The Triple Play Report: 5/27/26
An earnings triple play is a stock that reports earnings and manages to 1) beat analyst EPS estimates, 2) beat analyst sales estimates, and 3) raise forward guidance. You can read more about “triple plays” at Investopedia.com where they’ve given Bespoke credit for popularizing the term. We like triple plays as an indication that a company’s business is firing on all cylinders, with better-than-expected results and an improving outlook. A triple play is indicative of positive “fundamental momentum” instead of pure fundamentals, and there are always plenty of names with both high and low valuations on our quarterly list.
Bespoke’s Triple Play Report covers what each company does, what this quarter’s results say about their growth outlooks, and their histories of delivering triple plays. Bespoke’s Triple Play Report is available at the Bespoke Institutional level only. You can sign up for Bespoke Institutional now and receive a 14-day trial to read today’s Triple Play Report. To sign up, choose either the monthly or annual checkout link below:
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Better Late Than Never
Last week, the Dow finally caught up to the rest of the major US indices in surpassing its pre-Iran war highs. Since that move to new highs, the oldest US index has been moving sideways for the last couple of days.
A look at the performance of major US indices from 2/10 through 5/21 – the period the Dow went between highs – illustrates how much the index has lagged its peer indices. While the DJIA rallied just 0.19% during that span, every other major US index was up at least 6%, with the Nasdaq 100 blowing them all out of the water, gaining nearly 14%.
While the Dow has lagged its peer indices, on an equal-weighted basis where each component’s performance is treated equally, the Dow’s underperformance doesn’t look quite as bad, at least relative to the S&P 500. As shown in the chart below, while the 30 Dow components were down an average of 0.24% from 2/10 through 5/21, the average S&P 500 component was up just barely 1%. The average Russell 2000 component, however, was still up close to 6%, while the average performance of the stocks in the Nasdaq 100 is even higher than the index’s performance.
Turning back to the Dow, breadth in the index from 2/10 through 5/21 was skewed to the downside. The chart below shows each component’s impact on the index in terms of points during that period. Caterpillar (CAT) has had the biggest positive impact, responsible for 761 upside points, followed by UnitedHealth (UNH) at 673 points. Trailing way behind in third place, Amazon.com (AMZN) has added 379 points to the index’s performance.
On the downside, Home Depot (HD) and Sherwin-Williams (SHW) have had a combined downside impact of just over 800 points, illustrating housing market weakness. Pointswise, there wasn’t much in the way of train wrecks at the individual stock level, but just a lot more malaise than clear sailing ahead.
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Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 5/27/26 – Here We Go Again
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“Every victory is only the price of admission to a more difficult problem” – Henry Kissinger
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 modestly higher (+0.27%), while Nasdaq leads (+0.79%) as memory stocks surge again in pre-market trading. Crude oil is down over 4%, right around $90 per barrel, on hopes (again) of a resolution to the war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The 10-year yield is down 3 bps to 4.46%, and gold is down another 1.2% to $4,450 per ounce.
It’s a quiet economic calendar this morning, with Richmond Fed the only report on the calendar, while several Fed officials are scheduled to speak. In Asia and Europe, markets were mixed, and the STOXX 600 is currently up 0.2%
As mentioned above, WTI crude briefly dipped below $90 per barrel this morning and now trades just above that level. Prices have been moving in an increasingly narrow range as the markets await a resolution to the war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. US markets have already rallied so much above their pre-war levels, so it’s hard to imagine seeing the US market get a major lift unless prices see a major decline from here. However, if prices continue to drift lower, we would expect to see a broadening of the rally, perhaps even at the expense of the mega caps.
One area of the world more leveraged to oil prices is Europe. As shown below, the FTSE Europe ETF (VGK) has yet to take out its high from earlier in the year, but the drop in oil prices this morning has it getting closer. With this morning’s rally, the ETF is also breaking its downtrend from its earlier peak, leaving one less roadblock to clear on the road to new highs.
On a final note, here we go again. Whenever a new trend emerges in the market, you always find irrelevant companies looking to exploit the wave of euphoria by ‘rebranding’ their businesses to capitalize on the wave of investor interest. In the late 1990s, we saw it with dot-com companies. Then, about 10 years ago, penny stocks started adding crypto to their name in hopes of getting a pop in their share prices.
Recently, the “it” rebranding strategy is AI, and the latest example this morning is a company called Sharps Technology (SSTS). For years, Sharps Technology could generously be described as a medical device company in that they made medical syringes. In 2025, the company “pivoted” towards crypto, essentially becoming a Solana treasury company and holding as much as $250 million in the cryptocurrency on its balance sheet.
Judging by the company’s stock price, the pivot to crypto didn’t go as planned, as the price of STSS stock has been in a steady free-fall for several years now. On a reverse-split adjusted basis, the stock has gone from around $16,000 to $1.82 yesterday. It’s been like a memory stock, but only in reverse!
Often, a reverse stock split, even if it’s on a 1-2 basis, is a sign of trouble at a company. STSS has announced two reverse stock splits in the last four years. In October 2024, the company announced a 1 for 22 reverse split, and if that wasn’t bad enough, six months later, it announced a 1 for 300 split. If our math is correct, for every 6,600 shares you had in the summer of 2024, you have one now!
