The week of 13-Oct saw stocks, bonds and currencies lower, digital tokens much higher, and commodities mixed. This week, stocks, bonds and currencies recovered some of those losses, commodities were again mixed, and Bitcoin rose to new all-time highs while Ethereum gave up all of the prior week's gains. The largest gains were in Bitcoin, which rose 7.6% (on top of the prior week's 25.3% gain) to close at a record high of 145.3 grams. Gold stocks had the largest losses, dropping 1.2% this week on top of a 2.6% loss the prior week.
The US Dollar was strong this week, gaining 1.4% and recouping about half of the prior week's loss. The weakest currency was the Japanese Yen, which added 0.3%. Long term bonds were little changed (off 0.1%) while short term bonds rose 1.3% and notes of zero maturity (USD cash) gained 1.4%.
Bitcoin worked its way higher over the last two weeks, setting a string of record highs, and closed this week at an all-time high of 145.3 grams, up 8.8%. Ethereum rose 8.3% to 8.1 grams on Friday 13-Oct, but dropped steadily this week, closing at 7.4 grams, down 8.8%.
Stocks were higher, led by the Dow Jones Industrials, which rose 3.5% to close at 566.3 grams, a new 10 year high (more on this below). The Euro Stoxx FEZ rose 1.0%, the least of the major indexes. Gold stocks were the only falling equities, losing 1.2% for the week.
Copper and crude oil were the strongest commodities, rising 2.5% and 2.2% respectively. Cotton was the weakest, falling 1.1%. Platinum was also weak, dropping 0.9%, and continuing to hover just above its all-time lows.
US stocks, and the Dow Jones Industrials in particular, have been setting new record highs when measured in dollars. And they're doing quite well measured in gold, as well: they are up 157% from their 2009 lows and are now priced the same as they were exactly 10 years ago in October of 2007. But new all-time highs? Hardly! At 566 grams, they are 59% below their 1999 high of 1394 grams.
This week I suffered a major computer crash that damaged the spreadsheet used to build many of the charts for the website (but thankfully, not the time series data itself). I am taking this opportunity to restructure the charting files to make updating and backing up easier. As a result, many charts will not get updates for a few days. Hopefully full service will be restored by next week.
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