Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – Nothing to See Here
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“It is the obvious which is so difficult to see most of the time.” ― Isaac Asimov
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After opening firmly lower last night, equity futures gained steam overnight on hopes of a ceasefire in the Iran war. After Iranian officials refuted those reports, though, we’re basically back to the unchanged line. It could be worse!
Following last Friday’s better-than-expected jobs report, treasury yields are modestly higher, with the 10-year yield at 4.36%. In commodity markets, crude oil is surprisingly contained at a decline of less than 1%, although that could change as reports surface that Israel launched strikes on Iran’s largest petrochemical facility. Gold prices are fractionally higher at just under $4,700 per ounce, and Bitcoin is up a healthy 3% and making a run back towards $70K.
It was a positive start to the week in Asia, even as China and Australia were closed. Japanese markets rallied 0.6%, while South Korea gained 1.4%. In Europe, markets are all closed, so there’s little economic or market data for investors to react to, leaving plenty of room for investors to focus their attention on Iran and the energy markets.
In the US today, the only report on the calendar is ISM Manufacturing at 10 AM. Economists expect the headline reading to pull back from 56.1 to 54.9.
Even though it was a short one, last week’s gains were enough to make it the best weekly performance of the year. Bulls will take gains whenever and wherever they can, but the rally, at this point, has done little to break the overall trend that has been in place for the last several weeks. The S&P 500 remains below the 200-DMA, and the downtrend remains intact. Whether the rally is a dead cat bounce or the real thing, it has to start somewhere, and only time will tell. At this point, though, bulls will need to see more improvement before starting to feel more confident.
As mentioned above, many international markets are still closed for the Easter holiday, so we wanted to see what seasonal headwinds or tailwinds the Easter holiday has historically had on the market. The chart below shows the S&P 500’s performance in the week after Easter for every year since 1945. Overall, the S&P 500 has averaged a 0.2% gain during Easter week with positive returns 59% of the time, but most years have been anything but average. Look no further than last year when the S&P 500 rallied 4.6% for its second-best Easter week performance, trailing only the 5.0% gain in 2001.
Looking at the chart above, you can see that performance around Easter week has been better more recently than in the years immediately after WWII, with fewer large declines during the Easter week. The chart below shows the 20-year average of the S&P 500’s Easter week performance since 1964, and clearly shows the improving trend. In 1964, the 20-year average performance was negative, but it has steadily increased over time, especially over the last 25 years. The 20-year average peaked in 2017 at 0.9%, but at 0.7% now, it’s the third-best reading of any since 1964, trailing only the readings in 2017 and 2018.
Unlike most other holidays, which fall on a specific date or particular point on the calendar, Easter can fall anywhere from late March to late April. Given Easter’s floating nature, we were curious to see if there was any correlation between the market’s performance during Easter week and when it falls on the calendar. The scatterplot below shows the date of every Easter since 1945 and the S&P 500’s performance during Easter. As shown, while Easter week performance has improved over time, there is zero correlation between performance and when Easter falls on the calendar. Nothing to see here.
Brunch Reads – 4/5/26
Welcome to Bespoke Brunch Reads — a linkfest of some of our favorite articles over the past week. The links are mostly market-related, but there are some other interesting subjects covered as well. We hope you enjoy the food for thought as a supplement to the research we provide you during the week.
Dum Dum, Give Me Gum Gum: The remote Pacific island now known as Easter Island was first “discovered” by Europeans on April 5, 1722, when Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen sighted its shores during an expedition in search of Terra Australis. The date coincided with Easter Sunday, which inspired the island’s enduring Western name. What Roggeveen and his crew encountered was both a treeless landscape dotted with towering stone figures, later called moai, standing along the coast.
Accounts describe confusion between the Europeans and the island’s inhabitants, the Rapa Nui people, whose culture had already developed in isolation for centuries. The explorers were astonished by the scale and number of the statues, some weighing dozens of tons, carved from volcanic rock and transported across the island with methods still debated today. Despite the grandeur of these monuments, the island appeared sparsely resourced. That puzzled the Europeans as to how such a society sustained itself.
Still, there are conflicting theories about what happened to the people who inhabited the small, remote island. One version tells us that Rapa Nui became severely overpopulated, and after exhausting resources, the population collapsed to just a few thousand by the time the Europeans arrived. Another version says that the island only grew enough crops to feed a small number of people, as evidenced by calculated agricultural “rock garden” productivity, meaning the population could have never gotten out of control. As interesting as it is to do a little research on at home, it is perhaps just as entertaining to see the Moai featured in the movie Night at the Museum!
