Jun 11, 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.
“Too many people miss the silver lining because they’re expecting gold.” – Maurice Sendak
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
There have been some positive developments in the US-China trade talks as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that both parties agreed to a consensus in trade talks that now only have to be agreed upon by President Trump and Xi. The President just truthed that the deal is ‘done’. Despite the positive headlines, futures have been drifting lower as the terms of the deal really only bring us back to where we were after the Geneva meeting, so this drama is anything but done, even if things are moving in the right direction.
Markets are also a bit anxious heading into the release of the May CPI report. Will this be the month that the impact of tariffs starts to show up in the data, or will we once again hear that it’s a ‘next month’ story?
The S&P 500 closed within 2% of an all-time high yesterday, and overall breadth has likewise been strong. Let’s start with the cumulative advance/decline. The S&P 500’s cumulative A/D line has already hit a new high since “Liberation Day”, and after a brief dip in late May, it has rebounded right back within a hair of its high. If the market takes out its February high, it would be good to see breadth confirming the move.
One big contributor to the strong breadth in the market is the Technology sector, which has already taken out its late May high in the last few days, reaching a new high yesterday.
While the S&P 500 and Technology have seen new highs in terms of breadth as they wait for new highs in price to follow, the Industrials sector has been the opposite, as price has already made a new high, while breadth remains just shy. Back in late May, the sector’s cumulative A/D line just barely missed making a new high, and after a brief dip in late May, is now back on the rebound as it looks to take out those highs once again.
Jun 10, 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.
“Too many people miss the silver lining because they’re expecting gold.” – Maurice Sendak
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
We’re not sure if it’s the summer doldrums setting in early or that investors needed a breather after the craziness of the last several months, but for the second morning in a row, the action in futures has been quiet. This morning, S&P 500 futures have been moving on either side of the unchanged line while the Nasdaq is set to open slightly higher.
US and Chinese officials are in London again this morning for the second day of trade talks, and the economic calendar is quiet with NFIB Small Business Sentiment being today’s only report. That came in better than expected, rising from 95.8 to 98.8 in May. Overnight, in Asia, Australia and Japan were higher while Hong Kong and China declined.
When it comes to the mega-cap stocks in the S&P 500 with market caps of more than or around a trillion dollars, an increasingly evident trend is that the group no longer trades as a block, where each member’s performance is no longer in line with the others. This can be seen in the year-to-date performance of the nine stocks listed below. While the average performance of the nine stocks on a YTD basis is basically unchanged (-0.01%) and the median is a gain of 5.37%, the performance of each stock ranges from 18.5% (Meta Platforms-META) to a decline of 23.6% (Tesla–TSLA). Even over the last 12 months, while all nine stocks have experienced positive returns, the magnitude of the gains ranges from 4.3% for Apple (AAPL) to a gain of 69.6% for Broadcom (AVGO). Even with every stock trading higher, they have hardly traded in unison.
Where we have seen a group of stocks trade much more in unison is at the other end of the market cap scale. The table below shows the nine stocks in the S&P 500 with the smallest market caps and how each has performed YTD and over the last 12 months. On a YTD basis, all nine stocks are lower with an average decline of 20.7% (median: -19.35). Just as notable is that the range of returns has been much closer than the largest stocks in the S&P 500. Whereas more than 42 percentage points separates the best and worst performances of the nine largest stocks in the S&P 500, for the nine stocks with the smallest market caps, the spread is just 23 percentage points. So, while the rising tide hasn’t impacted each of the nine largest stocks equally, the nine smallest stocks have been weighed down by a more similar anchor.
In terms of performance, while there may have been some concerns over the performance of the mega-cap stocks in recent months, they’re still doing much better than the nine smallest stocks.
Even on a relative strength basis, the nine stocks with the smallest market caps in the S&P 500 have consistently underperformed. Earlier this month, they even made a new low relative to the mega caps.
