May 19, 2025
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“Successive US administrations and Congress have failed to agree on measures to reverse the trend of large annual fiscal deficits and growing interest costs.” – Moody’s, 5/16/25
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
After being the lone holdout with a AAA credit rating on the sovereign debt of the US, on Friday evening, Moody’s joined Standard and Poor’s and Fitch in downgrading US debt. As you might expect, equity futures are lower and interest rates are higher in response to the news. As Moody’s noted in its statement, the downgrade is the result of ‘successive US administrations’, and the buildup of debt in the US has been a long-running issue. The news, therefore, is surprising to no one, but it still reinforces the problem and brings it to the forefront.
The chart below shows the 10-year US Treasury yield dating back to 2010, with each AAA downgrade notated on the chart. In the case of both the S&P and Fitch downgrades, the actions did little to change the trend in interest rates. When S&P downgraded US debt in 2011, yields were already falling and continued to decline, whereas the Fitch downgrade in 2023 came in the middle of a period when rates were rising. So, while each action garnered headlines, the ratings agencies didn’t tell us anything the market didn’t already know.
May 16, 2025
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“The most important decision you make is to be in a good mood.” – Voltaire
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 biggest individual stock story of the week and probably of the last year is UnitedHealth Group (UNH). The stock is down 28% this week alone and has been more than cut in half in just a month! It’s hard to remember what was once considered a blue-chip stock falling out of favor so fast.
UNH is also a member (for now) of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), and because that index is price-weighted, the stock used to be one of the index’s largest components. That has made its fall from grace even that much more impactful on the index. The chart below shows the Dow’s performance over the last six months, and we have also created a theoretical index price that doesn’t include UNH (green line).
While the DJIA is still 6% below its recent high, without UNH, it would be just 2% from its high, and the spread between the current Dow and the Dow Ex UNH is 4.6% percentage points! From a technical perspective, the Dow would look much better without UNH. Through yesterday’s close, the Dow was still below potential resistance at its late-March/pre-Liberation Day high, but backing out UNH, it cleared those levels earlier this week. Taking out the index’s weakest component involves cherry-picking, but we think it provides some good perspective.
May 15, 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.
“How you begin life is not nearly as important as how you end up.” – Emmitt Smith
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 last night’s segment on CNN’s OutFront with Erin Burnett, click on the image below.
After some positive days of market performance, the euphoria surrounding the US-China trade talks has faded a bit as investors focus again on rising rates, with the 10-year treasury yield back above 4.5%. Walmart (WMT) marked the unofficial end to earnings season with better-than-expected earnings on inline revenues, and the stock is up fractionally. The morning is much worse for UnitedHealth (UNH) as that company’s terrible year continues with reports that the company is under criminal investigation related to billing practices in its Medicare Advantage plans. Based on where the stock is trading in the pre-market, shares have lost more than half of their value since April 11th!
While the pace of earnings reports is slowing down, today is one of the busier days in recent memory for economic data with Empire and Philly Fed Manufacturing reports for May, Retail Sales for April, PPI for April, jobless claims, Industrial Production, Capacity Utilization, and Business Inventories. As if that’s not enough, Powell will also be speaking at 8:40 eastern.
As tensions in global trade pushed economic uncertainty to levels rarely seen before, investors couldn’t get their hands on enough gold. At its high for the year on 4/22, front-month gold prices were up over 30% YTD, and Costco (COST) even had to place a one-ounce limit on the amount of gold that its customers could purchase as sales of the yellow metal on its website exceeded $200 million per month.
With the US and China dialing back on trade tensions, markets and investors have let out a giant exhale of relief, and while it has been good for risk assets, gold prices have taken a hit. Overnight, prices dropped as low $3,123 per ounce, representing a decline of 11% from the recent record high. While prices recovered a bit since the lows, gold briefly traded below its 50-day moving average for the first time since early January.
