Below is an updated look at our Dow 30 trading range screen.  For each stock, the black vertical “N” line is its 50-day moving average, while moves into the red or green zone are considered overbought or oversold.  A stock is considered “overbought” when it’s more than one standard deviation above its 50-day moving average, and vice versa for oversold.  The dark red and green shaded areas represent between two and three standard deviations above (or below) the 50-DMA.

As shown in the screen, Apple (AAPL) is currently the most overbought stock in the Dow — trading at nearly 3 standard deviations above its 50-day.  With a gain of 32% YTD, Apple is having a monster year.  Other overbought stocks in the index include Boeing (BA), Home Depot (HD), 3M (MMM), McDonald’s (MCD), and United Tech (UTX).

Dow stocks on the oversold side include General Electric (GE), IBM, Nike (NKE), Pfizer (PFE), Procter & Gamble (PG), and Verizon (VZ).  Verizon (VZ) is currently the worst performing Dow stock year-to-date with a decline of 12.65%.

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Bespoke’s Interactive Earnings Report Calendar lets investors and traders easily find earnings report dates and times for companies set to report quarterly numbers in the weeks and months ahead.  As investors ourselves, we used to constantly have to track down earnings report dates from a number of different websites, so we created our own online calendar to make the process much easier.  Below are a series of screenshots that show you how to find and use Bespoke’s Earnings Report Calendar.

First, if you’re not yet a Bespoke Premium subscriber, start a 14-day free trial to gain access to the calendar.  From the “My Research” dashboard upon logging in, click on “Earnings Report Calendar” under the “Bespoke Interactive” section in the right-most column.

Once the Interactive Earnings Report Calendar page is loaded, you can seek out earnings report information in a number of ways.  As shown below, you can enter a specific stock ticker and click on “Get Earnings Report Data,” use the monthly calendar section (top left of page) to click on a specific date or week, download the entire calendar into Excel with a CSV file, or just scroll through the entire list of stocks set to report earnings in the coming weeks (bottom of page).

In the example below, we’ve entered the stock ticker “AFAM” and pulled up its expected report date and time, which is 5/8/17 in the AM (AM means pre-open).  Entering a stock ticker also pulls up historical quarterly earnings report information like the % of time the stock has beaten earnings and revenue estimates, the average price change that the stock experiences in reaction to earnings beats and misses, and how volatile the stock typically is on its earnings reaction day.

We’ve also clicked on the 8th of May in the calendar section in the example below, which then populates all companies set to report earnings on 5/8/17.

In the table section of Bespoke’s Earnings Report Calendar, you can click on the column headers to sort the data.  This helps you identify stocks set to report earnings that have the highest (or lowest) earnings beat rates, the highest (or lowest) revenue beat rates, the stocks that raise guidance the most, and the stocks that typically react the most positively or negatively to their earnings reports.

There are an endless number of ways to use the calendar.  The simplest is to use it to find the expected earnings report date for a stock you’re following.  Go ahead and bookmark Bespoke’s Earnings Report Calendar if you’re already a Bespoke Premium or Bespoke Institutional member.  If you’re not yet a member, start a 14-day free trial to Bespoke Premium to gain access to the calendar.

NFIB Small Business Optimism was released earlier this morning and showed a m/m decline for the third straight month.  While a trend like that would sure seem to indicate that the post-election optimism has worn off, at a level of 104.5, the headline index is still nearly ten points higher than it was last October.  On top of that, April’s reading of 104.5 also came in better than expected.  It’s also interesting to note that the last time this index saw a three month losing streak was in the beginning of 2016, and in the first three months of 2015 it also saw two large declines in the first quarter as well, so there may be some seasonality at play here.

The chart to the right shows the issues that small businesses currently consider to be their number one problem.  In this month’s report, there really wasn’t much in the way of movement here as Taxes and Red Tape still top the list of biggest problems and Quality of Labor (16%) rounds out the top three.  The only real mover of note was the category of Poor Sales which dropped two percentage points to 10%.  At current levels, that’s not far from its cycle low of 9% that we saw back in November 2015.

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With shares of Apple (AAPL) up sharply yesterday, the company’s market cap crossed the $800 billion mark for the first time ever.  The company is now just 25% away (barring any shrinkage from buybacks) from crossing the trillion dollar level.  We say “just 25%” because from when it was trading in the low $90 range a year ago, shares of AAPL are up 65%.  Looking at the chart from the last two years, it sure does look like the chart is starting to go parabolic.  Back in late January when AAPL reported Q4 earnings, it already looked extended.  Then in late February, it rose even more after Warren Buffett gave it his seal of approval.  Now it just keeps rallying!

After a rally of over 65% in a year, it sure is easy to say that AAPL is more than overdue to pullback.  When you look back at the stock on a historical basis, 65% y/y rallies are hardly out of the norm.  The most recent such run ended two years ago in the spring of 2015.  What’s even more incredible is that throughout its life as a public company, AAPL’a average y/y gain has been 31%.  Over that same time, that’s 40% better than the 22% average y/y change that Berkshire Hathaway has experienced. While it is true that AAPL now is a larger company than it has ever been, it is not as though the company wasn’t one of, if not, the largest companies in the US when it had many of its most recent 65% y/y gains as well.