Jun 9, 2025
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“If I have to go around telling everyone how great I am, then there’s something wrong with my act.” – Les Paul
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
It’s a generally quiet morning in markets ahead of what could be a busy day, depending on how a trifecta of potential catalysts play out. First, US-China trade talks will resume in London in London, and then we could also get an update from the Senate with its version of the reconciliation bill and what changes it made to the House’s version. To round out the trifecta, Apple (AAPL) will be holding its annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). In last Wednesday’s Chart of the Day, we looked at how the stock typically performs leading up to and after the conference, so make sure to check that out, if you haven’t yet.
The S&P 500 closed above 6,000 for the first time since 2/21, and with a gain of just over 2%, it’s firmly back into positive territory for the year. Overall breadth on the year has also been strong as eight sectors are up YTD, and just three – Consumer Discretionary (-6.8%), Energy (-3.4%), and Health Care (-2.6%) are in the red. The only other sector that’s underperforming the S&P 500 this year is Technology (1.1%), and because it’s easily the largest sector, that’s why so many sectors are outperforming, including five sectors that are up over 5%. The best performing sector, though, is Industrials which finished last week up just shy of 10% for the year.
The technical picture for Industrials also looks positive. For about the last month now, the sector has been trading right around its highs from late last year, and while it was acting as resistance, just last Friday, it broke out to new highs just as the rising 50-DMA looks like it’s on track to cross back above the 200-DMA. Late last year, we were positive on the Industrials sector given the trend of onshoring and less regulation in a second Trump administration, and that has, so far, played out this year.
Jun 6, 2025
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“The greatest discovery of the 21st century will be the discovery that Man was not meant to live at the speed of light.” – Marshal McLuhan
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
Given all the drama coming out of DC, you can’t be faulted for forgetting there’s an employment report today, but that is probably what should receive the most focus this morning from the markets. Whether it does is another story altogether. Heading into the report, US equity futures have bounced from Thursday’s close as they look to erase much of yesterday’s losses. European stocks are pretty much unchanged, while Asian equities were mixed with modest gains and losses. In the Treasury market, yields are little changed, as is the case with crude oil, even as gold, silver, and Bitcoin see modest gains.
Yesterday’s spat between Elon Musk and President Trump sucked all the oxygen out of the room when it comes to news and overshadowed every other major geo-political event that the market had been focused on heading into the day. The argument also sucked a lot of the market cap from Tesla (TSLA) stock as it fell more than 14% for its third double-digit percentage decline this year! While the declines have been painful, TSLA has also experienced two double-digit percentage rallies this year, including a 22.7% gain on 4/9, which was its largest one-day gain since May 2013. In other words, the stock has been volatile, even by the standards of TSLA.
Yesterday, on an intraday basis, TSLA plunged 11.7%, which was just the 14th time since its IPO in 2010 that the stock declined by double-digit percentages from the open to close and the second time this year. We’d also note that the 21.1% rally from the open to close on 4/9 was the stock’s second-largest open-to-close rally in its history.
While TSLA has been volatile, it hasn’t made a lot of headway. With the stock closing yesterday at $284.70, it was 3 cents–yes, CENTS–higher than where it opened after Election Day last November. There have been some major moves within those six months, but for all the talk about how Musk’s support of Trump was just a sinister ploy to buy influence and enrich himself, the stock’s performance says otherwise. While the stock hasn’t done much since the election, over the last year, shares have rallied just under 60%, which is nearly six times the 11% gain of the S&P 500.
YTD performance within the mega-cap tech space looks like a pack of FruitStripe gum. At the top of the performance list, Meta Platforms (META), Broadcom (AVGO), and Microsoft (MSFT) have all experienced double-digit percentage gains this year, while TSLA, Apple (AAPL), and Alphabet (GOOGL) have seen double-digit percentage declines. In between, Nvidia (NVDA) and Amazon.com (AMZN) have modest gains or losses.
From a shorter-term perspective, the disparities are nearly as wide. While AAPL and TSLA are both modestly below their 50-DMAs, AVGO headed into last night’s earnings report nearly 30% above its 50-DMA while NVDA, META, and MSFT were all at least 10% above that level. While often thought of as a monolith with the stock market, when it comes to performance, mega-cap tech has been in as much unison as political discourse at a holiday dinner.
