Exploring Trends Across Asset Classes, Mega-Caps, and Banks
Equities have stalled out in the last half of August as a buyer’s strike ahead of the seasonally weak month of September takes hold. Below is a look at where equity ETFs and other asset-class ETFs stand within their trading ranges using our Trend Analyzer tool. Notably, gold (GLD) is now solidly in the lead in terms of year-to-date percentage change after Bitcoin (IBIT) has fallen off dramatically in the last week. Of the various asset class ETFs shown, Bitcoin (IBIT) is easily down the most week-over-week with a drop of 4.8%. On the flip side, oil (USO) is up the most with a gain of 3.5%.
Looking at the mega-caps, the best performer over the last week has been Tesla (TSLA), which remains the worst performer of the group on a year-to-date basis. Alphabet (GOOGL) is the only other mega-cap in the green over the last week, while the rest of them are down 1%+. So far, Microsoft (MSFT) is the only one that has moved back below its 50-day moving average.
One other area of the market worth looking at is the banks and brokerage firms. While Bank of America (BAC) is up the least year-to-date of any of the stocks shown, it’s up the most over the last week with a gain of 3.3%. BAC is also now the most overbought stock of the bunch as it trades nearly two standard deviations above its 50-day moving average. On the flipside, Coinbase’s (COIN) 4.6% drop over the last week leaves it as the only name in the group that’s below its 50-DMA.
As a reminder, you can monitor trends across ETFs, sectors, groups, and indices using our Trend Analyzer tool, available to Bespoke members.
The Closer – Funding, New Homes, AI Dynamics – 8/25/25
Log-in here if you’re a member with access to the Closer.
Looking for deeper insight into markets? In tonight’s Closer sent to Bespoke Institutional clients, we start out with commentary on funding markets (page 1) followed by a look into the latest manufacturing data out of the Dallas Fed (page 2). We then shift over to the update on new home sales (page 3). Afterward, we review the differing performance in AI names (page 4) and close out with a rundown of the latest positioning data (page 5).
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 — 8/25/25
If Alphabet “Missed the AI Boat”, What Does That Mean for Microsoft?
Since the launch of ChatGPT, the consensus has been that Microsoft (MSFT) has been one of the AI winners while Alphabet (GOOGL) missed the boat. Some of the criticism towards GOOGL was earned as the company was late in launching a consumer AI product/tool, and then had a clumsy launch once it did. What many investors overlooked, though, was the fact that GOOGL branded itself an ‘AI first’ company way back in April 2016. Now, just because a company calls itself AI-first doesn’t mean it is. After all, anyone can say they’re an NFL-caliber quarterback, but only three dozen or so people are at any one time. In GOOGL’s case, though, missing the boat was hardly an accurate description of the situation.
Even now, nearly three years after the launch of ChatGPT, most investors view MSFT as the winner relative to GOOGL, if for no other reason than its investments in OpenAI that have given it a 49% share of the company’s future profits. Given the overall sentiment, how much do you think MSFT has outperformed GOOGL by since the launch of ChatGPT? The answer is that it hasn’t. As shown in the chart below, while MSFT has nearly doubled (+97.9%), GOOGL is now up nearly ten percentage points more with a gain of 107.6% and has just eclipsed MSFT in the back-and-forth race for outperformance.
The chart below shows the performance spread between the two stocks since ChatGPT’s launch. For the most part, GOOGL has been moderately underperforming MSFT, but it hasn’t been consistent. Overall, the average margin of underperformance has been less than 3 percentage points, so it has hardly been a runaway train in favor of MSFT. Even more, the widest the performance spread has grown between the two stocks at any point since ChatGPT’s launch was 43 percentage points in GOOGL’s favor. For MSFT, there hasn’t been a point since ChatGPT’s launch where it outperformed GOOGL by more than 31 percentage points. If GOOGL missed it, what exactly was the boat it missed?
Chart of the Day: August Vacation for Winners
Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 8/25/25 – While You Were Out
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.
“Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don’t you think?” – The Wizard of Oz
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
If last week’s rally to close out the week felt like a Friday, this morning’s futures feel a bit like a Monday as futures are modestly lower in what feels like a sluggish market. The big headline this morning is probably a story from Friday where the President threatened tariffs on furniture makers who import goods from overseas. Stocks like Wayfair and RG are trading sharply lower in response,
The only economic reports on the calendar are New Home Sales at 10 AM and the Dallas Fed report at 10:30. Earnings season is mostly over, except for the elephant in the room – Nvidia (NVDA)- which reports Wednesday after the close.