As gold corrects, its price has become increasingly volatile, and large daily moves have become increasingly common. While it traded more than 2% lower on an intraday basis yesterday, it finished the day down just 1.8%. Even though it didn’t have a daily move of 2%, 11 of the last 25 trading days have seen moves of more than 2%, and just recently, the rolling 25-day total was 12. As shown below, 2%+ daily moves haven’t been that clustered together since 2011, and before that, the Financial Crisis.
May 14, 2025
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“The only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” – Mark Zuckerberg
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
Meta Platforms (META) founder Mark Zuckerberg turns 41 years old today, and love him or hate him, the man has certainly taken some risks in building META into what it is. That’s also why he has a net worth of over $200 billion, making him one of the richest people in the world!
This week, the market has taken a risk on persona, continuing into the pre-market futures. S&P 500 futures indicate a 27-bps point gain at the open while the Nasdaq is 0.40% higher. There’s not much in the way of earnings-related news to contend with today, the economic calendar is empty, and even the geo-political picture has experienced a bit of a lull. Just what you would expect as we all try to get through the middle of the week.
For the S&P 500, the first two trading days of the week have been notable for two big reasons. First, on Monday, the S&P 500 surged above its 200-DMA for the first time in over a month, as the S&P 500 rallied over 3%. The rally of 3.26% was the largest daily gain on a day when the S&P 500 crossed above its 200-DMA since March 2020. Second, it’s hard to see in the chart, but if you squint hard, you can see that yesterday was the first time in over two months that the S&P 500’s 50 and 200-DMA had an upward slope.
Yesterday’s upward shift in the slope of the 50 and 200-DMAs ended a streak of 56 trading days where both moving averages were sloping downwards. As shown in the chart, the length of that streak was far from extraordinary relative to history. During the 2022 bear market, we went nearly a year where at least one of the moving averages was sloping downwards, and during the financial crisis, the market had a stretch of over 19 months where at least one moving average was downward sloping. While the most recent period may not have been the longest streak with at least one moving average sloping downward, the fact that they are both now sloping upward is positive from a psychological standpoint.
May 13, 2025
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“Do you know the only thing that gives me pleasure? It’s to see my dividends coming in.” – John D. Rockefeller
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 rose 3.26% to start the week, which was its biggest Monday gain since April 6th, 2020 when the index rose 7.0% on weekend headlines that the rate of COVID infections was slowing and lockdowns might start to ease.
Yesterday’s rally was driven by an agreement between the US and China to pause steep reciprocal tariffs of 100%+ for at least the next 90 days. The best performing stocks yesterday were names that got hit the hardest during the post-“Liberation Day” crash from April 2nd to April 8th. The worst were the ones that held up best during the Trump-tariff crash. You can see this in the chart below that breaks the S&P into deciles (10 groups of 50 stocks each) based on performance from 4/2 to 4/8. The bars show the average performance yesterday of the stocks in each decile. The three deciles of stocks that did the worst during the tariff crash from 4/2 to 4/8 saw average gains of more than 5% yesterday. The 50 stocks that held up the best from 4/2 to 4/8 actually fell an average of 0.95% yesterday. This clearly highlights yesterday’s rotation out of tariff resistant names into tariff exposed names.
It has taken a gain of more than 17% off the lows for the S&P 500 to finally tick back up into overbought territory:
May 12, 2025
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“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.” – Cormac McCarthy
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
US equity futures are up 3% pre-market on news that the US and China would be pausing tariffs for 90 days after meetings between the two in Geneva over the weekend.
As shown below, SPY is set to open above its March highs and back in positive territory since Election Day last November.
Stocks most dependent on China for cheap imports are soaring this morning. Below is a look at the pre-market moves for stocks in some of the “tariff losers” baskets we’ve highlighted in the last five weeks. Wayfair (W) is up the most at 16.2%, followed by RH (+15.6%) and elf Beauty (+10.2%). Best Buy (BBY), Yeti (YETI) and SharkNinja (SN) are all up 8%+ as well.
