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“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.” – Steve Jobs

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

Today’s the day Apple (AAPL) investors have been waiting for as the company will finally announce a detailed AI strategy.  The company has been criticized for being slow to the game, but, as has been widely pointed out by analysts for months now, it has a reputation for being late to the game regarding new technologies.  Where they succeed is by watching everyone’s first bets at a technology and then raising the stakes.

Futures are lower to kick off the week, and the economic calendar is sparse today with the NY Fed’s Survey of Consumer Expectations the only report on the calendar.  The weak tone in futures originated in Europe, where EU election results showed significant gains for the populist far-right parties.  Between the elections in Mexico and India last week and the EU elections over the weekend, politics has been making its way to the headlines lately. Thankfully, we won’t have to deal with that here in the US this year…

Last week was tough for commodities as just about all of the commodity-related ETFs in our Trend Analyzer declined at least 1% and in many cases much more.  The one notable exception was the US Natural Gas Fund (UNG) which surged nearly 15% making it the only ETF in the group that finished the week at oversold levels.  Before we all go getting on the UNG bandwagon, though, even after last week’s gain, it is still one of just two ETFs in the group that’s down on the year.

Over the last year, UNG has been a long painful ride lower. A year ago, the ETF was trading in the high 20s/early 30s, and earlier this year it was in the low teens before rallying back to $20 on Friday.  Even after that gain, though, the ETF remains stuck below its 200-DMA which is a boundary line that it has been comfortably residing for the last year.

Over the last year, there have only been six trading days where the ETF has closed above the 200-DMA. As shown in the chart below, this is a very low level, but it’s hardly unprecedented. There have been multiple times where the ETF spent years below its 200-day moving average.

From a long-term perspective, UNG has been burning money for 15 years.  On a reverse split-adjusted basis (there have been two 1-4 reverse splits since 2017), the ETF was above $3000 versus $20 today- a decline of more than 99%!

To continue reading the rest of today’s morning note, where you’ll find much more analysis of global equities and economic readings released this morning, read today’s full Morning Lineup with a two-week Bespoke Premium trial.