Chart of the Day: Equal Weight Yields More
Q2 2025 Earnings Conference Call Recaps: Big Banks & Asset Managers
Bespoke’s Conference Call Recaps use AI to summarize lengthy earnings calls. The commentary below is AI-generated and then edited by Bespoke for quality control. As always, none of these summaries should be construed as recommendations to buy or sell any securities, and investors should do their own research and/or consult with a financial professional before making any investment decisions.
Our latest recap, available to Bespoke subscribers, covers Q2 2025 earnings calls from JPMorgan (JPM), Bank of America (BAC), Wells Fargo (WFC), Morgan Stanley (MS), Goldman Sachs (GS), BlackRock (BLK), and Citigroup (C).
The second quarter of 2025 marked a rebound in capital markets activity and continued resilience for big banks and asset managers across asset and wealth management. JPMorgan (JPM) led the group with $15B in net income and strong trading gains (+15% YoY), driven by fixed income and derivatives. Its asset and wealth business added $36B in net inflows. Goldman Sachs’ (GS) investment banking surged (+32% YoY) as dealmaking returned, but FICC trading softened. Bank of America (BAC) and Citi (C) both reported improved capital markets results, with Citi noting that investment banking revenue increased by 18% and FICC trading revenue rose by 25%. Morgan Stanley (MS) experienced a revival in equity underwriting and advisory services (+34% YoY in IB revenue), offsetting sluggish trading. On the asset management side, BlackRock (BLK) posted a record $12.5T in AUM with $116B in net inflows (excluding low-fee redemptions) and double-digit EPS growth (+16% YoY), while JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley also posted strong flows and AUM growth. Wells Fargo (WFC) leaned on net interest income growth and consumer credit normalization. Across the board, firms noted lower fee compression, improved flows, and a more upbeat M&A outlook, with private markets and technology services (e.g. BlackRock’s HPS and Preqin acquisitions) becoming increasingly central to long-term growth narratives…
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Bespoke Baskets Update — July 2025
Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – More Banks Beat – 7/16/25
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.
“There is always some kid who may be seeing me for the first time. I owe him my best.” – Joe DiMaggio
On this day in 1941, Yankees star Joe DiMaggio extended his record hit streak to 56 games, which would end the next day. July 16th was also the day of the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico in 1945. J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye was published on July 16th, 1951, and the Apollo 11 moon-landing mission launched on this day in 1969.
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 the S&P is down just 0.3% over the last week, we’ve seen overbought levels work themselves off for some of the key breadth levels we watch.
The S&P’s 10-day advance/decline line had gotten to one of its most overbought levels of the last year earlier in the month, but it’s currently sitting just below the flat-line.
The percentage of overbought stocks in the S&P has also fallen from a reading above 50% down to 32%, while 22.6% of stocks in the index are now oversold.
The Closer – Good Day for Bad Breadth, Steepener, Earnings – 7/15/25
Log-in here if you’re a member with access to the Closer.
Looking for deeper insight into markets? In tonight’s Closer sent to Bespoke Institutional clients, we begin with some commentary regarding risks that could drive up yields which includes inflation data (pages 1 – 3). We then turn to a look at JB Hunt (JBHT) earnings and how today’s performance shaped up in spite of very weak breadth (page 4). Next, we check in on loan growth (page 5) before finishing with a look at some impressive earnings streaks ahead of earnings season (pages 6 & 7).
See today’s full post-market Closer and everything else Bespoke publishes by starting a 14-day trial to Bespoke Institutional today!
Daily Sector Snapshot — 7/15/25
Earnings Season Begins
The first of the big banks have reported this morning which means that earnings season is off to the races. For S&P 500 members, Thursday will be the busiest day this week with 17 stocks reporting, and early next week is when the earnings slate really takes off with a total of 44 stocks reporting Tuesday and 47 on Wednesday. As shown below, in addition to having a higher number of stocks reporting, part-way through next week will also account for a significant portion of S&P 500 market cap reporting. On Wednesday (7/23), the first of the mega-caps are up as Alphabet (GOOGL) and Tesla (TSLA) account for nearly half of the over $6 trillion in market cap reporting that day. Most of the rest of the mega-caps will report in the following week with Microsoft (MSFT) starting things off on Tuesday, July 29, with Meta Platforms (META) the next day (7/30), and Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN) out the day after that (7/31). While Wal-Mart (WMT) has historically marked the unofficial end of earnings season, nowadays it’s NVIDIA (NVDA) that caps things off. WMT is set to report on 8/21, while NVDA is six days later on 8/27.
