Stocks Priced in Gold -4% in March So Far Despite New S&P Record
Wednesday, 3/13/2024 14:49
ONE WEEK ahead of the US Fed's March meeting on Dollar interest rates, gold prices rallied Wednesday, steadying $30 per ounce below last Friday's all-time spot market high as the US stock market edged back from the new all-time high it set last night.
Information technology stocks ended Tuesday 2.8% higher for March so far, while the S&P500 ex-IT index showed a 1.0% rise, putting the index as a whole 1.5% higher from the end of last month.
But shares in
AI chipmaker Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA) fell over 3% at today's opening in New York after rebounding Tuesday but failing to take out last Thursday's new top.
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Priced in bullion – which yesterday
snapped a 6-day run of new all-time gold highs – the S&P500 as a whole has now fallen by 4.4% so far in March.
That's after the S&P500 index reached a 2-year high in terms of the precious metal. It continues to trade almost 2/3rds above its long-term average when priced in gold ounces.
Gold priced in the US Dollar briefly touched $2170 per Troy ounce today before edging back to $2164, down 1.4% from Friday's new all-time spot-market high.
The price of silver meantime rebounded harder, recovering last weekend's new 2024 highs around $24.50 per Troy ounce, while fellow 'industrial' precious metals platinum and palladium also rallied towards multi-month highs at $930 and $1070 respectively.
Following Tuesday's stronger-than-expected US inflation data, betting on next week's Federal Reserve meeting sees only a 1-in-100 shot that the US central bank will start cutting the cost of borrowing from today's 2-decade highs in March.
June remains the consensus view – albeit with "no change" now
priced as a 1-in-3 shot for that month's Fed meeting – while end-year rate forecasts today edged up to 4.56%, the highest in more than 2 weeks according to interest-rate futures data analyzed and published by derivatives exchange the CME.
"Rate-sensitive [corporate US] shares such as utilities and real estate are relatively unchanged" for 2024 to date, says the
Wall Street Journal, noting that – despite the 30% pullback in former darling automaker Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) – "tech stocks
are still up double-digit percentages in 2024 [as a group, and] industrial and financial-services shares, tied more to the outlook for growth, have advanced at least 7%."
With Shanghai gold prices slipping a 2nd session from Monday's latest all-time high, China's CSI300 index today dropped 0.7% from Tuesday's 4-month high, trading higher by 1/8th from the 5-year low hit at the start of last month.
European equities have now gained 6.2% in Euro terms so far in 2024, rising Wednesday towards the 9th all-time record closing high in the last month on the EuroStoxx 600 index.
Gold prices for Euro investors meantime rallied to €1981 per Troy ounce, 1.3% below Friday's all-time spot-market high, while
the UK gold price in Pounds per ounce recovered Friday's record-high weekend closing level at £1693.
So-called cryptocurrency today set a new record above $73,000 as crude oil rose but major government bond prices slipped again, edging longer-term borrowing costs up to 1-week highs around 4.18% per annum on benchmark US Treasury debt.
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