Apr 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.
Some relatively encouraging news over the weekend regarding the status of the COVID-19 outbreak in both Europe and the US has equity futures and other risk assets in rally mode this morning. In recent weeks, there has been some variability in weekend data, so that will make today’s updates on the outbreak even more important. If the recent trajectory of case counts and deaths manages to hold, though, it would be one of the most encouraging trends we have seen in weeks.
Read today’s Bespoke Morning Lineup for a discussion of the latest trends and statistics of the outbreak, an analysis of the factors driving stocks in Europe in today’s rally, and the latest investor expectations surveys out of Europe.
The S&P 500 and most sectors are starting out the week at oversold levels, but we’ve definitely started off prior weeks on a worse footing recently. In fact, two sectors (Consumer Staples and Health Care) aren’t even oversold. If today’s pre-market rally in the futures holds, we could finish off the day with no sectors at oversold levels. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Apr 3, 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.
Wow. That was a pretty bad jobs report. While economists were only expecting a 100K decline in non-farm payrolls (NFP) for March, the actual decline was much sharper at -701K. Going back to WWII, there have only been seven other reports that were weaker. Making matters worse is that the numbers are only going to get worse next month. Given the weakness, you might expect futures to be sharply lower on the news. Instead, they are actually off their lows and down less than half of one percent. Not bad for a Friday in 2020!
Read today’s Bespoke Morning Lineup for a discussion of the latest trends and statistics of the outbreak, conditions in the corporate credit market, and some truly weak economic data points out of Europe.
It looks like today is shaping up to be another one of those “Corona Fridays”. In the 13 Friday’s so far in 2020, the S&P 500 has traded in the red on ten of those days. Granted, one of the up days was one of the best days in the S&P 500’s history, but even including that gain on of all days Friday the 13th in March, the S&P 500’s average change on Friday’s so far this year has been a decline of 0.43% (median: -0.82%). Market performance on Fridays so far this year has been a lousy way to start the weekend, but look on the bright side, at least the market is closed for Good Friday next week.
Apr 2, 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.
All eyes were on jobless claims this morning, which were expected to rise by 3.7mm, though estimates were wide-ranging from 800,000 to 6.5mm. So, where did they come in? How about 6.648 million. That was above all economists forecasts!
Equity markets were pricing a gain of more than 1% but have given up half of those gains in the immediate aftermath of the report.
Read today’s Bespoke Morning Lineup for a discussion of the latest trends and statistics of the outbreak, overnight moves in the market, and some really weak employment-related data out of Spain.
Last week’s jobless claims reading reflected the fact that 1% of the US population filed for unemployment. With claims doubling this week, that means 2% of the US population filed for claims this week Not the labor force but the entire population. Given the moves in claims over the last two weeks, the historical chart of claims is essentially useless. That surge in claims we saw during the financial crisis? It looks like nothing more than a speed bump in relation to what we’re going through now.
Apr 1, 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.
Happy April Fool’s Day. If only the picture of the futures market right now were a prank, but those numbers are real (at least for now). After a month-end rally tied to rebalancing, US futures are kicking off the new quarter on a down note as comments from the President last night that his administration now expects 100K – 240K deaths from the COVID-19 outbreak under a best-case scenario has really spooked investors. While those estimates are no doubt concerning, we would reiterate the point we have been making for some time now that the headlines are going to get a lot worse in the days and weeks ahead, so this shouldn’t be a major surprise.
Read today’s Bespoke Morning Lineup for a discussion of the latest trends and statistics of the outbreak, overnight moves in the market, and our updated state by state summary of the latest COVID-19 trends in the United States. One notable trend of the summary is that in the state of New York, 1% of the entire population has now been tested.
The S&P 500 is poised to open down over 3.5% this morning and if those numbers hold through the close it would be the 2nd worst start to a quarter in the history of the S&P 500. The only one that was worse was the first trading day of 1932 when the S&P 500 kicked off the quarter with a decline of 6.9%. The only other quarter besides that where the S&P 500 declined more than 3% was in October 1998 during the Russian debt crisis and the collapse of the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management.
Hopefully, this quarter’s weak start isn’t a sign that we’re in for more of the same in Q2 as we saw in Q1 and March. For starters, the S&P 500’s average daily change during the month of March was 4.8% which ranks as the most volatile month in the history of the S&P 500 (first chart)! Second, with a decline of 20% during the quarter, the S&P 500 had its worst quarter since Q4 2008 and just the 9th 20%+ decline on record (second chart).
Mar 31, 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.
Futures were higher earlier but have been losing ground relatively quickly as a number of negative headlines have crossed the tape. First, Spain reported its highest number of casualties since the crisis began. Closer to home, it has been a harrowing day in the New York City area as the city saw its number of fatalities increase 16% in the span of just six hours! That’s right, as of 10:30 AM on Monday, the death toll in NYC stood at 790, but by 4:30 PM the total number of fatalities has increased for 914.
On the economic front, Goldman Sachs has revised its forecast for Q2 GDP down to 34%! We have long stated that the market would bottom when it could look through headlines that were only going to get worse, and headlines like the ones we have seen this morning and will likely see in the coming days/weeks will provide a test the resolve of the market’s recent rally.
Read today’s Bespoke Morning Lineup for a discussion of the latest trends and statistics of the outbreak, overnight moves in the market, and a great state by state summary of the latest Covid-19 trends in the United States.
We almost got there yesterday, but couldn’t quite make it. What we’re referring to is the S&P 500 moving out of oversold territory. After several days of off the chart oversold readings, the S&P 500 almost moved into neutral territory after yesterday’s rally. With futures drifting lower into the open, though, that move into neutral territory may not come today. For the sake of reference, the S&P 500 has been trading at oversold levels since 2/25/20 or 25 straight trading days.
Mar 30, 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.
Here’s one we haven’t seen in a long time. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq are both poised to open within 0.10% of their close on Friday. While global equities have been uncharacteristically stable this morning, crude oil is still experiencing extreme volatility and briefly traded below $20 to its lowest level in 17 years.
Read today’s Bespoke Morning Lineup for a discussion of the latest trends and statistics of the outbreak, overnight moves in the market, and a great state by state summary of the latest Covid-19 trends in the United States.
While things are far from certain, one encouraging trend we have seen in recent trends related to the Covid-19 outbreak is that the day over day percent change in global case counts and deaths has shown signs of starting to flatten from the mid-single digits to the low single digits. Due to the fact that the decline came on a Sunday (we saw similar declines on prior Sundays), we would caution against reading too much into this, but in a world where we’re grasping at straws for signs of hope, this one is worth watching. While global trends are slowing, as noted in this morning’s report, US trends have still shown no similar signs of improvement.
