Gold and Silver prices are very strong again this week with gold setting a new all time high of $6154 CAD currently back to $6125.. Spot gold is up 9% in the past 5 days and up 21% in the past month. Silver is up 9% to $76.22CAD. US Dollar index DXY is down 1% at 98.08. SP500 Volatility Index VIX rose 55%. SP 500 ES futures are flat 0% this past week after failing to a push higher for the first time in weeks, currently trading 6632.. Crude WTI futures have spent the entire week under $60, currently $56.75, down 12% in the past month. The US Government Shutdown continues with prediction markets indicating it will likely last beyond the end of the month.
$4.4 Trillion Dollar US market giant NVDA is down 6% this week to $181.81 after it failed to rise above the key $200/share level earlier this month. In late September NVDA announced it will invest up to $100B into Open Ai. Open Ai had already agreed to spend that investment back into Oracle who will provide cloud compute to Open Ai and lease NVDA chips. The combined deal allows all 3 companies to bolster their perceived financial stability, though critics have questioned if the deal simply allows the recognition of revenue and investment earlier than it is actually crystallised - by recording the profit from the sale immediately but deferring the cost of the depreciation over the lifetime of the contract.. CNBC reported on Monday “In an interview with CNBC's David Faber at Oracle's AI World conference on Monday, [Oracle Ceo] Magouyrk said of course OpenAI can pay $60 billion for a year's worth of cloud resources. In July, OpenAI agreed to a five-year deal with Oracle that's worth more than $300 billion.” Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle briefly became the richest person in the world on Sept. 10 after Oracle rose 36%.
On Thursday, BBC reported “John Bolton, who served as Donald Trump's national security adviser before becoming a vocal critic of the president, has been criminally indicted on federal charges..” The FBI have searched his home and the charges stem from his alleged mismanagement of classified documents.
"Now, I have become the latest target in weaponizing the Justice Department to charge those he [Trump] deems to be his enemies with charges that were declined before or distort the facts," Bolton said.
Crypto was crushed last Friday with BTC down 9% this week to $106,750 USD after pushing to a new all time high of $126,100 on October 6th. ETH is down 16% in the past month to $3790. CNN Reported “After Trump's tariff threat Friday, nervous investors dumped their riskier bets and fled to the perceived safety of government-issued Treasury bonds and gold.”
S&P AeroSpace and Defense ETF XAR fell 3% in the past 5 days to $238.15. Weekly Jobless Claims reporting is suspended due to the government shutdown. The Gold/Silver ratio is up 1.75% to 80.69. Longer 20 yr and 30 yr US government bonds are down nearly ⅕% at 4.53 and 4.56% respectively. Ai powered Government Contractor Palantir PLTR fell 4% this week, currently $178.12. With the first rate cut now in since the Sept 17th FOMC meeting; The probability of a total of only 25 bps in rate cuts in 2025 as priced by PolyMarket fell to 0%, the probability of 50 bps in cuts fell 10pts to 21% and the probability of 75 bps in cuts rose 5pts to 74% and the probability of a full 100bps in cuts currently stands at 10%. Short term rates are down 21bps in the 2yr at 3.38, their lowest level since Sept 2022. US Comex Copper Futures HG, a leading indicator of economic growth, is down 15 cents to $4.93 usd/lb.