Gold futures fell 3.10 percent to 3876.3 dollars an ounce and silver futures fell 3.69 percent to 49.97 dollars, deepening the morning break below 4000 dollars. Today’s gold story ties the slide to the repricing after October’s inflation report, with traders fully pricing a December Federal Reserve rate hike, and the midday rates tape backed that up: the 5-year Treasury yield rose 12.5 basis points to 4.95 percent, the 10-year rose 10.9 basis points to 5.11 percent and the 30-year rose 8.0 basis points to 5.44 percent, all ahead of the 1:00 p.m. 30-year auction that today’s Treasury story sets up as the refunding’s final test.
Broadcom rose 5.81 percent to 365.29 dollars, the largest normalized move in the tables, while Nvidia fell 4.71 percent to 165.55 dollars. No story published today explains the Broadcom rise, and none is claimed here. Nvidia’s fall follows today’s updated Nvidia story: Jensen Huang resigned as chief executive, president and board member effective immediately, chief financial officer Colette Kress was named interim chief executive, and the Justice Department now has three separate inquiries involving Nvidia, Megaspeed and Super Micro, Semafor reported.
Tanker freight rose 4.98 percent to 570.40 dollars. Today’s Iran story reports Tehran’s claim, unconfirmed independently and graded accordingly, that four tankers are on fire in and near the Strait of Hormuz, alongside a separately reported projectile strike on a vessel off Ras Al-Khaimah, and President Trump’s post that the United States does not need a deal with Iran lifted crude in this morning’s reporting: Brent rose 1.98 percent to 94.60 dollars a barrel and WTI rose 1.29 percent to 87.65 dollars by midday.
The miner complex reversed Wednesday’s split. Rare earth miners fell 3.90 percent to 51.06 dollars after rising 2.49 percent at Wednesday’s close in today’s miner equities story, gold miners fell 2.53 percent, copper miners fell 2.53 percent, silver miners fell 2.50 percent, lithium and battery miners fell 2.38 percent and uranium miners fell 2.20 percent. The precious names tracked their metals lower, as the miner story’s logic would suggest; no story published today explains the critical-mineral reversal.
Natural gas rose 3.48 percent to 3.33 dollars per million BTU and is up 12.89 percent on the week, the strongest weekly move in the commodity tables; no clear single driver for the gas move appears in today’s reporting. Alphabet rose 2.80 percent to 301.67 dollars, and no story published today explains that rise either: today’s Google item is the European court adviser’s backing for the AdSense fine, which points the other way.
The cross-market read is a rates-led repricing with a geopolitical energy premium, not a broad risk-off selloff. Yields and the dollar rose together, with the dollar index up 0.25 percent at 103.16 and the dollar at 159.77 yen, near the 160 level where today’s yen story says intervention watch intensifies, while index equities barely moved, the S&P 500 up 0.21 percent and the Nasdaq 100 up 0.20 percent. Investors sold duration, precious metals and miners, paid up for tanker capacity and crude, and split the chip complex name by name. The 30-year auction at 1:00 p.m. is the session’s next test of whether buyers accept these yields.