Friday’s gain wasn’t the first 1%+ rally this summer, but it was the largest gain for the S&P 500 since the day after Memorial Day. Even with that gain, the S&P 500 only managed to squeak out a gain of 0.3% for the week, owing to the five-day losing streak that the market was riding heading into Friday. Last week, we showed the chart of the S&P 500’s performance during the week of the Fed’s Jackson Hole symposium, and below we have updated it to include last week’s 0.3% gain. While it was a weaker-than-normal Jackson Hole week, last week was the third straight year of positive returns and the fifth in the last six.
While most investors were checked out for the weekend, crypto markets had some major moves. Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, gave up all of Friday’s gains and fell to its lowest level since early July. The catalyst for the decline was a massive sale of 24,000 coins worth over $167 billion from a Bitcoin whale on Saturday. As shown in the chart below, for now, Bitcoin remains above support at the $109,000 level, but a break of that support within just two weeks of hitting a record high wouldn’t be a positive technical signal.
While Bitcoin investors may have been wishing that it didn’t trade on weekends after Saturday’s decline, Ethereum continues to gain attention and share in the crypto space. Around the time that Bitcoin was hitting record highs a couple of weeks ago, Ethereum was pulling back and testing support from its highs last fall. That support held, and over the weekend, Bitcoin broke out to new 52-week and record highs.
Looking at Ethereum from a 5-year time frame, its parabolic run over the last several weeks rocketed right through prior resistance in the low 4,000 range, right up to the highs from late 2021 and just under 5,000.
Brunch Reads – 8/24/25
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.
The Walls Kept Tumbling Down: On the morning of August 24, 79 CE, life in the Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum began like any other summer day. Merchants opened their shops, farmers tended their fields, and families prepared meals. But by midday, Mount Vesuvius, long thought to be just another mountain, erupted. A towering column of ash, pumice, and noxious gases shot twelve miles upward, more than twice the height of Mount Everest, darkening the daylight and raining fragments onto the towns below.
In Pompeii, streets quickly filled with debris as terrified citizens tried to flee. Roofs collapsed under the weight of falling pumice, and those who stayed behind struggled to breathe in the thickening air. Across the bay in Herculaneum, many believed they were safer, but hours later, superheated pyroclastic surges swept down the volcano’s flanks at speeds up to 70 miles per hour. The waves of ash, gas, and molten rock buried the town instantly, sealing its people in place.
By dawn the next day, both cities lay under about 16 feet of volcanic material. Pompeii was smothered in ash, and thousands died, frozen in plaster-like casts of their final moments. What had been bustling Roman communities were erased in less than 24 hours, only to be rediscovered nearly 1,700 years later. It is one of the most visited sites in the world today, as the ruins were preserved exactly as the people and buildings had been left.
AI & Technology
Brace for a crash before the golden age of AI (Financial Times)
Big Tech is pouring unprecedented sums ($750 billion this year and next from just four companies) into data centers to fuel AI, yet history suggests these spending frenzies often end in crashes before real gains arrive. Scholar Carlota Perez frames AI as part of a familiar cycle: a manic installation phase marked by bubbles and upheaval, which eventually lays the groundwork for broader prosperity. What’s different now is the software-driven scale of AI, the global reach of tools like ChatGPT, and the open question of whether today’s giants can capture the long-term rewards, or if instability, debt, and political fractures derail the path to a golden age. [Link]
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The Bespoke Report – 8/22/25 – Cut Confirmed
To read our weekly Bespoke Report newsletter and access everything else Bespoke’s research platform offers, start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium. This week, Fed Chair Powell signaled a cut is almost a given at the next FOMC meeting. His embrace of dovish arguments on both the labor markets and inflation drove a massive rally in stocks to end the week, both in the US and Europe. Other markets are also performing well with investment grade corporate bonds trading at a record low risk premium this week. We also discuss earnings, AI stocks, custom baskets of stocks that tease out market narratives, and more in this week’s report. Give it a read!
A Whipsaw Week
The first part of this week was driven by rotation out of the year’s winners into the year’s losers. Fast forward to Friday with Fed Chair Powell hinting at rate cuts in September, everything reversed. As shown below, breaking the Russell 1,000 into deciles (ten equal sized groups of 100 index members), today’s best performers were those that had been the worst performers from August 13th through yesterday’s close. The 100 stocks down the most from 8/13-8/21 gained over 4% today on average. Conversely, the deciles of the best performers from 8/13-8/21 still averaged gains today, but they were much weaker at just over 1%.
