Biden doubled the vaccination target upward and confirmed that the next phase of important issues is to rebuild infrastructure, the Federal Reserve advanced to the end of June to end restrictions on bank dividends and repurchases, the broader U.S. stock market in this series of good stimulus higher, but a number of leading technology stocks dragged the Nasdaq had turned down during the day, although the end of the turn up but failed to reverse the week’s decline. Under the pressure of bulk institutional selling, some popular Chinese stocks such as Akiyo plunged during the day, and Chinese Education stocks such as Heilongjiang, which had been rumored to have negative regulatory news, also plunged.
The University of Michigan Consumer Confidence Index hit a one-year high in March, but at the same Time consumer Inflation expectations for the next five to 10 years rose to a six-year high. Inflation expectations continue to rise in the market, with the 10-, 20- and 30-year inflation indicators hitting at least near seven-year highs and the 2-year even hitting a near 14-year high. U.S. bond prices continued to fall and yields continued to rise, with 10-year U.S. bond yields setting new three-day intraday highs. And with European stocks rebounding across the board, European bond prices retreated and German bond yields came off five-week lows.
In commodities, media said the Suez Canal, which was expected to be blocked by a giant ship in just a few days, now appears to take at least a week; Crude Oil futures rebounded after unsuccessful efforts to get the ship off the shallow end on Friday, though U.S. oil still failed to recover all of its losses for the week. Partly benefiting from days of gains in the dollar index, precious metals such as Gold and industrial metals such as copper also rebounded, and cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin also reversed their losses, but precious metals and cryptocurrencies remained down throughout the week, and some industrial metals such as copper also fell.
Leading tech stocks turn up, U.S. stocks pull up in late trading
The three major U.S. stock indexes opened collectively higher, but the Nasdaq Composite Index, which had risen more than 0.7% in early trading, turned lower in midday trading. The S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average both brushed new daily highs at midday, the S&P had risen nearly 0.9%, the Dow rose more than 270 points, after the Nasdaq turned down, the S&P and the Dow brushed new daily lows, narrowing gains, the Dow rose less than 62 points at one point, the S&P rose less than 0.2%.
The end of some of the leading technology stocks such as Apple turned up, the three stock indexes collectively pulled up, the Nifty quickly turned up after refreshing the daily high, the Dow hit a new intraday high, the S&P approached the intraday record high. The three major indices eventually closed up more than 1%.
The Dow closed up 453.40 points, or 1.39%, at 33072.88 points, and the S&P closed up 1.66%, at 3974.54 points, both closing at record highs, and both hitting their biggest closing gains since March 5. The Nasdaq closed up 1.24% at 13,138.72 points, the largest closing gain since March 11.
This week, the Dow rose 1.36%, the S&P rose 1.57%, both erasing all losses last week, the Nasdaq fell 0.58%, down two weeks in a row.
Small-cap stocks had turned down at midday, with the end of the pull up, and eventually continue to outperform the broader market, value stocks dominated by small-cap index Russell 2000 closed up 1.76%, but this week’s cumulative decline of 2.89%, inferior to the three major stock indexes. The technology-heavy Nasdaq 100 index closed up 1.55%, with a cumulative gain of 0.87% for the week.
The S&P 500’s 11 major sectors, only down more than 0.3% on Friday, telecommunications services 1 closed lower, energy, information technology, materials and real estate were up more than 2%, in addition to rising nearly 0.4% of utilities, other sectors rose at least 1.7%. Essential consumer goods were the best performers throughout the week, while non-essential consumer goods were the worst performers.
U.S. bond yields rose for two days in a row, with market 10-year and 2-year inflation hitting new eight-year and 14-year highs
U.S. Treasury prices continued to rise, with yields rising for the second consecutive day. U.S. 10-year benchmark Treasury yields had risen above 1.68% during the European session on Friday, refreshing the recent three-day intraday high, up more than 5 basis points during the day, before giving back some of the gains, U.S. stocks had briefly fallen back below 1.64 in early trading, and regained 1.66% at lunchtime, to about 1.66% at the close of U.S. stocks, up 3 basis points during the day.
Yields on U.S. bonds of all maturities fell cumulatively over the week, with yields on long bonds falling significantly more than those on short bonds. By the end of Friday in New York, the yields on 10-year and 30-year U.S. bonds had fallen by 4.5 and 5.5 basis points, respectively, and the 2-year yield had fallen by 1 basis point this week.
The 10-year flat inflation rate (breakeven inflation rate), measured by the spread between the 10-year Treasury note and the inflation-protected Treasury note (TIPS), rose more than 5 basis points intraday on Friday to a new high of 2.3715% since April 2013, breaking 2.37% for the first time in eight years.
