Global shares mixed as gold, silver bounce back

New York: The US stock market is losing ground amid mixed trading, while gold and silver bounce back from their latest sell-off. The S&P 500 slipped 0.9 per cent and fell further from its all-time high set last week, even though the majority of stocks within the index rose. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 189 points, or 0.4 per cent, as of 12:20 pm eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.6 per cent lower.

Several influential Big Tech stocks weighed on the market, including drops of 3.3 per cent for Nvidia and 2.9 per cent for Microsoft. They helped drown out a 6.5 per cent climb for Palantir Technologies, which reported bigger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Its forecast for 61 per cent growth in revenue this year also topped analysts’ expectations. The action was stronger, again, in metals markets.

Gold’s price climbed 6.8 per cent to $4,970.40 per ounce in its latest swing since its jaw-dropping rally suddenly halted last week. Silver’s price, which has been whipping through even wilder moves, leaped 11.6 per cent. Gold and silver prices had been climbing for more than a year as investors looked for safer places to park their cash amid worries about everything from tariffs to a weaker US dollar to heavy debt loads for governments worldwide.

Their prices took off in particular last month, and gold’s price at one point had roughly doubled over 12 months. But those rallies suddenly gave out last week, and gold’s price dropped from close to $5,600 to less than $4,500 on Monday. Silver plunged 31.4 per cent on Friday alone.