In the table below, we show the 25 best performing stocks in the Russell 1,000 today. As shown, wireless networking equipment maker Ubiquiti (UI) is experiencing the single largest gain of any stock in the index, up 28.8%. The stock’s surge comes after reporting a top and bottom line beat this morning with the announcement of a stock buyback and cash dividend. Earnings aside, the stock was a big decliner in the days prior, having fallen almost 20% since August 13. The next largest gain was another earnings story as Zoom Communications (ZM) rose 12.18% on its own top and bottom line beat.
On average, the stocks up the most today were down 4% from 8/13-8/21, with names like RH, Rocket (RKT), and QXO down 10%+ during this period. As Powell opened the door for another cut, many of the biggest gainers today were housing related or cyclical in nature. RH (RH) is a high-end home furnishing business whereas Rocket (RKT), Mr Cooper (COOP, and UWM (UWMC) represent mortgage lending. Homebuilder-adjacent names like Builders FirstSource (BLDR) and Floor & Decor (FND) likewise posted high-single digit gains today. Out of the transportation industry, travel and leisure names like Alaska Air (AIR) and Norwegian Cruises (NCLH) made the list in addition to logistics and goods transporters such as XPO (XPO).
The Triple Play Report — 8/22/25
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 highlights companies that have recently reported earnings triple plays, and it features commentary from management on triple-play conference calls, company descriptions and analysis, and price charts. 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 this week’s Triple Play Report, which features 28 new stocks. To sign up, choose either the monthly or annual checkout link below:
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Xometry (XMTR) is an example of a company that recently reported an earnings triple play before the open on 8/5. On a streak of six EPS and revenue beats, this quarter’s triple play saw the stock 43% higher on the day. That rally brought the stock out of the red on the year, and it has since climbed another 10%. What a month it’s been for XMTR shareholders!
Here’s how AI describes the company: Xometry (XMTR) is a technology company that operates a global AI-powered marketplace for on-demand manufacturing, connecting businesses that need custom parts with a network of more than 4,300 suppliers. Its platform covers a wide range of processes, including CNC machining, 3D printing, injection molding, sheet metal fabrication, and urethane casting, making it a one-stop solution for industries such as aerospace, defense, automotive, medical devices, and robotics. The company differentiates itself by offering instant quoting, dynamic pricing algorithms, and supplier-matching tools that leverage machine learning to improve accuracy and speed in sourcing. For enterprises, Xometry provides software integrations like Teamspace, which enables collaborative procurement across organizations, and Workcenter, a cloud-based platform that helps suppliers manage workflow, capacity, and payments. Through its asset-light model, Xometry addresses inefficiencies in the traditionally fragmented and offline manufacturing market, helping buyers diversify supply chains and reduce costs while allowing small and mid-sized manufacturers to monetize excess capacity and reach new customers globally.
XMTR turned in a strong Q2, with revenue up 23% from last year to $163 million, led by 26% growth in its core marketplace and a 31% jump overseas. The customer base keeps expanding, with nearly 75,000 active buyers, up 22%, and more large accounts spending above $50,000 annually. Profitability improved as well, with gross margin climbing to a record 40.1%, helped by smarter AI-driven pricing and new tools that speed up quoting and order processing. Recent product rollouts included instant quotes for new materials, a system that reads technical drawings automatically, and the launch of Teamspace in Europe, which makes it easier for teams to manage projects together. Suppliers also got a lift from a new mobile app that lets them track jobs and share updates more easily. Growth came across industries like aerospace, defense, automotive, and robotics, with a major European aerospace firm choosing Xometry as a preferred supplier, an account that could generate over $10 million annually. Management pointed out that marketplace margins have steadily climbed over the past four years, showing how scale and data continue to strengthen the model.
Looking at the snapshot below from our Earnings Explorer, Xometry (XMTR) reported its first triple play after a string on lower guidance. A 40% pop for the stock post-earnings isn’t totally new for XMTR, but it’s an impressive swing nonetheless. Beat rates have also been strong the last several quarters, a positive sign that the stock is on the right track.
As a bonus to this installment of the Triple Play Report, we’d like to point out a hard-hitting stat from one of the Triple Play stocks found within today’s report. Advertisement technology company Applovin (APP) has gained more than 10% on each of its last seven earnings reaction days and 11 of its last 12. We can’t think of another stock that has done this. These massive moves higher on basically every earnings report in the last couple years is one reason why it has been a 10-bagger since the start of 2024!
You can read more about XMTR, APP, and the 26 other triple plays we covered in our newest report by starting a Bespoke Institutional trial today.
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.