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“Time makes more converts than reason.” – Thomas Paine

Morning stock market summary

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

We’re looking at another flat morning for US equity futures this morning. Last we looked, S&P 500 futures were exactly unchanged, and both the S&P 500 and Dow were little changed. While there’s been little move in equities, US Treasury yields are lower as the 10-year yield has dipped back below 4%.

In terms of economic data, it’s a quiet morning.  Mortgage applications surged over 9%, but the only other report on the calendar is Wholesale Inventories at 10 AM. The next major report will not be until tomorrow when the CPI for December is released. While it’s not economic data, investors will also be on the lookout for an announcement from the SEC regarding potential approval for a bitcoin ETF after yesterday’s disastrous turn of events where it was seemingly approved only but then taken back as the SEC claimed its X account was compromised.

In Asia, the Nikkei surged 2%, but most other major benchmarks in the region were lower, and in Europe, equities are just like US futures – flat as a pancake.

It’s now been 50 trading days since US markets made their Q4 lows on 10/27/23.  One of the more impressive rallies has been the 20%+ gain in the small-cap Russell 2000. That move ranks as the largest 50-day rally in the index since 2020 and one of only 21 periods in the index’s history since 1979 that it rallied that much or more in a 50 trading-day period. Before the experiences during the early days of COVID, there was one occurrence in March 2019, but before that, you have to go back to 2012.

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