Tanker freight was the largest move in the tables, down 17.17 percent to 691.6 dollars and down 23.06 percent on the week. Today’s commodities roundup flags that the fall runs against the week’s Hormuz headlines, including the IRGC claim, still unconfirmed, that two tankers and a tugboat caught fire in the strait (see today’s Hormuz story), and no story in this morning’s reporting explains the freight drop as a response to confirmed news, so it reads as the shipping market unwinding its disruption premium.
Silver miners rose 9.6 percent to 78.11 dollars and gold miners rose 9.01 percent to 84.59 dollars, with gold futures up 1.57 percent to 4,137 dollars an ounce and silver futures up 1.21 percent to 52.75 dollars. Today’s updated gold and silver story ties the bullion rally to a softer dollar and falling Treasury yields after the midterm elections, with a Democrat controlled Congress read as a constraint on both deficit expansion and the war path.
Mega-cap technology rallied hard: Microsoft rose 6.68 percent to 555.8 dollars, Amazon rose 6.12 percent to 266.03 dollars and Apple rose 5.31 percent to 349.51 dollars, and the Hang Seng rose 3.67 percent. No story in this morning’s reporting explains the individual mega-cap jumps beyond the broad post-election rebound, and the chip complex itself lagged, with Nvidia down 3.17 percent, semiconductors down 3.14 percent and Qualcomm warning that handset revenue fell 26 percent on the memory squeeze (see today’s Qualcomm story).
Copper miners rose 3.97 percent and rare earth miners rose 4.02 percent, extending the metals bid beyond bullion. The mining beat’s news was expansionary rather than defensive, led by Freeport’s Bagdad approval earlier in the week and today’s Caledonia bridge facility for the Bilboes gold project and Rare Earths Norway’s Fen pilot plant.
The cross-market read is a war premium unwind with a rates tailwind. Brent crude rose 0.67 percent to 95.25 dollars but is down 17.09 percent on the week, freight is deflating, and the US 10 year yield fell 5.8 basis points to 4.89 percent after the Treasury refunding held coupon sizes unchanged (see today’s Treasury yields story), while bullion, miners and equities are bid together. The exception is semiconductors, still carrying the handset and memory squeeze story, and the open question for today is whether the Bank of England’s decision at noon London time extends the global easing in yields or interrupts it.