yield at 4.38%, crude oil is slightly lower, gold is down nearly 1%, and Bitcoin is up 1.5%. International markets are mostly closed this morning in observance of the May Day holiday, but Japan and the UK were both open, and the former saw a modest gain while the UK is down about 0.6%
The S&P 500 rallied 10.43% in April, marking the largest monthly gain for the index since November 2020 and the 14th month since WWII that the S&P 500 had a monthly gain of more than 10%. While moves of this magnitude were rare in the immediate years after WWII, they have been somewhat more frequent, but still uncommon, in recent decades.
The scatter chart below compares the S&P 500’s monthly change since 1945 to where it was trading relative to a 52-week high at the start of each month. Below that, we have zoomed in on the months that had double-digit percentage gains. At the start of this April, the S&P 500 was just over 6% below its 52-week high, and while that wasn’t the closest the index was trading to a high at the start of a double-digit percentage month, it was close. For all months with double-digit gains, the S&P 500 was trading an average of 15.0% (median: -10.7%) from a 52-week high at the start of the month.
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