Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 5/14/25 – Mid Week Rest
See what’s driving market performance around the world in today’s Morning Lineup. Bespoke’s Morning Lineup is the best way to start your trading day. Read it now by starting a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium. CLICK HERE to learn more and start your trial.
“The only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” – Mark Zuckerberg
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
Meta Platforms (META) founder Mark Zuckerberg turns 41 years old today, and love him or hate him, the man has certainly taken some risks in building META into what it is. That’s also why he has a net worth of over $200 billion, making him one of the richest people in the world!
This week, the market has taken a risk on persona, continuing into the pre-market futures. S&P 500 futures indicate a 27-bps point gain at the open while the Nasdaq is 0.40% higher. There’s not much in the way of earnings-related news to contend with today, the economic calendar is empty, and even the geo-political picture has experienced a bit of a lull. Just what you would expect as we all try to get through the middle of the week.
For the S&P 500, the first two trading days of the week have been notable for two big reasons. First, on Monday, the S&P 500 surged above its 200-DMA for the first time in over a month, as the S&P 500 rallied over 3%. The rally of 3.26% was the largest daily gain on a day when the S&P 500 crossed above its 200-DMA since March 2020. Second, it’s hard to see in the chart, but if you squint hard, you can see that yesterday was the first time in over two months that the S&P 500’s 50 and 200-DMA had an upward slope.
Yesterday’s upward shift in the slope of the 50 and 200-DMAs ended a streak of 56 trading days where both moving averages were sloping downwards. As shown in the chart, the length of that streak was far from extraordinary relative to history. During the 2022 bear market, we went nearly a year where at least one of the moving averages was sloping downwards, and during the financial crisis, the market had a stretch of over 19 months where at least one moving average was downward sloping. While the most recent period may not have been the longest streak with at least one moving average sloping downward, the fact that they are both now sloping upward is positive from a psychological standpoint.
The Closer – Whiplash, Nasdaq’s New Bull, Debt Data Deluge – 5/13/25
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Looking for deeper insight into markets? In tonight’s Closer sent to Bespoke Institutional clients, we begin by evaluating the market’s whiplash so far year to date (page 1) followed by a look at the Nasdaq establishing a new bull market (page 2). Moving on to economic data, we review the latest CPI release (page 3) followed by a deep dive into the latest credit releases including the SLOOS (pages 4 and 5) and the New York Fed’s report on Household Debt & Credit (pages 6-8).
See today’s full post-market Closer and everything else Bespoke publishes by starting a 14-day trial to Bespoke Institutional today!
Daily Sector Snapshot — 5/13/25
Chart of the Day: Volatility Evaporates
Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 5/13/25
See what’s driving market performance around the world in today’s Morning Lineup. Bespoke’s Morning Lineup is the best way to start your trading day. Read it now by starting a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium. CLICK HERE to learn more and start your trial.
“Do you know the only thing that gives me pleasure? It’s to see my dividends coming in.” – John D. Rockefeller
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
The S&P 500 rose 3.26% to start the week, which was its biggest Monday gain since April 6th, 2020 when the index rose 7.0% on weekend headlines that the rate of COVID infections was slowing and lockdowns might start to ease.
Yesterday’s rally was driven by an agreement between the US and China to pause steep reciprocal tariffs of 100%+ for at least the next 90 days. The best performing stocks yesterday were names that got hit the hardest during the post-“Liberation Day” crash from April 2nd to April 8th. The worst were the ones that held up best during the Trump-tariff crash. You can see this in the chart below that breaks the S&P into deciles (10 groups of 50 stocks each) based on performance from 4/2 to 4/8. The bars show the average performance yesterday of the stocks in each decile. The three deciles of stocks that did the worst during the tariff crash from 4/2 to 4/8 saw average gains of more than 5% yesterday. The 50 stocks that held up the best from 4/2 to 4/8 actually fell an average of 0.95% yesterday. This clearly highlights yesterday’s rotation out of tariff resistant names into tariff exposed names.
It has taken a gain of more than 17% off the lows for the S&P 500 to finally tick back up into overbought territory:
The Closer – Record Customs Duties, Small Range, Deciles – 5/12/25
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Looking for deeper insight into markets? In tonight’s Closer sent to Bespoke Institutional clients, we start with a look at the record share of federal government receipts coming in from customs duties in addition to a technical update of the S&P 500 (page 1). We also make note of the S&P 500’s remarkably tight intraday range despite the 3% gain today (page 2). We then provide a decile breakdown of today’s price action (page 3) before capping off with an update on positioning (pages 4 and 6).
See today’s full post-market Closer and everything else Bespoke publishes by starting a 14-day trial to Bespoke Institutional today!
Daily Sector Snapshot — 5/12/25
Chart of the Day: Don’t Chase
Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 5/12/25
See what’s driving market performance around the world in today’s Morning Lineup. Bespoke’s Morning Lineup is the best way to start your trading day. Read it now by starting a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium. CLICK HERE to learn more and start your trial.
“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.” – Cormac McCarthy
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
US equity futures are up 3% pre-market on news that the US and China would be pausing tariffs for 90 days after meetings between the two in Geneva over the weekend.
As shown below, SPY is set to open above its March highs and back in positive territory since Election Day last November.
Stocks most dependent on China for cheap imports are soaring this morning. Below is a look at the pre-market moves for stocks in some of the “tariff losers” baskets we’ve highlighted in the last five weeks. Wayfair (W) is up the most at 16.2%, followed by RH (+15.6%) and elf Beauty (+10.2%). Best Buy (BBY), Yeti (YETI) and SharkNinja (SN) are all up 8%+ as well.
Brunch Reads – 5/11/25
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.
Kasparov and the Computer: On May 11, 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue, a supercomputer designed specifically for chess, defeated Garry Kasparov, widely considered the greatest chess player of all time, in a six-game match. It was the first time a computer beat a reigning world champion, which ended 2-1 with three draws.
Kasparov had held the world title since 1985. He had previously played and beaten an earlier version of Deep Blue in 1996, winning 4–2 after a brief scare in Game 1. But IBM upgraded the machine substantially for the 1997 rematch, doubling its processing power to evaluate around 200 million positions per second. It also included a team of grandmasters who helped fine-tune its evaluation algorithms between games.
The 1997 match began in New York City, where Deep Blue took Game 1, but Kasparov rebounded with a win in Game 2. In Game 2, Kasparov believed the machine had made a move so nuanced that it must have been aided by a human. The turning point came in Game 5, a tense draw in which Kasparov, showing uncharacteristic nervousness, offered an early draw in a promising position. Then, in Game 6, Deep Blue shocked the world by dismantling Kasparov in just 19 moves. Visibly agitated, Kasparov accused IBM of foul play and demanded access to the computer’s logs and a rematch. IBM declined and disbanded the Deep Blue project shortly after. While the victory was not proof of consciousness or human-like thought, it was symbolic in the sense that a machine had outplayed a human at the apex of intellectual competition.
AI & Technology
Zuckerberg Says in Response to Loneliness Epidemic, He Will Create Most of Your Friends Using Artificial Intelligence (Futurism)
Mark Zuckerberg says the average American has fewer than three friends and sees AI chatbots as a way to fill that social gap. In a recent interview, he floated the idea that people might one day bond more with bots than with other humans, even as Meta’s own AI tools are criticized for crossing serious ethical lines and exposing underage users to inappropriate content. Is the push for AI “friends” about solving loneliness, or just Meta’s latest attempt to monetize human disconnection? [Link]
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