While we can’t buy more time, tomorrow marks the rare occasion that we’ll get an extra day in a year.  Leap years, as they’re known, seem straightforward at first glance – every four years, right?  However, there’s a small twist.  Typically, a year divisible by four is a leap year, but years ending in ’00 are only leap years if they’re divisible by 400.  For example, 2000 qualified as a leap year, but 1700, 1800, and 1900 did not.

Now, let’s look at historical data. Since the New York Stock Exchange adopted the five-day trading week in late 1952, the S&P 500’s average performance on the last trading day of February has been flat, with a median change of 0.00%. However, when the last trading day falls on Leap Day (February 29th), performance has been weaker. The S&P 500’s median performance dips slightly to a decline of 0.13% compared to a small gain of 0.06% on the last trading day of non-leap year Februarys.  Interestingly, the last trading day of February, regardless of being a leap year or not, has shown weakness in recent years, experiencing negative returns in each of the past nine years.  Whether or not the pattern plays out this year remains to be seen, but even if it does, it would be a small price to pay for an extra day!

Just over a year ago, a pair of interesting ETFs debuted. The Unusual Whales Subversive Republican (KRUZ) and Democrat (NANC) Trading ETFs seek to track the performance of stock investments of sitting Congressional members. The Republican ETF (KRUZ) would track those investments of Republican members while the Democratic ETF (NANC) would track those of Democrats.  As shown below, the past year has seen Democrats come out as winners. The over 30% total return for NANC is almost twice that of KRUZ and is also several percentage points stronger than the S&P 500 ETF (SPY).

Not only is NANC the better performer of the two since inception, but it is also significantly larger.  As shown in the chart below, NANC currently has assets under management (AUM) of $27.89 million compared to only $9.35 million for KRUZ.  While NANC has consistently held a large AUM since inception, we would note that it really took off in the past few months.

Both of these ETF have hundreds of holdings with KRUZ being the smaller of the two with 488 while NANC has 748.  NANC is not only large, but is significantly more top heavy.  The top ten holdings of that ETF account for roughly half of its weight, whereas KRUZ’s top ten holdings are just under 20% of its weight.

As always, what conversation about top-heaviness is complete without a mention of the mega-caps.  That group of stocks are some of the largest holdings in NANC.  Microsoft (MSFT) is the single largest with a 7.44% weighting followed by 6.1% from Amazon (AMZN), 5.1% from Apple (AAPL), and 4.7% from NVIDIA (NVDA). Using our Custom Portfolios tool, below we show the 26 holdings of NANC that currently account for at least 0.5% of weight. Continuing its relentless rise, NVDA is of course the best performing one of those stocks and is deeply overbought alongside most others on this list.

Shifting over to KRUZ, as previously mentioned, weights are distributed a bit more evenly. As such, below we show the 28 stocks with weights that are above 1%. The largest holding is Intel (INTC) at a 2.35% weight. Albeit a big drop down the market cap ladder, HVAC company Comfort Systems (FIX) is the next largest holding at 2.24%.  That comes as the stock has experienced an impressive rally of close to 40% in the past month alone.  ConocoPhilips (COP) is the only other stock with a weight of more than 2%, while Accenture (ACN) is the next largest at 1.99%.  While further down the list in terms of its weight, mega caps also make this list with NVIDIA (NVDA) and Amazon (AMZN) on the board.

NVIDIA (NVDA) is up nearly 2,000% over the last five years, but would you believe that there’s another stock — a non-AI stock — that’s up even more?

As shown below, while NVDA is up 1,937% since February 2019, cosmetics-maker e.l.f. Beauty (ELF) has that number beat with an even bigger gain of 2,639%!

While the two are in completely different industries, one thing they have in common is their penchant for reporting earnings triple plays.  As a reminder, an earnings triple play occurs when a stock reports earnings and 1) beats analyst EPS estimates, 2) beats analyst sales estimates, and 3) raises forward guidance.

As shown in the snapshot from our interactive Earnings Explorer below, NVIDIA (NVDA) has now reported five earnings triple plays in a row.

e.l.f. Beauty (ELF) has that topped, though, with seven triple plays in a row dating back to August 2022!

If you’re interested in reading about more stocks that have recently reported earnings triple plays, start a Bespoke Institutional (All Access) trial today and access our latest Triple Play Report (thumbnail preview below).

After some weakness overnight, prices in the crypto space have seen a significant turnaround today.  Bitcoin, for example, has rallied nearly 5% from its lows earlier in the session and is back to new 52-week highs.  When the Bitcoin ETFs were first launched back on January 11th, prices immediately dropped by more than 20% in what looked like another sell-the-news event surrounding a Bitcoin milestone. As shown in the chart, though, in just the last month alone, the largest cryptocurrency has rallied more than 25%.

The rally in Bitcoin has also helped to dig it out of the hole it has been in for more than two years. After falling just short of $68,000 per coin in November 2021, bitcoin declined by more than 75%, but after more than tripling in less than 15 months, it is now just a little bit more than 20% from its prior all-time high. Will 2024 be the year?

Even more impressive than the recent rally in Bitcoin has been Ethereum’s run. Over the last month alone, the second-largest crypto has rallied 39%. That’s more than Nvidia (NVDA)!  Despite the monster rally over the last month, though, Ethereum remains 35% below its November 2021 high of $4,800.