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“I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the US Congress.” – Ronald Reagan

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

It’s been a rough week for bulls, but they’re trying to end the week on a positive note. Let’s just see if they have enough firepower to keep the market up through the trading day. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq are both on pace to open up by about 0.50%, even with Amazon.com (AMZN) trading down 7.5%. Even with the gains, treasury yields are down modestly, with the 10-year yield at 4.2%, so there’s still a good amount of trepidation out there.

Crude oil is also down fractionally, with WTI trading down to $63. The precious metals stocks have been surprisingly calm this morning, at least relatively speaking. Gold is up 0.7% while silver and platinum are both down about 3%. And hold onto your hats for a second, Bitcoin is trading higher! After touching $60K overnight, Bitcoin is up 5% to just above $66K.

In Asia overnight, the Nikkei traded up 0.8% and finished the week up 1.8%, but every other major index in the region finished down for the week, and except India, they were also all down on Friday. The weakness in Asia hasn’t followed through to Europe, though. The STOXX 600 is up 0.4%, which will keep it in positive territory for the week.

In the US today, the only economic reports on the calendar are Michigan Sentiment at 10 AM (who knows how they’ll be feeling this month) and then Consumer Credit at 3 PM.

It’s well established that the trillion-dollar market cap stocks no longer trade as a monolith to the upside, but unfortunately for bulls, it looks increasingly like they trade in unison to the downside. On a YTD basis, there’s plenty of dispersion in performance. Among the group’s worst performers, we’re less than a week into February, but Microsoft (MSFT), Tesla (TSLA), and Broadcom (AVGO) are all down over 10% YTD. Another two stocks – Nvidia (NVDA) and Amazon.com (AMZN) are down YTD (AMZN will be down over 10% at the open this morning). On the upside, the gains aren’t nearly as large as the losses, but Wal-Mart (WMT) has managed to gain close to 14% while Alphabet (GOOGL) managed to hang on to a gain of over 5% after yesterday’s intraday bounce.

Over the last five trading days, the trillion-dollar stocks have traded more in tandem. Seven of the ten listed are down over the last week, and most are down over 5%. At the other extreme, the gainers have also moved over 5%, so it’s mostly been an either-or situation for the group, with most stocks taking the “or” path.

As mentioned above, GOOGL was on pace for a much larger decline yesterday, following its incredible boost to CapEx guidance on Wednesday.  Shortly after the open, the stock was down over 8% and well below its 50-DMA, but buyers stepped in throughout the trading day, and the stock finished down less than 1% and outperformed all of the major US equity indices in the process. Yes, GOOGL was actually a positive (or less negative) contributor to yesterday’s market performance!

With GOOGL rallying throughout the day, it also extended its record streak of closes above its 50-DMA. At 184 trading days, GOOGL hasn’t traded below its 50-DMA since May 1st! Before the current streak, the prior record of closes above the 50-DMA ended at 175 trading days in September 2021.

What you’ll also notice looking at GOOGL’s price chart is how much space there is between the stock’s price and its 200-DMA. As of yesterday’s close, GOOGL was 39.1% above its 200-DMA, which is among the highest readings on record, Even more incredible is that in late November, it was more than 60% above its 200-DMA, which was right up there with the record high spread of 61.7% from way back in June 2005, less than a year after the stock’s IPO.

It’s a stunning reversal from just a year ago, when the stock languished well below its 200-DMA and investors criticized the company for “missing AI”. Headlines suggested an existential crisis. Clearly, the market has made up for lost time.