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Wall Street Mixed; Gold, Silver Bounce 02/03 09:07
The U.S. stock market is holding relatively steady on Tuesday, while gold
and silver bounce back from their latest selloff.
NEW YORK (AP) -- The U.S. stock market is holding relatively steady on
Tuesday, while gold and silver bounce back from their latest selloff.
The S&P 500 rose 0.1% and was flirting with its all-time high set last week.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 207 points, or 0.4%, as of 9:40 a.m.
Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.1% lower.
Palantir Technologies helped lead the way and climbed 7.5% after reporting
bigger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Its
forecast for 61% growth in revenue this year also topped analysts'
expectations, as CEO Alex Karp crowed that his company is unique and that
"these numbers prove it."
The better-than-expected performance helped calm some of the worries in the
market that AI customers may not get as big a payoff for their investments as
they expected. Such concerns have been weighing on AI stocks after they shot to
records because of the frenzy underway in AI tech.
The strengthened optimism helped South Korea's Kospi surge 6.8% for its best
day since the wild days of the COVID crash and recovery in early 2020. Just a
day earlier, it had tumbled 5.3% from its record for its worst day in almost 10
months. The Kospi is home to many tech stocks, including Samsung Electronics,
which surged 11.4%.
The action was even stronger, again, in metals markets. Gold's price climbed
6.3% to $4,947.80 per ounce in its latest swing since its jaw-dropping rally
suddenly halted last week.
Silver's price, which has been whipping though even wilder moves, leaped
13.1%.
Gold and silver had been climbing for more than a year as investors looked
for safer places to park their cash amid worries about everything from tariffs
to a weaker U.S. dollar to huge debt loads for governments worldwide. Their
prices took off in particular last month, and gold's price at one point had
roughly doubled over 12 months.
But those rallies suddenly gave out last week, and gold's price dropped from
close to $5,600 to less than $4,500 on Monday. Silver plunged 31.4% on Friday
alone.
Many traders say expectations that President Donald Trump's nominee to lead
the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates high to fight inflation were what
turned the momentum initially, though some disagree. Most agree that simple
gravity then took over.
After gold and silver prices had shot up so much, so quickly, they were
bound to fall back at some point, particularly with so many investors piling in
to use gold as a way to bet on continued weakness for the U.S. dollar.
"The move underscored how stretched anti-USD positioning had become,"
according to volatility strategists at Barclays.
On Wall Street, PepsiCo rose 2.8% after the snack and beverage giant's
profit and revenue for the latest quarter nudged past analysts' expectations,
though it also said it would cut prices this year on Lay's, Doritos and other
snacks to try and win back inflation-weary customers.
That helped work against a 18.2% drop for PayPal, which reported weaker
results for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It also named a new CEO
after it said "the pace of change and execution" over the last two years "was
not in line" with the board or directors' expectations.
Pfizer fell 3.6% even though it reported stronger profit for the latest
quarter than analysts expected. The pharmaceutical company gave a forecasted
range for profit in 2026 whose midpoint was below analysts' expectations.
The Walt Disney Co. slipped 1.2% after it said Josh D'Amaro, head of the
company's parks business, will become its next CEO in March.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury held at 4.29%, where
it was late Monday.
In stock markets abroad, indexes bounced back in Asia from sharp losses the
prior day. Japan's Nikkei 225 rallied 3.9%, while stocks rose 1.3% in Shanghai
and 0.2% in Hong Kong.
Indexes were weaker in Europe, where France's CAC 40 fell 0.6%.
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