The Closer – Fed Minutes, NVIDIA (NVDA) Earnings, Stockpiles – 5/20/26
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- Today’s release of the FOMC Minutes confirmed that a rump of hawkish members believe that the FOMC should remove the dovish bias from their statement.
- NVIDIA (NVDA) earnings showed that data center revenues continue to power growth with compute up 76.8% YoY and networking up 199% YoY.
- Petroleum inventories have drawn by a record degree over the past month while net exports hover near record highs.
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The Triple Play Report: 5/20/26
An earnings triple play is a stock that reports earnings and manages to 1) beat analyst EPS estimates, 2) beat analyst sales estimates, and 3) raise forward guidance. You can read more about “triple plays” at Investopedia.com where they’ve given Bespoke credit for popularizing the term. We like triple plays as an indication that a company’s business is firing on all cylinders, with better-than-expected results and an improving outlook. A triple play is indicative of positive “fundamental momentum” instead of pure fundamentals, and there are always plenty of names with both high and low valuations on our quarterly list.
Bespoke’s Triple Play Report covers what each company does, what this quarter’s results say about their growth outlooks, and their histories of delivering triple plays. Bespoke’s Triple Play Report is available at the Bespoke Institutional level only. You can sign up for Bespoke Institutional now and receive a 14-day trial to read today’s Triple Play Report. To sign up, choose either the monthly or annual checkout link below:
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Bespoke Investment Group, LLC believes all information contained in these reports to be accurate, but we do not guarantee its accuracy. None of the information in these reports or any opinions expressed constitutes a solicitation of the purchase or sale of any securities or commodities. This is not personalized advice. Investors should do their own research and/or work with an investment professional when making portfolio decisions. As always, past performance of any investment is not a guarantee of future results. Bespoke representatives or clients may have positions in securities discussed or mentioned in its published content.
Chart of the Day – Three Headed Monster vs. Breadth
Bespoke Baskets Update – May 2026
Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 5/20/26 – Higher Ahead of Nvidia (NVDA)
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“Software is eating the world, but AI is going to eat software.” – Jensen Huang, May 2017
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 have been moving higher all morning, and both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are indicated to open firmly higher. Treasury yields are modestly lower, with the 10-year yield still at 4.65%, while crude oil falls over 2% to $101.80. Gold is basically flat, and Bitcoin is up 1% to $77,500.
Overnight, Asia was lower across the board with the Nikkei down 1.2%, while other countries in the region were down by smaller amounts. In Europe, the tone has been more positive with the STOXX 600 up 0.4%, led higher by a 0.7% gain in France. The gains have been fueled by reports that the EU has reached a trade agreement with the US to sidestep additional tariffs.
There’s no data on the calendar today, but we will hear from a few Fed speakers before the main event after the close when Nvidia (NVDA) reports results. While the company’s embrace of AI has been a major contributor to the stock’s rally, we were struck by the quote above regarding AI and software. AI’s impact on software may have only been realized by the market in the last six months or so, but Jensen Huang was warning of its impact all the way back in 2017!
Just given its roughly 7.5% weight in the S&P 500, how NVDA reacts to earnings will have a material impact on the market’s performance tomorrow. NVDA has been on a roll heading into the report as the stock rallied more than 33% off its March low and closed yesterday more than 11% above its 50-day moving average (DMA).
You’ve probably heard people saying, “as goes Nvidia, so goes the market,” and while the magnitude of the stock’s move has been larger than the S&P 500, the patterns of the two over the last two years have been remarkably similar.
Since the launch of ChatGPT, NVDA’s relative strength versus the S&P 500 has followed a steady upward trend with periods of sharp outperformance followed by periods of consolidation. After trading sideways versus the market for nearly a year, since the March low, the stock appears to be attempting a new leg of outperformance. How the stock reacts to today’s earnings report could go a long way in determining if the latest attempt is successful.
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The Closer – Best of Breed, Rate Rise, Delinquencies – 5/19/26
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- Moves higher despite negative breadth have been a feature of the rallies in both the broad market and our Best of Breed basket.
- As the surveyed 30 year mortgage rate reached 6.75%, 10y real yields have surged 17 bps in three sessions.
- Delinquency and charge off rates for all loans and credit cards have improved, but rates for commercial and industrial loans hit multi-year highs.
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To the Moon! Space Stock ETFs Explode
While the Procure Space ETF (UFO) began trading way back in 2019, three new space-stock ETFs have hit the market in the last couple of months: NASA, MARS, and ORBX.
As shown below, space stocks have been soaring lately. UFO is up nearly 50% year-to-date, while MARS has gained more than 50% since it began trading in early March.
NASA is up 42% since it launched on April 1st, while ORBX began trading on April 15th and is already up 21%.
In terms of AUM, UFO has nearly $900 million, while NASA is up to $840 million. MARS is at just $52.3 million, while ORBX has just crossed the $20 million mark.
If you’re interested in the individual names that make up these space ETFs, we highlight them below.
Next to each ticker, we’ve marked “yes” if it’s included in one of the four space ETFs mentioned above.
Tickers in grey are included in all four of the space ETFs. These include names like Blacksky (BKSY), Intuitive Machines (LUNR), AST SpaceMobile (ASTS), Planet Labs (PL), and Rocket Lab (RKLB).