AI & Technology
AI Adoption and Firms’ Job-Posting Behavior (Federal Reserve)
AI adoption is rising quickly, but there’s little evidence so far that it’s reducing overall hiring, with job postings holding steady or even ticking slightly higher in AI-heavy firms. The bigger changes are happening beneath the surface, where some roles are changing or disappearing while others expand, and the long-term impact is still unclear. [Link]
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The Closer – AI Eats Trades, Mortgage Rates, Oil – 4/2/26
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- Imports of categories related to AI spend are going absolutely gangbusters with total import bill of just below $60 billion in February, up 63% in six months.
- Our Salient Price Stress Index combining impacts of mortgage rates and gas prices is up 5.9% over the past few months.
- Spot Brent trades for cargoes loaded in the near-term rose above their 2008 nominal peak to close at a record $141.37/barrel.
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The Bespoke Report – 4/2/26 – It’s All Oil, Oil the Time
To read our weekly Bespoke Report newsletter and access everything else Bespoke’s research platform offers, start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium. This week’s report comes a day early as the market is closed in observance of Good Friday. In this week’s report, we cover the market’s handcuff to oil prices, market performance during Q1, the extraordinary moves in the Energy sector, economic data since the war started, seasonality, and much more.
Bespoke Market Calendar — April 2026
Please click the image below to view our April 2026 market calendar. This calendar includes the S&P 500’s historical average percentage change and average intraday chart pattern for each trading day during the upcoming month. It also includes market holidays and options expiration dates plus the dates of key economic indicator releases.Click here to view Bespoke’s premium membership options.
Q1 2026 Earnings Conference Call Recaps: Nike (NKE)
Bespoke’s Conference Call Recaps use AI to summarize lengthy earnings calls. The commentary below is AI-generated and then edited by Bespoke for quality control. As always, none of these summaries should be construed as recommendations to buy or sell any securities, and investors should do their own research and/or consult with a financial professional before making any investment decisions.
Our latest recap available to Bespoke subscribers covers Nike’s (NKE) Q3 2026 earnings call.
Nike (NKE) designs, manufactures, and markets athletic footwear, apparel, and equipment across performance sports and lifestyle categories, serving athletes from elite professionals to everyday consumers. Nike is in the middle of a deliberate reset, sacrificing near-term growth to clean up inventory and rebuild a healthier, more profitable business. Running (+20%) and other performance categories are gaining traction, while sportswear remains a drag as the company works through excess product. Management is moving back toward wholesale, with North America showing clear improvement (wholesale +11%), but Greater China (-10%) and EMEA remain pressured by promotions and weaker traffic. Margins were hit by heavy discounting and about 300 bps of tariff impact, though Nike expects improvement later in 2027. Innovation remains a bright spot, with new platforms like Nike Mind selling out globally. NKE reported better-than-expected EPS and revenue, and cut guidance. Shares fell more than 15% on 4/1, the stock’s worst day in almost two years…
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Q4 2025 Earnings Conference Call Recaps: RH (RH)
Bespoke’s Conference Call Recaps use AI to summarize lengthy earnings calls. The commentary below is AI-generated and then edited by Bespoke for quality control. As always, none of these summaries should be construed as recommendations to buy or sell any securities, and investors should do their own research and/or consult with a financial professional before making any investment decisions.
Our latest recap available to Bespoke subscribers covers RH’s (RH) Q4 2025 earnings call.
RH (RH) is a luxury home furnishings brand that sells high-end furniture, lighting, textiles, and décor through immersive gallery stores that double as design hubs and hospitality venues. It’s less a retailer and more a luxury platform of product curation, interior design services, and in-store restaurants to target affluent and ultra-wealthy consumers, offering a window into high-end housing demand, discretionary spending, and global luxury trends. RH is leaning aggressively into a long-term growth strategy despite one of the weakest housing backdrops in decades, with management framing the current period as a rare overlap of peak investment and trough demand. The biggest near-term driver is the launch of RH Estates, targeting the roughly 60% of luxury homes with traditional architecture, which the company believes can become its largest and highest-margin business. At the same time, RH is investing heavily in Europe (Paris, Milan, London) to build brand awareness before expanding into higher-volume suburban markets. Margins are under pressure from this investment cycle and tariff-driven supply chain disruption (RH has had to re-source about 40% of its assortment), but management expects significant operating leverage as capex falls from about $300M toward $150M annually. Longer term, RH is betting on structural tailwinds, including a $30T–$38T wealth transfer and rising multi-home ownership among ultra-wealthy consumers. Shares tumbled 19.3% on 4/1 after cutting guidance and recording EPS and revenue misses…
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One Year Liberated
One year ago today after the markets closed on 4/2/25, President Trump made an appearance in the Rose Garden of the White House. At the event, which he labeled as “liberation day,” the President announced a slew of new reciprocal tariff rates on countries all around the globe. The tariff rates ranged from a baseline of 10% on all imports upwards of 100% on some specific countries such as China. Headed into the announcement, the S&P 500 had already fallen 7.7% versus its 2/29/25 high, but over the next several days, the index fell another 12.4% through the 4/8/25 low (for a total decline from February’s high to April’s low of 18.9%). While equity markets took a big hit last spring, the S&P 500 made a full recovery by June and are now up solidly over the past year.
