Weekly Update 10 Apr 2020
Stocks moved higher, national currencies and bonds declined, and cryptocurrencies and commodities were mixed. Crude oil continued to be volatile, giving up most of last week's gains by closing down 22.9%. Gold stocks were the biggest winner, rising 11.5%.
National currencies all fell. The Japanese Yen and the US Dollar fell the most, giving up 4.0% each. The British Pound (not in table) outperformed, dropping 2.4%. The best performer in the table was the Chinese Yuan, off 2.6%. Short term bonds tracked USD cash, dropping 4.0%. The long term bond fund TLT did much worse, closing down 5.8%.
Bitcoin worked its way higher early in the week, peaking at 138.4 grams on Wednesday, then collapsed on Thursday and Friday, ending the week at 127.1 grams, down 2.1%. Ethereum followed a similar pattern, peaking at 3.26 grams on Wednesday, but fell much less and ended at 2.93 grams, up 7.0%.
Stocks had their week in the sun, as all indexes I track moved higher. In fact, the week's 1st, 2nd and 3rd place performers were all equities. Top honors went to the HUI gold stock index, which finished up 11.5%. US stocks rounded out the top 3, as the Dow Industrials rose 8.1% and the S&P 500 gained 7.6%. The Japanese Nikkei under-performed the other indexes, but still added a striking 5.0%.
Crude oil fell 22.9%, giving back nearly all of the prior week's gains and closing at 415 mg per barrel, 7.4% above its all-time low. Other parts of the energy complex, including retail gasoline and US natural gas are also near their all-time lows. Cotton was the best performing commodity, rising 2.4%; the only other commodity in the black was silver, which closed up 1.2%.
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