Chart of the Day – Mother, “May” I
Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 4/28/26 – Water, Water, Everywhere
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“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.” – Harper Lee
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
Sentiment surrounding AI is really something these days. On one day, you can have stocks surging on the idea that companies can’t get their hands on enough compute, and then the next day, they sell off sharply because there’s not enough demand. It’s like the line from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, “Water, water, everywhere/Nor any drop to drink”. This morning, the Nasdaq is leading futures lower on a report in the Wall Street Journal that OpenAI missed year-end user and revenue targets, raising questions over whether all of the investments in the sector will eventually pay off. These are legitimate questions to ask, but if the article is based on year-end 2025 targets, a lot has changed between now and then regarding OpenAI’s growth (Codex) and the sector.
Nasdaq futures are currently down more than 1% while the S&P 500 is indicated 0.65% lower, while oil prices have surged more than 5%, taking WTI back above $100 per barrel. The impact of that increase in oil prices can’t be overstated either. While oil prices surge, gold prices are sharply lower (-2.6%), while Bitcoin is down less than 1%.
In Asia, stocks were mostly lower, with South Korea being the only exception (+0.4%). Japan and Hong Kong were both down 1% while China declined only 0.2%. The BoJ left its policy rate unchanged, but it was a fractured vote with three of nine voters pushing for a rate hike.
In Europe, it’s a mixed picture. With much less tech exposure than the US, the STOXX 600 is unchanged on the session while Italy leads the way higher (+0.9%) and Germany lags (-0.2%).
In the US today, it’s a relatively quiet day for data with the FHFA House Price Index at 9:00, and the Richmond Fed and Consumer Confidence reports for April hitting the tape at 10 AM.
The S&P 500 hit both a new intraday and a closing high yesterday as the bull market continues to reconfirm itself with six closing record highs since 4/15. The index has had a parabolic run this month, and while a pullback or consolidation wouldn’t surprise anyone, the index should find decent support at the prior highs from late last year/early this year.
Over the last several years, whenever the market hits new highs, we look to see what’s driving the move higher. Is it the mega-caps or the rest of the index? Starting with the mega-caps, it’s been a strong month for the group, and while the group rallied nearly 1% yesterday to provide some positive momentum, it remains well below its prior all-time highs from last fall. At yesterday’s close of $67.08, the MAG7 ETF (MAGS) is still nearly 3% below its prior peak.
The equal-weight S&P 500, which more accurately reflects the performance of the “S&P 493”, traded down fractionally yesterday, so while it didn’t contribute at all to yesterday’s rally, it is actually much closer to all-time highs than the MAG7 ETF. In any event, though, it’s interesting to see that both the S&P 500 Equalweight and the MAG7 ETF closed more than 1% below all-time highs yesterday, even as the index itself hit a new one.
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The Closer – Political Performance, Renewable Rally, Auction – 4/27/26
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- Morgan Stanley (MS) indices tracking political themes in the stock market have seen Democratic outperformance since Inauguration Day.
- Renewable energy stocks are trading at three-year highs after putting in a long term bottom last spring.
- 5-year Treasury auctions have tailed or priced at the screws at every auction over the past eleven months, tying all other coupons for the record streak of auctions without a stop through.
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Gold Caught in the Middle
Last year, precious metals were an astoundingly strong trade with some of the strongest performance of any asset. As shown below, as the calendar turned the page, the rally in front month gold has reversed. Over the last year, gold is still handily outperforming indices like the S&P 500, Russell 1,000 Value, and Russell 1,000 Growth. However, the Nasdaq has caught the yellow metal due to a combination of Tech stock’s recent strength and the recent weakness in gold.
Checking in on front month gold’s drawdown, at the worst of the decline on a closing basis, gold fell 17.7% versus its January peak. As shown below, that was the sharply drawdown since late 2022, but is far from the worst declines on record. Further, the metal has rallied back to now be 11.8% from its 52-week high. That is only a few percentage points worse than the historical average drawdown (-9.9%).
As shown below, gold peaked in late January and after successfully testing support at its 50-DMA intraday on February 2nd, it quickly moved higher to retest prior highs within the next month. That run to new highs was unsuccessful though as gold has lost its glitter. The metal closed below its 50-DMA by March 18th (the first instance since August 21, 2025) and continued lower throughout the back half of the month. Similar to the early February intraday test of the 50-DMA, on March 23rd, gold tested its 200-DMA. While it never closed below, the rally higher since then has stalled as it re-addressed the 50-DMA which is now trending lower.
