Gold News

Stocks Priced in Gold -4% in March So Far Despite New S&P Record

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.
 
Chart of the S&P500 price index of US stocks divided by the Dollar-price of gold per Troy ounce, weekly since 1969. Source: BullionVault
 
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.
 

Adrian Ash

Adrian Ash, BullionVault Gold News

Adrian Ash is director of research at BullionVault, the world-leading physical gold, silver, platinum and palladium market for private investors online. Formerly head of editorial at London's top publisher of private-investment advice, he was City correspondent for The Daily Reckoning from 2003 to 2008, and he has now been researching and writing daily analysis of precious metals and the wider financial markets for over 20 years. A frequent guest on BBC radio and television, Adrian is regularly quoted by the Financial Times, MarketWatch and many other respected news outlets, and his views from inside the bullion market have been sought by the Economist magazine, CNBC, Bloomberg, Germany's Handelsblatt and FAZ, plus Italy's Il Sole 24 Ore.

See the full archive of Adrian Ash articles on GoldNews.

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