Sep 26, 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.
“This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.” – T.S. Eliot
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
Futures were higher heading into this morning’s economic data, and after the 8:30 batch of data, equities have built modestly on their gains. Personal Income and Personal Spending were both a tenth higher than expected, and PCE inflation was in line with forecasts at both the headline and core levels. While the inflation data was right inline, it remains at uncomfortably high levels with y/y headline coming in at 2.7% while the core reading was 2.9%. As long as these readings can stay below 3%, markets should be able to handle it.
Mondays aren’t usually a day we look forward to, but looking back, it’s been the best day of the week. After riding the optimism of Fed rate cuts to record highs last week, investors took the weekend to think about it and liked what they saw. On Monday, the S&P 500 rallied for the third day in a row, hitting its eighth record high of the month and the 28th record high of the year.
Since that record high on Monday, however, the S&P 500 has traded down for three straight days and is now trading back to where it closed last Tuesday – before the Fed cut rates. Instead of optimism for lower rates, investors are increasingly worried that the market is getting ahead of itself as terms like euphoria and bubble enter the lexicon.
The severity of the declines this week has been extremely modest. Over the course of the three-day losing streak, the S&P 500 is down less than 1%, so if this type of ‘pullback’ makes you nervous, you’re taking too much risk. Besides the shallow nature of the decline, the fact that the S&P 500 is down three days in a row after hitting a record high is hardly unusual. The chart below shows the S&P 500 dating back to 1990, and the red dots show every three-day losing streak that followed a record closing high. Just this year, there have been three other occurrences. One occurred back in February ahead of the tariff-tantrum, but there was also another one in late July and then again in mid-August. Remember those? We didn’t either.
Looking at other occurrences, yes, similar scenarios have played out right around major market tops, but there were dozens more that no one remembers anymore. The only way we’ll know if this occurrence is a significant one is with hindsight, but the odds are that it’s not.
Sep 25, 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.
“The best fiction is far more true than any journalism.” – William Faulkner
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
Just when it seems like the market can only go up, it does nothing but go down. Futures on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are in firmly negative territory this morning, putting both indices on pace for their third straight day of losses. The S&P 500 is indicated to open down by about 0.4% while the Nasdaq is on pace to open down closer to 0.6%. The weakness in US stocks follows a weak morning in Europe, where the STOXX 600 is down over 0.75%, and other major country-level indices are down by 0.15% to 1.0%.
Despite the weaker tone in equities, investors aren’t rotating into treasuries as yields are modestly higher as well. Crude oil is also lower, although gold and other precious metals are all up at least 0.5%. One are where investors certainly aren’t rotating is into crypto. Bitcoin is down nearly 2% while Ethereum is down over 3.7% as it struggles to hang onto the $4,000 level. There may have been a decent amount of froth in the sector heading into the month, but it has definitely worked itself off over the last several days.
We also have a ton of economic data to contend with this morning, with Wholesale Inventories, GDP, Personal Consumption, Durable Goods, and Jobless Claims at 8:30, followed by Existing Home Sales at 10 and the KC Fed Manufacturing report at 11. Besides those reports, there are also a ton of Fed speakers on the calendar. Should be fun! Of the reports hitting the tape at 8:30, most of them came in better than expected, with a much weaker-than-expected initial jobless claims reading of 218K being the big standout. The market response has been even higher yields and lower futures.
While the last couple of days have started to show some cracks in the market, sentiment was little changed based on the weekly survey from the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII). Bullish sentiment remained unchanged at 41.7% while bearish sentiment dropped to 39.2% and neutral sentiment increased to 19.1%. As shown in the chart below, even as stocks have recovered from their April lows, sentiment hasn’t experienced anywhere nearly as big a lift.
In fact, while the bull-bear spread in sentiment broke a streak of seven weeks in a row of negative readings, nearly three-quarters of all weeks this year have had negative spreads, and if the year were to end now, it would rank as the third-most weeks of negative bull-bear spreads in the survey’s history. The only years with a higher percentage were 2022, when the spread was only positive once (March 2022), and 2008, when 73% of weekly readings were negative. Outside of those two years, the only others when the bull-bear spread was negative more than two-thirds of the time were 1990 (69%) and 2020 (68%).
Sep 24, 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.
“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”- F. Scott Fitzgerald
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
The S&P 500 was only down 0.55% yesterday, but that was enough to be the worst day for US stocks since the first trading day of the month. This morning, futures are showing modestly positive gains, with the S&P 500 up 0.13% and the Nasdaq trading 0.21% higher. Treasury yields are also higher as the 10-year has ticked up to 4.13% and is on pace for the fifth daily increase in the six trading days since last week’s cut. Crude oil is up 1% and back up to $64 per barrel for the first time since the middle of the month, but gold is giving back some of the gains from the last two days as it trades back down to $3,800 per ounce. It’s been a rough few days for crypto, but the sector is catching a break this morning as Bitcoin rallies more than 1% while Ethereum is up a more modest 0.55%.
Overnight in Asia, stocks were mixed, with Japan and China trading higher, while India and South Korea slid by about 0.5%. As we saw in many European PMI readings yesterday, Japan’s flash Manufacturing PMI slid further into contraction, falling from 49.7 to 48.4 versus forecasts for a more modest drop to 49.5.
European markets are more negative this morning, with the STOXX 600 trading down 0.3%, as luxury stocks drag the major averages, especially in France, lower.
