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.
May 9, 2025
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“If it’s in the papers, it’s in the price.” – Bill Miller
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
Yesterday was the last big day for earnings season with roughly 200 companies posting Q1 numbers. For the next couple of weeks until Walmart (WMT) and NVIDIA (NVDA) wrap things up, we’ll see fewer than 30-40 reports per day.
While we saw a large percentage of companies cutting or pulling guidance in the early weeks of this earnings season in mid-April, things have taken a much more positive turn this month. The big uptick in positive guidance that we’ve seen so far in May has been enough to flip the guidance spread (% of companies raising minus lowering guidance) positive for the full earnings season. Of the 1,551 companies that have reported since the season began on April 10th, 6% have raised guidance versus 5% that have lowered. At the same time, 70% of companies have beaten consensus analyst EPS estimates, while 64% have beaten sales estimates. Q1 has basically been an average to slightly better-than-average earnings season during a period where market volatility and “uncertainty” raged due to President Trump’s tariff policy. In terms of share-price reactions, the average stock that has reported has averaged a one-day gain of 0.34% in reaction to the news. That’s very positive relative to history as well.
May 8, 2025
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“Wise and humane management of the patient is the best safeguard against infection.” – Florence Nightingale
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 roughly 1% ahead of today’s open after President Trump announced that a trade deal between the US and UK would be announced shortly. Along with the tariff news, yesterday the market managed to not trade lower after Fed Chair Powell’s press conference as it normally does.
We’ve gotten a huge number of earnings reports this week as well, and the results have been largely positive. So far in May, we’ve seen a positive reversal in guidance trends. In April, we were seeing many more companies lowering guidance than raising guidance, but that has flipped this month. Of the nearly 800 companies that have reported month-to-date, 69 have raised guidance compared to just 45 that have lowered guidance. You don’t expect to see such positivity when there’s such an “extremely elevated level of uncertainty” as Fed Chair Powell described in his FOMC comments yesterday.
Based on where it’s trading in the pre-market, the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) is set to test last week’s highs when it opens this morning.
May 7, 2025
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“Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.” – Pyotr Tchaikovsky
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
While European markets are trading lower, equity futures in the US are higher by about 50 basis points this morning on positive trade talks with China.
As shown below, this week’s declines have yet to do much technical damage, but we’ll likely need a positive close today for the S&P to remain above its 50-day moving average. Right now, price is sitting in between the 50-DMA (below) and the 200-DMA (above), and the next stop on the upside will be a re-taking of the 200-DMA.
Weakness in the final hours of the trading day on Fed Days has been a hallmark of Powell’s tenure as Fed Chair. That’s actually in contrast with what we’ve seen for markets recently. The S&P is currently flat since “Liberation Day” back on April 2nd, but as shown below, we’re only flat because of intraday strength. Since 4/2, the S&P (SPY) has averaged an opening gap lower of 0.27% each day followed by an average gain of 0.28% from the open to the close.