As noted previously, this week’s earnings are dominated by big banks and financial centers. In the chart below, we show the share of stocks from each sector that are reporting each day through the end of August. As shown, the next few days are predominately Financials with Industrials also accounting for a steady share of results (hovering around low double digits). The following few weeks until mid-August (which is the peak of earnings season) has a much greater variety in sectors reporting results whereas the tail end of August is predominately Tech names.
Chart of the Day: Longshots Update
Bitcoin, IBIT Trounce Stocks
The iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) has been the fastest-growing ETF of all time, eclipsing $70 billion in assets in less than 18 months and currently up to $85 billion. That’s already big enough to rank it in the top 20 or so of the largest “mega-ETFs” in the US.
Since its closing price on launch day back on January 11th, 2024, IBIT is up 156%. That compares to gains of 36% for the Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQ) and 31% for the S&P 500 ETF (SPY).
Compared to current S&P 500 stocks, IBIT’s gain of 156% since it launched on 1/11/24 would rank 12th in terms of performance. There are eleven stocks in the index up even more than that, led by Palantir’s (PLTR) gain of 794%. Other big winners since IBIT launched include Vistra (VST), Howmet Aerospace (HWM), Axon (AXON), NVIDIA (NVDA), Tapestry (TPR), Royal Caribbean (RCL), Coinbase (COIN), and Netflix (NFLX). There are 21 stocks in the S&P up more than 100% since IBIT’s launch in early 2024, while the average stock in the index is up 26.1%.
Bitcoin prices were in the mid-$10,000s back in November 2022. Since its low point during that month, Bitcoin is up 668%. We also looked to see how that gain compares to the best-performing S&P 500 stocks over the same time frame. As shown below, just four stocks in the index are up more than Bitcoin since its 2022 low: Palantir (PLTR) — up nearly 2,000%, NVIDIA (NVDA) — up nearly 1,000%, Coinbase (COIN), and Vistra (VST). Another four stocks are up more than 400% over the same time frame: Meta (META), Super Micro (SMCI), Royal Caribbean (RCL), and Broadcom (AVGO).
Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 7/15/25 – And They’re Off
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 first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are.” – J.P. Morgan
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 yesterday’s CNBC segment on “The Exchange” where we discussed sentiment leading up to the Q2 earnings season, please click on the image below.
It’s taken long enough, but the Q2 earnings season is finally here, with several large banks, including J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM), reporting this morning. Of the reports we’ve seen so far, the results have generally been good, with five companies beating EPS forecasts and four topping consensus forecasts for sales. In response to the positive reports, though, four of the five stocks are trading lower. The magnitude of the declines has been very modest, and it’s still early, but the negative reactions could be a signal that investors have high expectations heading into earnings season.
While investors are taking a sell-the-news reaction to this morning’s results, futures for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are both higher heading into this morning’s CPI report. The positive tone in futures stems from an announcement from Nvidia (NVDA) that it would resume sales of its H20 chips in China. In Europe this morning, markets are little changed, with the STOXX 600 up 0.2% while equities were mostly higher in Asia overnight.
In yesterday’s CNBC segment, we discussed how the expectations bar is higher heading into this earnings season than it was last earnings season. To illustrate, let’s look at JP Morgan Chase (JPM). The chart below shows JPM’s performance from the close before one earnings report to the close before the next. Heading into today’s report, JPM had rallied 27.2% since the close before its last earnings report, and that ranks as the sixth-best performance between earnings reports since at least 2002 and the best since the three months leading up to its January 2023 earnings report. During Covid, JPM rallied 37.8%, and there were two quarters following the dot-com bust when the stock also rallied by more than 35%.
Just because JPM has rallied a lot leading up to this quarter’s report doesn’t mean it has to decline in the three months following its next earnings report. That being said, the stock’s median performance following periods when it had big gains leading up to one earnings report is lower than its performance following all other earnings reports. Of the nine prior periods when the stock rallied more than 20% in the three months between earnings reports, JPM’s median performance between its next two earnings reports was a decline of 1.0% with positive returns 44% of the time. For all other periods when the stock was up less than 20% since its last earnings report, the median performance between its next two reports was a gain of 3.4% with positive returns 65% of the time.
Since JPM typically reports very early on in earnings season, the chart below shows the performance of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) between JPM reports since 2002. While the last three months have been the sixth-best period between earnings reports for JPM, in the case of SPY, its 17.0% has been the second-best. The only period between JPM reports that SPY performed better was leading up to its October 2009 report, when it rallied 18.0%. Based solely on the performance of SPY between JPM reports, the bar is higher heading into this current earnings season (with SPY up 17% over the last three months) compared to the 9.9% decline in the three months leading up to last April’s report. That decline was the sixth worst since at least 2002.