It’s been a week now since the Fed cut rates, and so far the equity market has seen a modestly positive reaction while treasury yields have moved higher, with the 10-year yield moving up to 4.11% from 4.03% last Tuesday, the day before the cut. The rise in yields over the last week undoubtedly is at least partially a reflexive response to what happened after last year’s cut. Back then, yields were in a steady decline in the six months leading up to the cut, falling from 4.7% to just over 3.6%, but the cut rang the bell, and from there, rates retraced all their previous decline by year’s end.
This year, we’ve seen a similar pattern where yields steadily declined leading up to last week’s cut and have been moving higher ever since. The one difference is that last year, most investors expected yields to continue falling into year-end, while this year, the consensus is expecting yields to rise and the curve to steepen. Will history repeat itself, or is it too obvious?
Homebuilder stocks are one of the most interest rate-sensitive sectors of the market, and like treasury yields, they’ve followed a similar pattern this year compared to last year. The one difference is that while the iShares Homebuilder ETF (ITB) was hitting highs for the year at the time of last year’s September cut, this year the ETF peaked about two weeks before last week’s cut. The fact that investors were starting to take profits in the homebuilders ahead of the cut illustrates the sentiment that there was less optimism towards long-term yields continuing lower after the September cut this year, compared to last year.
The S&P 500’s pattern this year varied from last year in that it has been much less volatile leading up to the cut than it was last year. In each case, though, it was trading either right at or very close to new highs at the time of the cut.
Sep 23, 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.
“I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
S&P 500 futures are unchanged as we type this, indicating an uneventful day for equities, although the persistent bid we have seen for months now could pull things higher throughout the session. The only economic data on the calendar this morning is New Home Sales at 10 AM and preliminary PMI data from S&P for the manufacturing and services sector at 9:45. There’s also a heavy dose of Fed speakers, including Chair Powell shortly after noon.
Overnight in Asia, markets were mixed. While Japan was closed, Hong Kong and China were lower, while the Kospi traded higher to record highs. The tone in Europe is decidedly more positive with broad-based strength pushing the STOXX up by 0.3% even as PMI data for the manufacturing sector showed lower than expected growth.
In terms of market leadership, the largest companies in the market continue to dominate. The table below lists the 20 largest stocks in the S&P 500 along with their YTD performance. All but one of them – Eli Lilly (LLY) – is up on the year, and it’s only down 2%. The median performance of the 20 stocks listed is a gain of 17.1%, with half of them rallying at least 20%, including Palantir (PLTR) and Oracle (ORCL), which are up 137% and 97%, respectively.
Now, contrast the performance of the 20 largest stocks with the 20 smallest stocks. Only four of the 20 smallest stocks in the S&P 500 are up YTD, and their median performance is a decline of close to 17%. It’s basically a mirror image of the 20 largest stocks. In an investment environment where passive flows should be a tide lifting all boats in the S&P 500, investors are actively abandoning ship on the smallest stocks in the index.
While the largest stocks in the S&P 500 have been leading the market all year, yesterday was a notable one in the fact that it was the first time all nine current members of the trillion-dollar club finished the day with a positive YTD performance. Earlier in the year, we got close with eight stocks in the black, but Apple (AAPL) was the holdout. For the first time all year, though, AAPL finished the day with a positive YTD gain yesterday, joining the eight others in the party.
Sep 22, 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.
“A man who is certain he is right is almost sure to be wrong.” – Michael Faraday
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
The S&P 500 closed at its 27th record high of the year on Friday as investors continued to bask in the light of the Fed’s rate cut on Wednesday. The 28th record high of the year will likely have to wait at least another day, though, as futures on all three major averages are indicated to open down by a little more than 0.30%. Small caps, which also hit a record high last week after a long drought, are also lower but not by as much (0.23%) as the S&P 500.
Asian stocks were mixed overnight, with the Nikkei rallying 1% to another record high, while Hong Kong was down close to 1% and China was marginally higher. While Japanese stocks keep hitting record highs, JGBs keep falling as the 10-year yield hit the highest level since 2007.
In Europe, the tone is more one-directional with the STOXX 600 down 0.2% while Germany leads the way lower with a decline of 0.7%. There’s no economic data in the region this morning, but auto stocks are weaker with both Volkswagen and Porsche trading lower after lowering guidance.
As we noted in last week’s Bespoke Report, we’re in a data lull. While multiple FOMC members will speak today, last week’s cut is behind us, and earnings season doesn’t kick off for another two weeks. Newton’s first law of motion says that an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon by force, so that would suggest more gains ahead. However, it is late September, which is historically a weak time of year, and investors have seen some large gains over the last five months, so you can’t fault anyone for wanting to take some profits.
Crypto will be one place to watch for a measure of risk appetite in the market, and this morning’s action is showing a more defensive posture. Bitcoin is trading down over 2% this morning as it has broken below $113,000 and below its 50-day moving average (DMA). With today’s decline, Bitcoin is essentially trading right where it was back in May.
Unlike Bitcoin, which has been moving sideways, Ethereum prices had a much steeper run-up over the Summer, even as it has traded in a sideways range for the last month. This morning’s weakness in Ether has been more magnified with a decline of over 6%, and it too is below its 50-DMA for the first time in months.
Sep 19, 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.
“Language fits over experience like a straight-jacket.” – William Golding
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 important to continue to note that the S&P is trading in extreme overbought territory, but there hasn’t been a similar move with underlying breadth. Yet another breadth indicator that remains totally neutral is the percentage of stocks in the S&P trading at new 52-week highs.
