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“It’s equal can not be seen on this earth.” – Anthony Lucas

Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.  

These words describe the image of oil soaring into the sky from beneath the clay Texas surface at the first major oil discovery in US history. It occurred 124 years ago today when Anthony Lucas and his partners struck black gold, starting the US oil industry. Lucas and company tried and failed for years to find oil underneath the Texas, but January 10^th, 1901, was the day their dreams were finally realized.

Like the dog that catches the car, right after finally finding success, the question quickly became “Now what?”  Once oil started flowing and launched the pipe they were drilling with 100s of feet in the air, they realized they had nowhere to put it or no way to stop it from flowing. First, they tried a 2.5-foot-high wall around the perimeter of the well, but it overflowed within 24 hours. They built a second wall at a wider circumference, but that quickly became overwhelmed too. A third wall covered 50 acres, but it wasn’t long before that was overflowing too. Talk about a good problem to have! Eventually, they got things under control and so began the modern-day US oil industry.

The chart below shows how US crude oil production started to take off after 1901. According to the Department of Energy, in 1900, the US produced 63 million barrels of crude oil annually. Within 10 years, production tripled. Another 10 years later, it more than doubled again and kept rising from there until peaking in 1970.  Production was nearly cut in half from 1970 through 2008 as analysts started to fear the world was running out of oil and prices shot well into the triple-digits. Then, proving the adage, that the cure for higher prices is higher prices, the shale boom arrived, and production since then has rebounded to a historic degree. So much for running out of oil.

Even as the US oil industry exploded in the early 1900s, exports were practically non-existent until more than 100 years after Lucas’ first discovery.  Beginning in the 2010s, though, exports surged like nothing ever seen before and now total a record 4+ million barrels per day.

When it comes to recent crude oil performance, prices were weak for most of the second half of 2024 after prices peaked in the high 80s during the spring. Over the next six months, WTI sank into the mid-60s where it started to stabilize. Since early December, though, prices have started to rebound with a rally this morning taking it above $75 per barrel and back above its 50-day moving average for the first time since October. While one level of resistance has been cleared, another remains at the downtrend line in the high $70s. If those levels get taken out, markets will find it increasingly difficult to prevent concerns over inflation from getting louder.

For the next couple of hours, though, December’s non-farm payrolls will be the market’s main area of focus, and the much higher-than-headline forecast has yields surging and equity futures plunging. At 4.78%, the 10-year yield is now at its highest level since November 2023.

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.

“When things go wrong, don’t go with them.” – Elvis Presley

Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.  

We had the wrong kind of “turnaround Tuesday” yesterday. Equities opened positively and then sold off throughout the trading day as the better-than-expected ISM Services and higher-than-expected Prices Paid component pushed yields higher and stock prices lower.  That weakness flowed into Asia overnight and Europe this morning where equities have been trading lower. The picture for today looks dicey again as yields continue to move higher. The 10-year yield is firmly above 4.7% and, in the UK, the 10-year yield has moved to its highest level since October 2008! There was just a brief respite in the selling of bonds as comments from Fed Governor Waller hit the tape where he said he supports rate cuts in 2025 provided the economy and inflation play out as expected, but it lasted less than a few minutes before yields were back near their highs of the day.

The ADP Employment report came in weaker than expected as total payrolls increased 122K versus forecasts for an increase of 136K. While weaker than expected, it was still a steady number and has helped to alleviate some of the pressure in bonds and stocks. Jobless claims also just hit the tape, and initial claims fell to 201K which was below forecasts while continuing claims came in higher than expected. Given the holidays, though, some of these claims numbers could be distorted.

Nowhere was yesterday’s negative reversal more pronounced than in Nvidia (NVDA). The stock opened at record highs and looked like it was going to breakout of its six-month trading range after Monday night’s keynote speech from CEO Jensen Huang. It quickly reversed lower throughout the session, though, and finished down by over 6% on the day and over 8% from its intraday high.  As shown in the chart below, yesterday was the sixth time in the last year that NVDA hit an all-time high intraday but then sold off at least 4% during the trading day.  While the first three are almost hard to notice given they occurred during steady uptrends for the stock, the last two marked short-term tops. While NVDA managed to stay above its 50-day moving average in yesterday’s decline, it closed closer to that level than any of the other prior reversals.

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 most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.” – Peter Thiel

Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.  

Below is a quick look at the performance of stocks so far in 2025 based on how they performed in 2024 using our decile analysis.  We broke the Russell 1,000 into deciles (10 groups of 100 stocks each) based on 2024 total returns and then calculated the average YTD performance over the first three trading days of 2025 for the stocks in each decile.  Interestingly, both the best performing stocks and worst performing stocks in 2024 have done well so far in 2025, while the stocks in the middle of the performance distribution in 2024 have lagged.  As shown below, the decile of 2024’s best performing stocks are already up another 3.88% on average in 2025, while the decile of 2024’s worst performing stocks are up the second-most of any decile with an average 2025 gain of 2.7%.