Monday, June 21, 2021

Tech Shines, Gold Doesn't

 

By Alex Eule |  Thursday, June 17

Tech Still Rises. Investors have had two trading sessions to digest the Federal Reserve's plans for the economy and its (slight) openness to raising rates. The textbook response would have been to send value stocks higher, while selling off more expensive growth stocks. Sure enough, the opposite has happened. For a second straight day, the Nasdaq Composite outperformed. The tech-heavy index was up 0.9% today, closing within spitting distance of an all-time high. 

Meanwhile, the broad-based S&P 500 was essentially flat. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, more of a proxy for value stocks, fell 210 points, or 0.6%, its fourth consecutive decline.

While the Fed is finally in its talking-about-thinking-about rate-increases mode, investors aren't really buying it. The 10-year Treasury yield slid today, down six basis points, or six hundredths of a percentage point, to 1.509%.

The 10-year yield is now down a quarter of a percentage point since its high of 1.749% on March 31. As yields have fallen, tech stocks have resumed their outperformance. The Nasdaq has returned 6.9% since March 31, while the S&P 500 is up 6.3% and the Dow is up 3.2%. 

There was one more predictable casualty of the Fed's talk. Gold fell 4.6% today, to $1,773.80 an ounce. It was the precious metal's worst day since November. 

My colleague Barbara Kollmeyer covered the fall here. She quotes Ipek Ozkardeskaya, a senior analyst at Swissquote:  

Higher yields increase the opportunity cost of holding the non-interest-bearing gold, and prospects of a further rise in yields should cap the upside potential in the yellow metal despite the rising inflationary pressures.

Gold miners and other commodity producers fell as well today, including Newmont (-7%), Freeport McMoRan (-5.2%), and Nucor (-4.7%). 

 

 


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