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 skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” – Wayne Gretzky

Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.  

As much of the country digs and/or scrapes out from the snow and ice over the weekend, it’s a very lackluster morning for US equity futures. The S&P 500 looks to open 6 bps lower, while the Nasdaq is down slightly more at 19 bps. It’s worth noting, though, that both indices are well off their overnight lows. Treasury yields have a downward bias, with the 10-year yield trading down to 4.22%. Crude oil is slightly lower at just under $61 per barrel, but natural gas is surging more than 10% as it has nearly doubled in price over the last ten days as the US continues to fall into the grip of a severe cold snap. Everything is hot in the metals space, though, as gold now trades above $5,000 per ounce, while silver rallies 8% and platinum gains another 4%. Crypto continues to sit this rally out, though. While it’s higher this morning, those gains follow weakness over the weekend.

Although the Hang Seng managed a slight gain, most other Asian benchmarks were lower to start the week, although Australia and India were closed for a holiday. The Nikkei declined 1.8%, and even South Korea declined 0.8%. The declines in Japanese stocks came as the Yen followed through from Friday’s rally and rallied another 1% on speculation of a possible intervention on the horizon to halt the long-term slide in the currency (more on that below). Chinese stocks were only down fractionally, but there were some reports of possible disagreements between President Xi and one of his top generals, resulting in the removal of the general and other military members.

There’s not a lot going on in European markets as the STOXX 600 is basically unchanged, but most major individual indices are slightly higher.

On the US calendar, it’s a light day with Durable Goods at 8:30, and there’s no Fedspeak as the Federal Reserve is in its blackout period ahead of Wednesday’s meeting.

The rally in the yen on Friday took the dollar cross below its 50-day moving average for the first time since early October, and today’s rally has extended those gains to take the currency to its best levels versus the dollar since early November.

From a longer-term perspective, the rally in the yen has occurred at what is turning into a significant support/resistance level. In more recent history, levels around 160 have acted as support for the yen, and that level also coincides with a peak in the cross (low in the yen) from early 1990. And if you want to get creative, you could even make out what looks like an inverse head and shoulders.

We’ve seen a lot of huge moves in commodities over the last several months, and natural gas has started to get into the act over the last two weeks. Ten calendar days ago, on 1/16, natural gas closed at 3.10 MMBtu. This morning, prices are nearly twice as high, and earlier in the morning, they were double the level of the 1/16 close! Looking at the chart of natural gas and its history in terms of how the commodity has performed following prior short-term spikes, buying natural gas today feels a lot like skating to where the puck is rather than where it’s going. And happy 65th birthday to Wayne Gretzky!

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.

“Our conviction in the essential role of CPUs in the AI era continues to grow” – Lip-Bu Tan, Intel (INTC)

Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.  

Wait. Isn’t the market up so far this year? For years, investors became conditioned to think that if the market rallies, software stocks will lead the gains. It was nearly 15 years ago, but Marc Andreeson’s famous article titled “Why Software Is Eating the World” reflected a theme that dominated the market for years – it was software’s market, and everyone else was just on the sidelines watching. Based on the last several months of trading, it appears as though the market is seriously questioning whether software has had its fill.

The iShares Expanded Tech-Software ETF (IGV) used to be a guaranteed way for traders and investors to generate alpha, but so far this year, the ETF is down over 5%, and it has pulled back about 20% from its record high in September to levels it hasn’t traded at since late April.

We covered software in yesterday’s Chart of the Day, and we’ll expand on that analysis below.  Looking at the software ETF’s ten largest holdings and their performance through Thursday’s close, they’re all down YTD, all down over the last week, all below their 50-day moving averages, and all at oversold levels. Alpha? How about anti-alpha?

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’d say momentum is building around the world. So, ex-US has more momentum, healthy demand, lower vacancies.” – Chris Caton, Prologis

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 yesterday’s turnaround Tuesday on a Wednesday, we’re seeing a healthy amount of follow-through in futures this morning with the S&P 500 indicated to open 0.6% higher while the Nasdaq is up close to 1%. Investors continue to breathe a sigh of relief as an amicable agreement between the US and Europe over Greenland appears to have been reached. Realistically, though, there was never a chance of an armed conflict in the first place. Concerns over Greenland also showed up in the latest sentiment survey from AAII, where bullish sentiment declined sharply to 43.2% from 49.5%. The events of the last few days illustrate once again that investing based on front-page headlines is one of the worst investment strategies we can think of. If you’re going to do that, just save yourself the time and give your money away.

Asian stocks had a positive session following through on the rally in the US yesterday. The Nikkei rallied 1.7%, but no other major benchmark managed to gain more than 1%. The Kospi came close with a gain of 0.9%, and that was enough to close at another record high for the South Korean benchmark. In Australia, a stronger-than-expected unemployment report raised the odds of a rate hike next month. While economists expected the jobless rate to tick up to 4.4%, it dropped two-tenths of a percentage point to 4.1%.

European stocks are also rallying in their morning session as the STOXX 600 rallies almost 1%, and interest rates ease on what is a generally quiet session data-wise, outside of the steady stream of geo-political headlines coming out of Davos.

In terms of US data, it’s a busy morning with a slug of data at 8:30 and another round at 10. The 8:30 data was mostly better than expected with GDP coming in at 4.4% versus forecasts for 4.3%. Personal Consumption and the GDP Price Index were in line with estimates, and jobless claims were lower than expected. At 10 AM, we’ll get Personal Income and Spending and PCE.

For years now, when you hear the phrase “tale of two markets,” you’ve been conditioned to think of small caps underperforming while large caps lead. You think that, because it’s usually what has happened. So far this year, the phrase a tale of two markets has meant the opposite. As shown in the snapshot from our Trend Analyzer below, small-cap indices are leading with YTD gains of over 5%, while mega-cap and large-cap indices are either in the red or barely hanging on to gains. The S&P 100 ETF (OEF), which essentially tracks the 100 largest stocks in the S&P 500, is down over 1% YTD after falling over 2% in the last week alone!

Looking at one-year price charts of the Russell 2000 and S&P 500 shows the disparity. The Russell 2000 closed at an all-time high yesterday and remains in a solid uptrend, but the S&P 500 is trading at the same levels it was at three months ago, barely hanging on to its 50-DMA after breaking a very short-term uptrend earlier in the week.

One misnomer about the recent outperformance of small-cap stocks is that it has been solely a 2026 phenomenon. Looking at the relative strength of the S&P 500 versus the Russell 2000 since the bull market started in October 2022 shows a different picture. While large caps started a new leg of underperformance with the turn of the calendar, their relative performance peaked back in April. From that peak through mid-summer, the two indices performed in line with each other for about three months, but ever since early August, large caps have steadily underperformed. If you’re just hopping on the small-cap/broadening bandwagon, where have you been for the last five months?