While the eight-year anniversary of the financial crisis low was on March 9th, the bull market didn’t officially turn eight until last Friday when the S&P 500 closed at its first new all-time high since March 1st (eight days before the eight-year anniversary).  Below we have updated our bull market charts which compare the current bull market in the context of prior bulls in terms of length and strength.  Remember, we define bull and bear markets as rallies (declines) of 20% of more on a closing basis that were preceded by a 20%+ decline (rally).  At 2,979 calendar days and counting, the current bull market ranks as the second longest of all time, ahead of the early to mid-1950s bull market by about a year but way behind the granddaddy of them all which spanned from 1987 through 2000.

In terms of strength, the current bull market ranks as the third strongest of all time.  The table below lists all S&P 500 bull markets since 1928 sorted by strength.  The only two that were stronger than the current one were the 1987 – 2000 run and the 1949 – 1956 rally.  At current levels, though, the S&P 500 is right on the heels of the bull that ended in 1956.  In fact, to move into second strongest of all time, the S&P 500 would have to rally just 3.4% to 2,483.44.  A move into first place, however, is a bit more of a longshot.  In order to move into the top spot, the S&P 500 would have to rally an additional 92% to 4,614 without a 20% decline in between.  It’s a ways off, but we wonder if even that would be enough to move the AAII Bullish sentiment reading above 50%.

Welcome to Bespoke Brunch Reads — a linkfest of the favorite things we read 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.

Policy Pros & Cons

Minutes of the Meeting of the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association May 2nd (US Department of the Treasury)

A summary of the TBAC meeting assessing the need for ultra-long-term bonds with maturities out to 50 or 100 years. While their decision isn’t final, it does make it less likely the Treasury will adopt coupon debt that long. We should note the TBAC does suggest a 50 year zero coupon bond might receive lots of interest. [Link]

Corporate Tax Cut as Growth Elixir? Foreign Experience Suggests Caution by Greg Ip (Wall Street Journal)

Evidence suggests that regardless of other potential upsides or downsides to changing the corporate tax rate (there are many arguments on both sides), large corporate tax cuts will not create rapid economic growth. [Link; paywall]

Germany

Why Germany Still Has So Many Middle-Class Manufacturing Jobs by Hermann Simon (Harvard Business Review)

An analysis of what makes Germany’s famed mittelstand so good at producing “Hidden Champions”: companies that excel within their industry, have revenues below 5bn EUR, and are unheralded by the general public. [Link]

The global decline in the labour income share: is capital the answer to Germany’s current account surplus? by Bennet Berger and Guntram Wolff (Bruegel)

The authors argue that Germany’s large and persistent current account surplus is a different macroeconomic response to the same problems which result in high unemployment in other Eurozone members. We agree. [Link; 17 page PDF]

Sports

The Future of Football by Spencer Hall (SBNation)

A long piece but one filled with interesting thoughts about the future of the most popular sport in America: rules changes, coaching, and equipment all get attention. [Link]

How Ueli Steck Met Mountaineering’s Oldest Companion: Tragedy by Michael Wejchert (NYT)

The story of a Swiss mountain climber’s daring career and an investigation of the sport of mountaineering. [Link; soft paywall]

Moar Fyre

Comcast Rejected Funding Days Before Doomed Fyre Festival by Polly Mosendz and Kim Bhasin (Bloomberg)

Last week’s horrific failure, the Fyre Festival, was a (massively mistaken) branding exercise for Fyre Media Inc, a company that Comcast’s venture capital arm (yeah, we had no idea either) declined to fund just before the debacle. [Link]

“Let’s just do it and be legends man” by Gabreille Bluestone (Vice)

More on the massive squandering of resources and general ineptitude of the Fyre Festival organizers. False advertising class action lawsuits against models, “disaster pricing” for basic equipment like toilets and showers, customs snafus, and everything else you can imagine. [Link]

Hunger

Shameful Lunch Shaming by Billy Shore (Medium)

A passionate argument in favor of giving hungry kids the food they need, without stigma. [Link]

Venezuela Is Starving by Juan Forero (WSJ)

The catastrophic results of nationalization and economic collapse: the most basic resources to sustain life are no longer available in Venezuela. [Link; paywall]

Decline & Fall

Tyler Cowen and the Fallacy of American Laziness by Laurence B. Siegel (Advisor Perspectives)

Savage pushback against the idea George Mason economist Tyler Cowen has trumpeted: that American society is in decline and it’s all thanks to a “complacent class”. [Link]

Brexit dinner: live leaking from the second sitting by Robert Shrimsley (FT)

A satirical imagining of another round of last week’s disastrous Brexit dinner, presented in the format of angered live-tweeting from both sides of the table. [Link; paywall]

Bankruptcy

Amid Brick-and-Mortar Travails, a Tipping Point for Amazon in Apparel by Nick Wingfield (NYT)

As retailers reel, Amazon is looking for ways to up the pressure on apparel retailers with custom clothing options and private-label manufacturing. [Link, soft paywall]

U.S. Courts: Bankruptcy Filings Drop 6 Percent in 2016, Lowest since 2006 by Bill McBride (Calculated Risk)

As consumers and businesses continue to see improved income and activity in the wake of the last recession, bankruptcy filings have made new lows. [Link]

New Products

Elon Musk teases future plans at TED talk by Glenn Chapman (AFP/Yahoo)

At a TED talk in Vancouver, Musk talked about tunnel boring and mass transit. [Link]

U.S. SEC approves request to list quadruple-leveraged ETFs (Reuters/Yahoo)

The good news is that you’ll soon be able to buy a 4x leveraged long or short version of the S&P 500. The bad news is that you’ll soon be able to buy a 4x leveraged long or short version of the S&P 500. [Link; auto-playing video]

Have a great Sunday!