Since the crypto strategy hasn’t quite worked out for Sharps, today the company is going in a new direction and announced a new “vision to build the leading Agentic Finance Platform for the Global South.” The company will change its name to SkyAI and combine its “stablecoin rails with agentic AI to deliver financial access, education, and actionable intelligence to the billions of underbanked users across Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.”
Whenever you see these types of stories, it immediately brings bubble talk into the conversation, and rightfully so. The one silver lining to all of this, at least at this point, is that the announcement has been largely ignored as shares of STSS are up merely six cents in pre-market trading.
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The Closer – Memory & Tokens, AI Chart Check – 5/26/26
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- DRAM prices and GPU rental rates have continued to rise, powering the AI trade.
- AI related stocks have posted consistent gains recently with many of those names reaching new highs.
- Separate surveys tracking consumer confidence are showing drastically different results including a record low for UMich and more tempered readings for the Conference Board.
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The Trillionaires Gain a New Member
The S&P 500 is on pace to close at fresh record highs today on positive breadth. Once again, it is the AI trade powering the move as several of the index’s biggest gainers are out of the semiconductor space.
The single biggest gainer, up over 19% as of this writing, is Micron (MU).
An upgrade by UBS that saw a tripling of MU’s price target is being deemed the catalyst for today’s surge in the memory and data storage producer, and that is enough to also lift it above a $1 trillion market cap for the first time.
A year ago, MU’s market cap was just $100 billion, and it was at $62 billion when ChatGPT was released in late 2022.
MU is not the only memory chip maker to reach a $1 trillion market cap. On a US dollar-adjusted basis, Samsung, which trades in South Korea, eclipsed that threshold for the first time on May 6th.
Looking at other stocks with market caps above $1 trillion, Eli Lilly (LLY) has also re-joined the club.
With the addition of MU, there have now been 15 US and international stocks to hit the $1 trillion threshold (shown below).
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Mega-Cap AI Mentions on Earnings Calls
Below is a look at six-month price charts for six mega-caps that we’ve been monitoring closely since the AI Boom began with ChatGPT’s release in late 2022.
Apple (AAPL) has recently been the best performer in the group, with a surge above $300/share, while Amazon (AMZN), Alphabet (GOOG), and NVIDIA (NVDA) have recently pulled back a bit in the last couple of weeks after making fresh highs earlier in the month.
Meta (META) and Microsoft (MSFT) are two of the six names that still have a lot of work to do before reaching new highs.
For the last few years, we’ve been monitoring “AI” mentions during earnings conference calls of the mega-caps, and now that NVIDIA’s (NVDA) earnings report is in the rearview, we can update our data for Q1 earnings season.
As shown below, “AI” was mentioned 399 times by management on the conference calls of AAPL, AMZN, GOOGL, META, MSFT, and NVDA this quarter.
That’s a bounce back from the 348 “AI” mentions last quarter, which was the lowest since Q1 2023.
Below is a breakdown of “AI” mentions by stock, dating back to 2021. Five of the six saw increases in “AI” mentions this quarter, with Apple (AAPL) the lone mega-cap that mentioned it less. NVDA mentioned “AI” the most (111) and also saw the biggest quarter-over-quarter increase.
After a big drop off in “AI” mentions last quarter, Meta (META) saw a big jump as well, although they talked about “AI” a lot more back in 2024 and early 2025.
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Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 5/26/26 – Deal or No Deal
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“You’re short on ears and long on mouth.” – John Wayne
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The headlines over the weekend regarding the status of the war in Iran have been conflicting, but markets are taking the optimistic side. S&P 500 and Nasdaq futures were both firmly higher to kick off the holiday-shortened week. The S&P 500 is on pace to open at a new record high with a gain of 0.70%, while Nasdaq futures are up my more than 1%. European and Asian markets were mostly lower overnight, but that’s because they were open yesterday and saw broad gains.
Outside of equities, the 10-year yield is down 9 basis points and back below 4.5%, while crude oil is down 4% to $92.66, although it was down more over the weekend.
Here in the US today, we’re largely done with earnings season, but on the economic calendar, we’ll get house price data at 9 AM easter, Consumer Confidence at 10 AM, and the Dallas Fed Manufacturing Index at 10:30.
After the long weekend, we wanted to provide a quick recap of market performance heading into the holiday. The S&P 500 was up less than 1% for the week, but breadth was positive as three sectors rallied more than 3%, and another three rallied more than 1%. The only sectors that traded lower were Communication Services and Materials, which were both down less than 1%.
In terms of where sectors are trading compared to their trading ranges, four finished the week at overbought levels, while every other sector was neutral. Utilities and Materials are also the only sectors that headed into the weekend below their 50-day moving averages, but Utilities at least moved out of extreme oversold territory.
On a YTD basis, Financials has been the worst-performing sector with a decline of just over 5%. As shown in the chart below, the sector ETF finished the week right between its 50 and 200-DMAs. The 50-DMA, which has recently been acting as support, also coincides with longer-term support in the low 50s.