The 20-year and 30-year TIPS breakeven inflation rates rose about 3 and more than a basis point to 2.3255% and 2.3258%, new highs since August and September 2014, respectively. 2-year breakeven inflation rate rose more than 8.2 basis points to a new high since May 2007 to 2.7470%. 5-year rose more than 6.5 basis points to a new daily high of 2.6583%, close to the March 17 high. The 5-year rose more than 6.5 basis points to a new daily high of 2.6583%, approaching the high of 2.6719% set on March 17 since July 2008.
European government bond prices rebounded collectively on Friday, as yields recovered. The yield on the benchmark 10-year U.K. government bond rose about 3 basis points to 0.75% during the day; the yield on the German government bond rose 4 basis points to -0.35% during the same period, breaking away from the five-week low hit on Thursday. This week, British bond yields fell by about 8 basis points, German bond yields fell by about 6 basis points.
The U.S. dollar index ended a three-game winning streak and fell to a four-month high Bitcoin rose more than 5% above $54,000 intraday, but fell nearly $5,000 for the week
The ICE dollar index (DXY), which tracks the exchange rate of a basket of six major currencies, turned up during the European session, rising above 92.87 as it set a new daily high, closing in on the intraday high set on Thursday since November last year, up more than 0.02% during the day, but U.S. stocks turned down again before the session, falling below 92.65 as it set a new daily low at midday, down more than 0.2% during the day.
By Friday’s close, the dollar index was slightly below 92.70, down 0.16% intraday, ending a three-day streak of gains, up more than 0.8% for the week, up two weeks in a row; the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index fell 0.2%.
Mainstream cryptocurrencies ended their streak of daily declines on Friday. Bitcoin (BTC) rose above $54,000 at midday in the U.S. stock market to set a new daily high, up nearly $2,800 from the intra-day low in early Asian trading, a percentage gain of more than 5%, and closed above $54,100 in the U.S. stock market, up more than 3% in 24 hours, down about $4,800 from Friday’s U.S. stock market close, and down more than 8% in the last seven days.
Cryptocurrencies mostly accumulated losses throughout the week, but Ripple (XRP) rose more than 18% in seven days.
Crude oil rallies up over 4%, U.S. oil still down two weeks in a row
International crude oil futures rebounded on Friday. U.S. WTI crude oil erased Thursday’s losses, and despite three days of gains this week, was still down for the week; Brent crude oil erased most of Thursday’s losses, and was up slightly for the week.
WTI May crude oil futures closed up $2.41, or 4.11%, at $60.97 per barrel, down 0.76% for the week, the second consecutive week of cumulative losses after three consecutive weeks of gains, but the decline was significantly more moderate than last week, down nearly 6.4% last week, the largest single-week decline since the week of October 2 last year.
Friday Brent May crude oil futures closed up $2.62, or 4.23%, at $64.57 per barrel, up 0.06% for the week, last week’s cumulative decline of nearly 6.8% for Brent oil, also hit the biggest weekly decline since the week of early October last year, before last week’s big drop, Brent oil rose for six weeks in a row.
Gold and silver rebounded but still ended a two-week winning streak for the whole week, while copper posted its biggest closing gain in two weeks but fell for two weeks in a row
Gold futures in New York rebounded after returning to a more than one-week low on Thursday, with COMEX April gold futures closing up 0.4% at $1,732.30 per ounce on Friday, after a cumulative loss of about 0.5% for the week. This mainly stems from the fact that gold futures closed down 0.8% on Tuesday, the biggest closing loss since March 8. New York silver and platinum futures also rebounded, with silver futures rising above $25.10, coming off a closing low since Jan. 15, down 4.59 percent for the week, and gold both ending a two-week rally. Platinum rose 2% on Friday, after falling 1.85% for the week, a two-week losing streak.
London base metals futures rebounded across the board Friday. Copper came out of a more than two-week low, the biggest gain in two weeks, but still failed to regain the $9,000 mark at the close. Lead and zinc ended a three-day losing streak, coming out of one-week and two-week lows, respectively. Tin ended its two-day losing streak and broke out of a two-week trough. Nickel and aluminum erased Thursday’s losses.
Base metals were mixed this week, with copper down two weeks in a row, lead down five weeks in a row, zinc ending a two-week losing streak; tin up three weeks in a row, aluminum and nickel up two weeks in a row.
Gold, silver, oil and copper in the four major commodities, this week, the worst performance of silver.
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