Results were mixed for stocks, commodities and currencies, while bonds rose and the cryptos fell once again. Palladium showed the largest gains, rising 2.7% and closing at 31.0 grams – just shy of parity with gold. Ethereum had the largest loss, dropping 9.0%.
National currencies were mixed, with the USD moving higher by 0.6% while the Chinese Yuan dropped 0.5%. The other currencies were little changed for the week. US bonds, both short term and long term, were higher, rising 0.7% each.
Cryptocurrencies dropped again, with Ethereum falling 9.0% and Bitcoin dropping 4.6%. Bitcoin is now just below the 130% exponential growth line. It will be interesting to see if that line represents support, but I suspect that there will be intense selling pressure to raise USD cash for tax payments and to cover year-end expenses which will continue through mid-Jan 2019, so I'm not counting on that.
Stocks were mostly lower, with the European STOXX50 (up 0.9%) being the exception. The Japanese Nikkei fell the most, down 1.2%, while the S&P 500 was off 0.6%.
Commodities saw the largest price swings (outside of the cryptos). Palladium gained 2.7% and silver added 1.3%. The largest decline was in coffee, which fell 1.8%. Platinum made a new all-time low of 19.6 grams early in the week, then recovered to close unchanged. Palladium popped up above parity with gold and hit a high of 31.6 grams, but settled down to close at 31.0 grams, just below parity.
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