Mar 19, 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.
Down again. What else is new? Futures are indicated lower this morning, but with losses of less than 2% at this point, that seems like a win these days! Jobless Claims were just released and came in at 281K, or 61K above consensus expectations. In any other week over the last few years, that type of miss would have been a major concern, but given what economists are expecting to come in the next few weeks, we’ll be wishing for numbers like this.
Read today’s Bespoke Morning Lineup for a discussion of the latest salvos from both the ECB and US Federal Reserve to help stem the carnage in credit markets, as well as a recap of the latest case counts of the coronavirus.
Futures may be indicated lower this morning, but with the S&P 500 indicated to open down about 2%, we could actually end the streak of consecutive 4% daily moves which currently stands at eight. In the entire history of the S&P, there has never been a longer stretch of daily 4% moves, and the longest prior such streak was just six days way back in the late 1920s. In order for the market to find any sort of bottom, we’re going to need some signs of stability first.
Mar 18, 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.
Well, the St Patrick’s Day rally lasted long. Futures are once again trading limit down and poised to erase all of yesterday’s gains. On the bright side, despite the fact that futures are limit down, the major US index ETFs are only down about 6%, which isn’t much more than the futures. Imagine that. Only 6%!
Conditions remain dire, but we do have to stress the recent moves by the Fed should help to stabilize the credit markets and stem an even bigger disaster. That certainly doesn’t help with slowing down the pandemic and its spread, but it’s better than the alternative.
Read today’s Bespoke Morning Lineup for a discussion of the Fed’s latest moves to stabilize the credit markets, trading in Europe and Asia, as well as a recap of the latest case counts of the coronavirus.
The market’s volatility right now is truly unprecedented throughout history. Yesterday’s rally was the 7th straight trading day where the S&P 500 experienced a one-day move of more than 4%. That’s NEVER happened before, and the way things are playing out today, the S&P 500 is on pace for its 8th straight 4% move.
Mar 17, 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 the only thing you have left to fall back on is a little luck, things are bad out there. Futures were limit up at one point overnight, but those gains have faded as we near the close. Conditions in the credit markets aren’t faring as well, though. Despite all of the central bank actions over the last several days, credit spreads continue to widen.
Retail Sales were just released and came in much weaker than expected (-0.5% vs +0.2%), so despite all that shopping at Costco and stores like that as consumers stocked up on supplies, the overall total was weak.
Read today’s Bespoke Morning Lineup for a discussion of overnight moves in the credit markets, the latest stimulus plans coming out of Washington, and the trading in Asia and Europe.
Normally, when the equity market reaches extreme overbought or oversold levels it doesn’t stay that way for long. That hasn’t been the case recently, though, as the S&P 500 has been consistently at extreme oversold levels for a number of days now. There’s only so much time that the market or investors can stand these types of oversold readings.
Mar 16, 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.
Despite unprecedented stimulus from the Federal Reserve last night, US and global equity futures are trading limit down while US Equity Index ETFs are trading down roughly 10%. In fixed income markets, which were extremely stressed last week, conditions have shown some signs of not getting any worse, but major problems remain as the US economy and economies of countries around the world have essentially clogged to a halt.
Read today’s Bespoke Morning Lineup for a discussion of all the Fed’s moves, the troubling increases in Covid-19 cases in Europe, and a look at how the FOMC’s actions have impacted credit markets.
The chart below is from page two of today’s Morning Lineup and shows where sectors finished off last week relative to their trading ranges (as measured by standard deviations below their 50-DMA). The circle shows where each sector most recently closed and the tail shows where it closed a week ago. Finally, the boundary for each sector is three standard deviations above or below their 50-day moving average.
Even after Friday’s monster rally in the final minutes of trading all but one sector (Technology) was at least two standard deviations below its 50-DMA. With US equities on pace to open down by roughly 9% today, many of these sectors will likely be going off the charts once again.
Mar 13, 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.
These days any discussion of levels in the financial markets warrants the qualifier ‘for now’. With that in mind, US equity futures are trading limit up (5%) on optimism that the FOMC will continue to pump liquidity into financial markets, Washington is going to act regarding emergency measures to limit the economic impact, and maybe even that testing will become more widespread. We’re not out of the woods yet, and the headlines are going to get worse, but at some point the market will be able to look through that. Just to give you an idea of how volatile the overnight session was, futures have basically traded in a range of 9%.
Read today’s Bespoke Morning Lineup for a discussion of the carnage in financial markets overnight and the latest tallies on Covid-19 cases.
You’re probably getting sick of charts showing how extreme the moves we have seen in financial markets over the last month have been, but the move in high yield spreads has only been seen at one other time in the last twenty years. In short, when spreads rise it indicates increased risk aversion on the part of investors. In the last four weeks, spreads have increased 386 basis points (bps) or nearly four percentage points. The only time we saw that rapid an increase was at the height of the financial crisis in October 2008.
Mar 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.
The old saying goes that no news is good news, but the variation of that phrase today is that no news is good. No matter where you look today, there is literally no good news. Actually, jobless claims were just released and came in at 211K versus estimates for 220K, so the layoffs haven’t started yet. Futures are limit down as they have been for most of the night, but the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) is down moderately more at about 6%. The only question now is what time will the Fed act?
Read today’s Bespoke Morning Lineup for a discussion of the carnage in financial markets overnight, the latest tallies on Covid-19 cases, and a historical look at bear markets.
We touched on it in the Morning Lineup, but the volatility in the fixed income market has been cataclysmic. In the three trading day period from 3/6 through 3/10, the long-term US Treasury ETF (TLT) has experienced the best and worst days in its history.