The 26 stocks on this list of space stocks have soared an average of 81.8% year-to-date! Satellogic (SATL) has been the biggest winner with a YTD gain of 410%, while Blacksky (BKSY), Intuitive Machines (LUNR), Spire Global (SPIR), Iridium (IRDM), Planet Labs (PL), Vishay Precision (VPG), and Viasat (VSAT) are all up 100% or more.
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Love Stories Unwind
The average S&P 500 stock gained 35% in the year leading up to the index’s most recent all-time closing high made last Thursday (5/14). Since then, we’ve seen the biggest winners in the last year finally experience some gravity, while beaten-down stocks have shown signs of life.
The tables below show the most extreme moves in the index in the year leading up to May 14th along with performance in the two and a half trading days since then.
Sixteen S&P 500 stocks gained more than 200% year-over-year through 5/14. As shown in the first table below, every one of these stocks has fallen since 5/14 for an average decline of 12.5%.
On the flip side, 13 S&P 500 stocks were more than cut in half (down 50%+) in the year leading up to 5/14. Since then, they’ve averaged a gain of 10.1%!
Below we’ve broken the S&P 500 into deciles (10 groups of 50 stocks each) based on year-over-year share-price performance through last Thursday (5/14). For each decile, we’ve calculated the average percentage change since 5/14.
As shown, the decile of the best performing stocks y/y through 5/14 is down an average of 8% since then, while the decile of the worst performing stocks y/y through 5/14 is up 7.1%.
Last March 24th, we highlighted the 25-year anniversary of the Dot Com Bubble peak in a Chart of the Day for members.
The year leading up to the March 24th, 2000 peak saw similar but more extreme moves within the S&P 500. As shown below, the best performing decile of stocks in the year leading up to 3/24/2000 gained 438.9% over that period, while the worst performing decile of stocks fell an average of 49.3%.
In the year after the 3/24/2000 peak, the decile of best performers y/y at the Dot Com peak averaged a decline of 50%! The decile of worst performers in the year leading up to 3/24/2000 averaged a gain of 33.4% over the following year.
Below is a table showing the best and worst performing stocks in the year leading up to the Dot Com peak and how they did in the year after.
As you can see, it was an absolute bloodbath for the biggest Dot Com winners in the year after the peak, while the losers during the Dot Com run-up that were the furthest thing possible from the Internet space saw an epic recovery.
While the timing of the ultimate peak for any boom/bubble is as unpredictable as the love life of characters in a Taylor Swift song, the arc of the story has been repeated as frequently as her songs. When sentiment towards the market’s most loved stocks shifts, it happens fast. The names that the market is on cloud nine with today will eventually find themselves out in the cold, experiencing a sell-off by a thousand cuts, while the market ‘frogs’ turn into the new princes.
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Chart of the Day – Market Macro and Micro
Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 5/19/26 – Tech Leads Losses
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“The future starts today, not tomorrow.” – Pope John Paul II
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 have been losing steam as we approach the opening bell, with the biggest recent winners leading the losses. S&P 500 futures are indicated to open nearly 0.5% lower, while the Nasdaq is poised to gap down 0.75%. Treasuries aren’t doing much this morning as the 10-year yield is modestly lower but still above 4.6%. Crude oil is little changed but elevated as the Middle East is on edge over whether the US will launch a new round of attacks on Iran. Gold and Bitcoin are both fractionally lower.
In Asia, it was a mixed session with the Nikkei down 0.5% following a modestly stronger than expected GDP report, while China was up nearly 1%. With AI-related stocks coming under pressure yesterday, South Korea fell 3.3%.
With tech and AI-related stocks leading the selling pressure, European stocks are much more immune, and the STOXX 600 is bucking the trend of weakness with a gain of 0.8%. Germany is leading the way higher with a gain of 1.4%, while Italy lags with just a marginal gain.
In the US today, it’s a quiet day for data with Pending Home Sales at 10 AM. On a housing-related note, though, shares of Home Depot (HD) are trading marginally lower after reporting earnings this morning. Management noted that while the consumer continues to “defer their spending on larger projects…consistent with what they’ve told us the last few years,” they remain engaged.
Divergent market breadth usually gets the most attention when the S&P 500 trades higher, but the net number of stocks trading higher on the day is negative. Yesterday was the opposite, where the S&P 500 traded lower, but most stocks in the index finished the day higher. At the sector level, yesterday was also net positive as seven sectors traded higher while just four traded lower. With Technology being one of those sectors that traded lower, though, it dragged the entire market into the red with it.
For all the talk recently about how narrow breadth has been, the YTD picture of sector performance is also surprisingly positive. While the S&P 500 is 8.1% higher YTD, seven sectors have outperformed the index on a YTD basis, while just four have declined.
Where the big breadth divergence has occurred is since the low on 3/30. In the seven weeks since then, the S&P 500 is up 16.7%, but just two sectors – Technology and Communication Services – have outperformed. What really stands out is how many sectors have outperformed the S&P 500 by A LOT since 3/30. As shown in the chart, besides Technology and Communication Services, the only other sector that is even close to performing in line with the index is Consumer Discretionary.
Comparing the performance of the market cap and equalweight S&P 500 so far this year, while the market cap-weighted S&P 500 has outperformed, it’s not as though the divergence has been all that wide. While there have been times throughout the year when one version has significantly outperformed the other, in the bigger picture, they have largely cancelled each other out.
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