Oct 12, 2020
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 free trial to Bespoke Premium. CLICK HERE to learn more and start your free trial.
“Do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.” – Steve Clark
Due to the Columbus Day holiday, it’s a quiet start to the week in terms of data related to earnings and the economy, but equities are poised for a very strong start anyways as tech stocks lead the rest of the market higher. More specifically, it’s the software sector that’s driving the rally this morning, and one catalyst for the gains is the $3.2 billion takeover of Segment by software darling Twilio (TWLO). While stocks of the acquiring company usually take a hit when a merger is announced, this morning TWLO is trading more than 5% higher to record highs, and that comes after already tripling this year!
Be sure to check out today’s Morning Lineup for a rundown of the latest stock-specific news of note, market performance in the US and Europe, manufacturing in Japan, trends related to the COVID-19 outbreak, and much more.
On the topic of software, just last week the group looked to be starting to break out of a consolidation phase after underperforming the broader market since early September. Today’s rally should further the move out of congestion, but the group still enters the week trading down close to 5% from its prior high.
Bespoke
Oct 9, 2020
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 free trial to Bespoke Premium. CLICK HERE to learn more and start your free trial.
“When you learn to let go of the need to be right, being wrong gradually loses its power to disturb you.” – Yvan Byeajee
In the ongoing saga over the china trade deal stimulus talks, it appears as though things are back on again, or at least what the pundits are saying. Futures are higher this morning, and while it could be due to optimism over a larger stimulus bill getting done, it could also very well be over less uncertainty regarding the election, economic improvement even without a stimulus, or the fact that more successful treatments for COVID-19, even without a vaccine seem to come out every day. Just today, Gilead’s CEO was on CNBC and commented that a study of Remdesivir shortened recovery times of COVID patients by five days and significantly reduced the number of people that died of the virus.
Be sure to check out today’s Morning Lineup for a rundown of the latest stock-specific news of note, market performance in the US and Europe, European manufacturing, trends related to the COVID-19 outbreak, and much more.
We’re all familiar with the saying “Show me a man’s [or woman’s] friends, and I’ll show you the man [woman].” A corollary to that could be, “Show me which way the dollar is moving, and I’ll show you the direction of the stock market.” You see, so far this year, the direction of the dollar every month has been the opposite of the S&P 500. So when the dollar has rallied, as it did in the first three months of the year and in September, the S&P 500 declined. Likewise, in months where the Dollar Index declined, the S&P 500 rallied. October is only eight days old, but so far the Dollar Index has dropped 0.60% and the S&P 500 is up 2.49%. See, it’s as easy as that!
Oct 8, 2020
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 free trial to Bespoke Premium. CLICK HERE to learn more and start your free trial.
“I sometimes compare my brainstorming on paper to the drilling of oil wells. The only way to strike oil is to drill a lot of wells.” – Tom Monaghan, Founder Domino’s Pizza
Futures have been rallying all morning and are currently trading at their highs of the session. The catalyst this morning is – you guessed it – more stimulus hopes. In other news, IBM pre-announced better than expected results and said it would spin-off its managed infrastructure unit. In economic news this morning, jobless claims came in at 840K versus consensus forecasts for a level of 820K. Continuing Claims came in at 10.976 million which was much lower than forecasts for 11.4 million. Overall, a mixed bag but it’s encouraging to see continuing claims drop below 11 million for the first time since March.
Be sure to check out today’s Morning Lineup for a rundown of the latest stock-specific news of note, market performance in the US and Europe, trends related to the COVID-19 outbreak, and much more.
Small caps have been a disappointing area of the market for the last few years now, but the last few days have been a different story. Over just the last ten trading days, the Russell 2000 has rallied more than 10%. That’s the strongest 10-day rate of change for the index since the Spring coming off the COVID crash lows. While there have been plenty of other instances where the Russell 2000 saw a stronger 10-day rate of change, what makes the current period unique is that while most big rallies in the Russell 2000 have come after sharp declines, that wasn’t the case this time around.
