Today's Edition
NEW YORK (AP)
The US stock market is pulling back on Tuesday, while gold and silver bounce higher after their latest sell-off.
The S&P 500 fell 1.6% for one of its sharpest drops so far this year and slipped further from its all-time high set last week.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 531 points, or 1.1%, as of 2:05 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 2.4% lower.
Several influential Big Tech stocks weighed on the market, including drops of 4% for Nvidia and 3.3% for Microsoft.
They helped drown out a 5.5% climb for Palantir Technologies, which reported bigger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Its forecast for 61% growth in revenue this year also topped analysts’ expectations.
Action remained strong in the metals markets.
Gold’s price climbed 6.1% to settle at $4,935 per ounce in its latest swing since its jaw-dropping rally suddenly halted last week. Silver’s price, which has been whipping through even wilder moves, leaped 8.2%.
Gold and silver prices had been climbing for more than a year as investors looked for safer places to park their cash amid worries about everything from tariffs to a weaker US dollar to heavy debt loads for governments worldwide.
Their prices took off in particular last month, and gold’s price at one point had roughly doubled over 12 months.
But those rallies suddenly gave out last week, and gold’s price dropped from close to $5,600 to less than $4,500 on Monday.
Silver plunged 31.4% on Friday alone.
Many traders say expectations that President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates high to fight inflation were what turned the momentum initially, though some disagree.
Most agree that simple gravity took over afterward. After gold and silver prices had shot up so much, so quickly, they were bound to fall back at some point, particularly with so many investors piling in to use gold as a way to bet on continued weakness for the US dollar.
The Walt Disney Co. slipped 0.8% after it said Josh D’Amaro, head of the company’s parks business, will become its next CEO in March.
On the winning side of the market was PepsiCo, which rose 3.5% after the snack and beverage giant’s profit and revenue for the latest quarter nudged past analysts’ expectations.
It also said it would cut prices this year on Lay’s, Doritos and other snacks to try and win back inflation-weary customers.
In stock markets abroad, indexes bounced back in Asia from sharp losses the prior day. South Korea’s Kospi surged 6.8% for its best day since the wild days of the COVID crash and recovery in early 2020.
The Kospi is home to many tech stocks, including Samsung Electronics, which surged 11.4%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 rallied 3.9%, while stocks rose 1.3% in Shanghai.
