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“Only in America can you find so many angry people claiming to love their country, while hating almost anyone in it.” – Don King
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
Futures are modestly lower this morning after a weak day for momentum and megacap stocks yesterday. There’s only been a handful of earnings reports this morning, and the market reaction to them has been mixed. On the positive side, shares of Analog Devices (ADI), TJX, and Lowe’s (LOW) are all higher, while Estee Lauder (EL) and Target (TGT) are both down sharply. For both of these stocks, the negative reactions aren’t exactly a surprise, as they have been weak for some time now. EL is on pace now for its sixth straight negative reaction to earnings and the 11th out of the last 12. TGT hasn’t been quite as much of a disaster, but today will be the fourth straight quarter that the stock has reacted negatively to earnings.
Besides these earnings reports, there’s not much else on the calendar for today. Weekly mortgage applications fell 1.4% after a 10%+ increase last week. We’ll also get the FOMC Meeting Minutes at 2 PM, along with speeches from Waller at 11 AM and Bostic at 3 PM.
In Asia overnight, the session was mixed, with China up 1% and Japan down 1.5%, as trade data was weaker than expected. In Europe, major averages are little changed as the STOXX 600 is up fractionally, as CPI was in line with expectations (0.0% m/m).
Depending on how you look at it, yesterday could have been a good or bad day. Based on the S&P 500’s 0.59% decline, it looked like a bad day, but underneath the surface, 354 stocks in the index finished the session higher, and the equally-weighted S&P 500 finished the day up 0.45%.
Divergent days like yesterday, where the cap-weighted index declines at least 0.4% while the equal-weighted index rises at least 0.4% have been very uncommon. Since 1990, yesterday was only the 16th occurrence, and there have only been eight days where the opposite occurred (cap-weighted index up 0.4%+ and equal-weight index down at least 0.4%).
The scatter chart below compares the daily performance of the S&P 500 cap-weighted and equal-weighted indices for every day since 1990, but we have truncated the axes at gains or losses of 2% so it’s easier to see the details. Dots that fall in the upper left gray box were like yesterday, where the cap-weighted index fell 0.4%+ and the equal-weight index rallied at least 0.4% while dots in the lower right box are the opposite scenario. Here again, this chart shows just how uncommon these types of daily divergences have been over time.