The lower chart shows the Russell 2000’s 10-day rate of change going back to the start of 2018. In the rally off the March lows, the Russell 2000 had previously been down more than 30% over a 10-day period, and before that the 10%+ rally in early 2019 followed what was a 12% decline just before. The most recent rally, though, has been different. At no point in the last 50 trading days has the Russell 2000’s 10-day rate of change seen a decline of more than 5%. In other words, while most prior big short-term rallies have been a snapback from a prior decline, there was no big drop to snap back from this time around.
Oct 7, 2020
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 free trial to Bespoke Premium. CLICK HERE to learn more and start your free trial.
“Never judge a potato by its skin. One day, it will be french fries.” – Ian Wilson
French fries are on our mind this morning due to the fact that one of the only companies reporting earnings is Lamb Weston (LW), which basically produces nothing but french fries and other frozen potato products. The company just reported results and exceeded EPS forecasts by 31 cents (0.61 vs 0.30) on stronger than expected revenues. How can you lose with french fries!
In other news this morning, futures have rebounded much of the late day declines towards the end of the day yesterday following additional tweets from the President where he has appeared to restart stimulus talks over Twitter after unilaterally canceling them earlier. Where this all ends up nobody knows, but the longer this drags on the less likely it is that anything gets done.
Be sure to check out today’s Morning Lineup for a rundown of the latest stock-specific news of note, market performance in the US and Europe, trends related to the COVID-19 outbreak, and much more.
From its afternoon high to the close yesterday, the S&P 500 declined more than 2%. Using our intraday database, we found that there were 62 other trading days since 1982 where the S&P 500 sold off more than 2% between its high in the last 90 minutes of trading and the close. In the chart of the S&P 500 below, we indicate each of those prior occurrences with a red dot. While these types of moves were common during the financial crisis, they have also occurred at a number of other more benign periods throughout the market cycle.
Oct 6, 2020
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 free trial to Bespoke Premium. CLICK HERE to learn more and start your free trial.
“Beyond this, the problem is universal. It is that governments are now held responsible for the welfare of the people. The aspirations of the people can outrun their ability to pay for them, and nobody has yet found a way to create answers to the aspirations out of thin air.” – Adam Smith, The Money Game
It was a dramatic night on the political landscape with President Trump’s return to the White House, but in the markets, it was a quiet night ahead of a slow day for data. The only notable event on the calendar is a 10:40 eastern speech by Fed Chair Powell.
Be sure to check out today’s Morning Lineup for a rundown of the latest stock-specific news of note, market performance in the US and Europe, German factory orders, trends related to the COVID-19 outbreak, and much more.
While the S&P 500 has convincingly moved back above its 50-DMA and traded to its highest level since September 16th, gold still has about another 1.5% to go to get back above its own 50-DMA. Gold prices have rallied $80 (4%) off their recent lows, but in the process are now bumping up right against a short-term downtrend from its recent high. How gold reacts in the next couple of days will answer whether this most recent bounce results in a fourth lower high or the beginning of a new leg higher.
Oct 5, 2020
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 free trial to Bespoke Premium. CLICK HERE to learn more and start your free trial.
“How many millionaires do you know who have become wealthy by investing in savings accounts? I rest my case.” – Robert G. Allen
It’s a new week, but the headlines remain the same as markets remain focused on the health of the President, possibilities for stimulus, and the election. This week’s calendar is extremely light in terms of both economic data and earnings, so expect news outside of the economy and earnings to be the main driver of movement this week.
Be sure to check out today’s Morning Lineup for a rundown of the latest stock-specific news of note, market performance in the US and Europe, updates to the latest Services sector data from Markit, trends related to the COVID-19 outbreak, and much more.
Heading into the new week and the first full week of the fourth quarter, all of the major US indices are currently battling with their 50-day moving averages as just one of the 14 major index ETFs is more than 1% above or below it’s 50-day moving average. The S&P 500 has been battling back and forth with closes above and below its 50-DMA over the last week and gone nowhere in the process. Hopefully this week, we’ll get some more clarity over which way the index will break.
Within the eleven S&P 500 sectors, the picture looks a little better. Through Friday’s close, seven sectors finished the week above their respective 50-day moving averages while just four finished below. Not surprisingly, the only one of those four that finished the week more than 2% below its 50-day moving average was Energy.