Health Care has been another laggard this year, but has recently shown some signs of life. After holding support in the low $140 range for the last few weeks, the sector broke out of a short-term trading range to close out the week and closed above both its 50 and 200-DMA for the first time in several weeks. Health Care has been out of favor for a long time now, but there’s a lot of runway for the sector between current levels and the high from earlier this year.
Finally, Industrials were a laggard last week, and along with other sectors, still have yet to trade to a new high. As shown in the chart below, though, the sector is getting close. XLI has traded in a sideways range for more than a month now, with downside support at the 50-DMA and upside resistance at the highs from earlier in the year. If the headlines are right and the Iran war is close to an end, the resistance may start to weaken.
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Bespoke Brunch Reads – 5/25/26
Welcome to Bespoke Brunch Reads — a linkfest of some of our favorite articles over the past week. The links are mostly market-related, but there are some other interesting subjects covered as well. We hope you enjoy the food for thought as a supplement to the research we provide you during the week.
The Dunkirk Evacuation: By May of 1940, Nazi Germany had launched their invasion of Western Europe. The pure speed and efficiency of it shocked Allied commanders as it sent roughly 400,000 British, French, and Belgian troops to Dunkirk, a city on the coast of the English Channel.
On May 24th, Hitler issued his infamous “Halt Order,” stopping the advancement of his divisions just miles away from Dunkirk. To this day, this decision remains one of the most debated ones in military history as many historians argue it was a catastrophic blunder, while others believe it was a calculated tactical or political decision.
British Vice Admiral Bertram Ramsay coordinated an evacuation from Dover Castle, codenamed Operation Dynamo. The Dunkirk harbor was heavily damaged and could not accommodate large naval vessels. This forced the solution to come from hundreds of civilian boats, fishing vessels, and ferries. The soldiers waded into open water and were picked up and taken to large ships offshore. These became known as the “Little Ships of Dunkirk,” one of the most iconic symbols of the entire operation.
The evacuation ran from May 26th through June 4th. Those nine days changed the course of the war. Approximately 338,000 troops were successfully evacuated, far exceeding the initial estimate of 45,000. Winston Churchill warned the British public not to mistake Dunkirk for a victory, as “wars are not won by evacuations.” Roughly 40,000 troops, most being French soldiers, were left behind and captured. Large amounts of equipment were also abandoned, including tanks, artillery, vehicles, and supplies that Britain could barely afford to lose.
However, Dunkirk preserved the core of the British Army, allowing Britain to continue their fight in a time when most of Europe had already fallen. Without the evacuation, Britain may have been forced into a negotiated peace treaty with Germany, swinging the outcome of World War II. Christopher Nolan’s 2017 film brought the story to a new generation, depicting the event from the beach, the sea, and the air.
Education
Harvard Votes to Cap A’s in Effort to Curb Grade Inflation (WSJ)
Harvard is trying to crack down on grade inflation after A’s became so common that 55 students tied for the school’s top GPA award last year. The new policy would cap A grades in most classes, though students argue it could make courses more competitive and discourage people from taking harder or unfamiliar subjects. [Link]
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The Bespoke Report – 5/22/26 – IPOs Ahead
To read our weekly Bespoke Report newsletter and access everything else Bespoke’s research platform offers, start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium. In this week’s report we look at the looming US equity supply. In addition to reduced buybacks driven by the AI capex boom, three mega IPOs are likely to price this year including SpaceX (SPCX). We review their S-1 as well as some implications for index investing. The AI trade is alive and well, and we look at how it’s impacting foreign markets, US earnings, and breadth in the domestic equity market. We also discuss commodities, interest rates, and notable US economic data released this week. Give it a read!
Good Riddance?
Based on his public comments towards now-former Fed Chair Jerome Powell, no one will be happier to see new leadership at the Federal Reserve than President Trump.
The chart below shows the S&P 500’s performance during Powell’s tenure, which has been much better than the President’s rhetoric towards the former Fed chair would suggest. During this period, the S&P 500 has more than doubled from under 3,000 to over 7,000. While the point-to-point gains have been strong, it’s been a pretty volatile ride.
The lower chart shows the S&P 500’s drawdowns from all-time highs throughout Powell’s tenure. During that time, the S&P 500 experienced two bear markets and two near-bear markets in which the S&P 500 declined close to 20%. In most cases, though, the declines were short-lived, and outside the 2022 bear market, after each prior bear or near-bear, the S&P 500 was back at new highs within weeks or months.
Through Friday morning, right up to the swearing-in ceremony, the S&P 500’s annualized gain during Powell’s tenure was 13.4%. Relative to Powell’s peers, the only Fed Chair since WWII who presided over a stronger stock market was Paul Volcker. Powell’s performance is tied with William Miller, who preceded Volcker, but he was chairman for less than two years, or less than a quarter of the time Powell had the same role.
President Trump is almost certainly thinking good riddance today, but from a strictly stock market perspective, it doesn’t get much better, or as the President or new Fed Chair would probably say, “at least not yet.”
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