Market Update 2 Nov 2012 – Bitcoin recovers, Coffee makes new low

This was a good week for most investments, with all the currencies and bonds higher, all equities except gold stocks higher, and commodities mixed.

Bitcoin was the strongest currency, gaining 4.5% for the week, but this represents a recovery of less than half of last week's loss.  The Japanese Yen was the best performing government currency, rising 1.9%, closely followed by the USD and EUR.  Even the Canadian Dollar, the weakest of the bunch, rose 1.2%.

Bond values rose, but the short term treasuries outperformed the longer dated issues as SHY climbed 1.9% while TLT gained only 1.5%.

Conventional equities were all up, led by the Nikkei Index.  Bolstered by the strong performance of the JPY, the Nikkei gained 3.3% to close at 2.09g.  The S&P 500 rose 2% to close at 26.10g. Only the gold stocks declined, with the HUI Gold Bugs Index losing 1.6% to close at 8.76g.

Commodities were mixed, with silver and crude oil higher by 2.6% and 1.1% respectively, while copper, coffee and cotton traded lower. Although cotton dropped more than any other commodity for the week (down 1.1%) coffee's decline was more significant, setting a new all-time low of 27.81g on Thursday before recovering to close at 28.56g, down 0.1% for the week.