All investment categories except commodities showed nice gains last week. Interestingly, the week's biggest winners and losers were both commodities, with coffee rising a stunning 7.5% and cotton dropping 3.6%. Silver and crude oil both lost ground, down 2.8% and 1.3% respectively, while copper was slightly higher, up 0.7%.
Currencies were all higher for the week, and the JPY and USD are now close to breaking even over the last 12 months. The EUR in contrast, although up this week, is still down almost 13% from a year ago. Bonds were also higher, with the short term SHY gaining 3.9% while the long term bonds (TLT) rose 2.8%.
Broad market equities were higher, with the Nikkei up 6.1% and the S&P 500 up 3.3%, but in line with the week's poor commodities returns, resource stocks represented by the HUI were off 1.1%, Since it's recent bottom at 5.8 grams on May 18th, the HUI had bounced back 13% last week, but gave up some of those gains on Thursday and Friday, closing the week 9.4% above the May low. Over the last 12 months, however, the HUI is down 19%, lagging far behind the Dow and the S&P (which are both up about 3% for the last year), and performing even worse than the Nikkei, which is down 9%.
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