Below we show our asset class performance matrix with total returns for a range of ETFs since liberation day.
The biggest winners have been in the commodity space. Silver (SLV) is up 114% and that is even after falling 38% from its January high. Oil (USO) has been the next best performer with a 73% gain.
As for equities, the S&P 500 (SPY) has provided a 17.3% total return in the past year. The small cap indices like the S&P Smallcap 600 (IJR) and Russell 2,000 (IWM) have outperformed with gains of 19.1% and 24.9%, respectively. While small caps have provided larger total returns than large caps, large cap growth (IVW) and small cap value (IJS) are up similar degrees.
International equity ETFs have broadly outperformed US indices with the likes of Brazil (EWZ), Mexico (EWW), and Israel (EIS) all up well over 50%. Only one country ETF is lower in the past year: India (INDA) with a 9.1% decline. Germany (EWG) and France (EWQ) are the only two other country ETFs in our matrix to underperform the S&P 500.
Moving back to look at the US, in the tables below we show the Russell 1,000 members that have provided the best and worst total returns over the past year. For the biggest winners, we have two 10-baggers in memory chip maker Sandisk (SNDK) and optical and photonic product maker Lumentum (LITE). SNDK is by far the biggest winner even of those two, up 1,353%. Not far behind SNDK and LITE are two more AI Infrastructure stocks: Western Digital (WDC) and Ciena (CIEN). Many of these top performing stocks are plays on AI buildouts, however, there are some other stocks from other parts of the market such as Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), GE Veranova (GEV), and Five Below (FIVE).
Turning over to the other end of the spectrum, the Russell 1,000 currently has 36 members that are down over 50% in the past year. Of those, the biggest loser is nutrition company BellRing Brands (BRBR), which has fallen close to 80%. Fintech firm Fiserv (FISV) and language learning company Duolingo (DUOL) are the only others down more than 70%.
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In the Throes of Thursdays
The S&P 500 is currently on pace to close lower for the 10th consecutive Thursday, which would be a record Thursday losing streak going back to 1953 (when the current five-day trading week was put in place by the NYSE).
Over the last six months, the S&P 500 has averaged a decline of 0.54% on Thursdays, which is by far the worst of any weekday. As shown below, Friday is the only other weekday that has averaged a decline (-0.08%), while each of the first three trading days of the week have actually averaged gains.
Hypothetically, had you only owned the S&P 500 through the first three days of the week over the last six months (buy at the close on Friday and sell at the close on Wednesday), you’d be sitting on a nice 12.4% gain right now versus a decline of 2.1% for buy and hold.
As always, past performance is no guarantee of future results.
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Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 4/2/26 – That Didn’t Go As Expected
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“The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry, or depressing its contents seemed to be.” – Arthur C Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
Leading up to last night’s national address from the President, there was some optimism that he would lay out a path of ending the hostilities and/or reopening the Strait of Hormuz. We got neither. Instead, the speech was more just a reheating of leftover talking points from the last few weeks.
The market response was as you would expect. Equity futures are sharply lower. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq are both indicated to open down by at least 1.5%. Treasury yields are higher, with the 10-year yield up 3 bps to 4.352%. The big move is in oil markets, though, as WTI is trading up more than 9.5%, which would be one of the largest one-day gains since the war started! Gold prices are sharply lower with a decline of close to 4%, while Bitcoin is also 3% lower. With a three-day weekend looming and an incredibly large (and increasing) presence of US military assets in the Middle East, you can’t blame someone for not wanting to take too much risk ahead of the weekend.
In international markets, Asia was sharply lower, with the Nikkei down over 2% while South Korea tanked over 4%. European markets are all down at least 1%, continuing the trend of weakness we have seen since the President’s speech started at 9:02 Eastern last night.
The last two days of trading were a relief for bulls after the weakness of the last few weeks. As the chart of the Nasdaq below illustrates, though, the gains have done little at this point to break the downtrend that has been in place for the last several weeks. Mornings like today serve as a reminder of that. It’s also hard not to blame investors for being more cautious ahead of a three-day weekend, just as the President threatens in a national address to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age.
What was notable about the last two trading days was that the Nasdaq ended Q1 and started Q2 with gains of at least 1% on each trading day. The quarter-end gains were easily attributable to relancing, but gains to start a quarter tend to indicate actual inflows, which is a positive. Since the Nasdaq’s inception in 1971, the last two days were only the 10th time that the index gained at least 1% on the last day of a quarter and subsequently the first trading day of the next quarter.
The long-term chart of the Nasdaq below shows each occurrence, and they didn’t occur during the early stages of market downturns.