Jun 5, 2025
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“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.” – John Maynard Keynes
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
It’s been another quiet overnight session in the futures market, but that’s not for a lack of events. In Japan, JGBs managed to rally despite a weak 30-year bond auction. In the EU, the ECB just cut rates by 25 bps, and that will result in more ire from President Trump towards Fed Chair Powell. Concerning trade, markets are eagerly waiting for ‘the call’ between President Trump and President Xi as both countries look to make progress on trade talks. Yesterday was also the deadline for countries to make their ‘best and final’ offers, so be on the lookout for any of those details to emerge. Domestically, the status of the GOP’s big, beautiful bill remains up in the air as the Senate is unlikely to pass the bill without major changes, and Elon Musk continues to rail against it.
With all the concerns over deficits and the inability of Congress to rein in spending, it’s easy to understand why precious metals like gold have performed so well. After pulling back to the 50-day moving average in early May, gold prices found support and have seen a good bounce as the yellow metal makes a run for its recent highs. The last year has seen a monster run for gold as prices are up well over 40%, and besides the last few weeks where prices have been rangebound, the only other time in the last year that prices went this long without making a new high were leading up to the election and through year end of 2024.
As gold prices have been digesting big gains from earlier in the year, other precious metals have been playing catch up and moving into the driver’s seat. Let’s start with silver. Prices have been in a much more sideways range over the last year. Both last fall and earlier in the spring, silver traded around $35 an ounce but then quickly pulled back. This week, it made another run for $35 and broke right through to the upside this morning. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, and try again!
Platinum prices have followed a similar path. Here, the resistance was just below $1,075- a level it approached last summer, last fall, and then again, this winter. It finally broke out from that level in mid-March, and while it briefly pulled back later in the month, this morning’s rally of nearly 4% looks like a convincing breakout.
Within the commodities space, gold, platinum, and silver have all now seen big rallies this year with gains of around 20% or more, and all three are well above their 50-day moving averages as well. Elsewhere in the commodity space, so-called ‘soft’ commodities have lagged. The DB Agriculture ETF (DBA) is barely up YTD with a gain of just 1%, while the DB Oil ETF (DBO) is down by double-digit percentages. Not all commodities are created equal.
Jun 4, 2025
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“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it again?” – John Wooden
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 yesterday’s CNBC interview, you can just click on the image below.
Futures were comfortably higher leading up to this morning’s ADP Employment report, but the headline number came in weaker than expected at just +37K versus forecasts for an increase of 110K. This report often varies widely from the Non-Farm Payrolls report, but for investors looking for any sign that the economy is weakening, this gives them something to latch on to. Coming up later, we’ll get the May ISM Services report, which will also likely move markets. Within minutes of the ADP release, President Trump hit the Truth Social account calling on “Too Late” Powell to cut rates.
Despite today’s post-ADP weakness, US equities just recently moved back into positive territory for the year, meaning stocks worldwide are now pretty much higher across the board. But the performance gap remains wide. While Latin American and European equities are sitting on gains of more than 20%, and most other regions of the world are up by double-digit percentages, the US finds itself in the unusual position of looking up to its global peers.
In the short term, though, US stocks have been outperforming. Over the last week, Latin America and Europe are down while the S&P 500 is up nearly 1%. Recent performance looks like it’s been a bit of a mean reversion trade, though, as all seven regional international ETFs shown are between 4% and 7% above their 50-day moving averages (DMA).
Price charts of the regional ETFs over the last six months also illustrate some of the performance disparity on both a YTD basis and over the last week. Over the longer-term, the US is the only one of the seven ETFs shown that hasn’t hit a 52-week high in the last couple of weeks, but whereas Emerging Markets (EEM), Latin America (ILF), and Europe (VGK) have been moving in more of a sideways direction over the last week or two, the S&P 500 just hit a post “Liberation Day” high yesterday.
