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 free trial to Bespoke Premium.  CLICK HERE to learn more and start your free trial.

“Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.” – Ray Bradbury

Just when you thought things couldn’t get more chaotic, we got the news late last night that the President, his wife, and an aide tested positive for COVID.  Obviously, we wish the President and everyone else around the world who has come down with this virus a speedy recovery.  Time will only tell how the President’s diagnosis will impact the election, but with the added amount of uncertainty, you can’t fault investors for taking some chips off the table heading into a weekend.

With the news regarding the President’s positive COVID test, you may have forgotten that there was a jobs report this morning.  The results were mixed but more negative than positive with Non-Farm Payrolls missing expectations (661K vs 859K) due to a larger than expected decline in government jobs from the loss of census workers.  The Unemployment Rate, however, came in a bit lower than expected at 7.9% versus expectations for a level of 8.2%.

Be sure to check out today’s Morning Lineup for a rundown of the latest stock-specific news of note, market performance in the US and Europe, trends related to the COVID-19 outbreak, and much more.

Earlier this week, we noted that the relative strength of the semiconductors had hit a new record high, which was a positive sign for the broader market.  Taking a look at the semis from another angle, below we show the cumulative A/D line of the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX).  After moving basically sideways for well over a month now, the SOX’s cumulative A/D line now looks to be breaking out of that range as it has moved to new highs in the last two days.  Can the SOX itself be far behind?