Again, last month gold never quite fell below its 200-DMA on a closing basis. As a result, the metal has kept alive the second longest streak of closes above its 200-DMA on record: this streak is now at 615 straight trading days, meaning the last time gold closed below its 200-DMA was on November 10, 2023. Ironically, while this streak is still alive and well (gold would need to fall over 10% to return to the 200-DMA), it has also been on a growing streak of closes below its 50-DMA. As shown in the second chart below, gold has been below its 50-DMA for 28 straight days, the longest since a 41-day long streak ending in July 2023.
All that is to say that from a technical picture, front month gold has seen a deterioration in its technical picture as it is now sandwiched between support at the 200-DMA and 50-DMA. While those two moving averages will continue to be levels to watch, there is a wide spread between them. As shown below, there’s 16% between the two moving averages, and one month ago that spread was over 20%. The only other times this spread has been wider was 1980, 1983, 2006, and 2008.
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The Triple Play Report: 4/27/26
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: Bearish Technicals for Gold
Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 4/27/26
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“Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.” – Voltaire
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
Nasdaq futures are up once again this morning as semis rally another 1.5% in pre-market trading. As a reminder, the Philly Sox semis index is on an 18-day win streak and hasn’t had a down day this month! Meanwhile, traders continue to sell software stocks with the ETF that tracks the group (IGV) down about half a percent ahead of the open. One day soon we expect the long semis/short software trade to unwind; it’s just a matter of when.
As we noted in Friday’s Bespoke Report (read it here if you missed it on Friday), even though the cap-weighted large-cap index ETFs like SPY and QQQ have broken out to new all-time highs, the S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (RSP) looks quite different.
As shown in the lower left chart below, RSP attempted to break out but failed at resistance. On Friday, SPY rallied 0.8% even though breadth was -146 and the average stock in the index was down 0.2%.
While the Tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 (QQQ) rallied more than 2% last week, the S&P 500 (SPY) was only up 0.5%, and there were actually more sectors down (6) than up (5).
Health Care (XLV), Communication Services (XLC), Financials (XLF), Real Estate (XLRE), and Consumer Discretionary (XLY) were all down more than 1%.
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Brunch Reads – 4/26/26
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.
Take Me Out to the Ball Game: We’re just over a month into the MLB season, and on this day in 1941, Chicago Cubs owner Philip K. Wrigley was looking for a way to keep fans engaged during slower moments of the game. What he did was hire organist Ray Nelson to experiment with live music between innings. Instead of relying on recorded sound or silence, Nelson’s playful cues and familiar tunes quickly became part of the experience, reacting to game situations in real time. It caught on almost immediately and has been a staple feature at ballparks for decades. Thank you to Ray Nelson and the Chicago Cubs for one of sports’ most enduring traditions!
AI & Technology
Misanthropic: on Mythos, bad human behaviors and systems vulnerabilities (JPMorgan)
Anthropic’s new model Mythos pushes performance forward in coding and research tasks, but its standout ability is identifying and exploiting software vulnerabilities, even uncovering long-hidden flaws and completing complex cyberattacks end-to-end. That same capability has led to limited access through a controlled program with major tech companies, as the model has also shown occasional tendencies to cut corners, conceal actions, or behave in ways that raise new safety concerns. [Link]
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The Bespoke Report – 4/24/26 – Soak it In
It’s been an incredible move off the lows from less than a month ago as certain areas of the market have seen historic rallies ahead of a busy week of earnings and economic data next week. How much more gas does the market have in its tank as some areas of the world worry about running out of oil? We cover it all in this week’s Bespoke Report.
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Semi Stocks Boost the S&P 500
Since the March 30th low, one of the best performing areas of the stock market has been the semiconductors. At the moment, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (or the SOX) has risen for 18 sessions in a row since the March 30th low. Using the tradable VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) as a proxy, the group is now up right around 40% since then, which is a record 18-day rally since its inception.
Of course, the semiconductors are now home to some of the largest stocks in existence.
Broadcom (AVGO) now trades with a greater that $2 trillion market cap and, of course, there is NVIDIA (NVDA), with a market cap above $5 trillion.
Given the S&P 500 is market-cap weighed, the semis are the single largest weight of any industry group. In fact, the group accounts for 15.5% of S&P 500 weight.
So with a combination of massive outperformance and a massively large weight, the semiconductors are to thank for 4.9 percentage points of the index’s 12.8% rally since March 30th, meaning they’ve accounted for roughly 40% of the gain.
As shown below, that is more than twice as large of a positive contribution as the next best, Media & Entertainment, with 2.12 percentage points.
The other two Tech sector industries – Tech Hardware & Equipment and Software & Services – have also made positive contributions. The latter might come as a surprise as it has been a beleaguered group for most of the year. Nonetheless, since the lows, it is to thank for more than a full percentage point of the S&P’s 12.8% rally.
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