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The bubble in precious metals might have popped this week, with silver’s violent decline on Friday leading the group lower.
Having touched a new record of $120 per ounce earlier in the session, silver has pulled back to $75 in U.S. afternoon hours, now lower by 35% for the day. Gold — which as recently as Sunday had never seen $5,000 per ounce — climbed to $5,600 at one point Thursday, but has now retreated to $4,718, down 12% for the day.
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Platinum is lower by 24% and palladium by 20%.
To put silver’s move in perspective, it’s given back nearly its entire massive January gain in the space of a few hours. While crypto bulls might be used to such action, only those precious metals traders who were around during the days of the Hunt Brothers in 1980 will be familiar with that sort of downside volatility.
U.S. stocks are selling off as well, the Nasdaq down 1.25% and S&P 500 0.9%.
After plunging earlier in the week, cryptocurrencies, by comparison, are moving somewhat sideways on Friday, holding above Thursday evening’s panicky lows. Bitcoin was trading around $83,000 recently versus its overnight bottom of $81,000.
The action in markets has been volatile all week, but this latest bout appears to have been set off by President Trump’s picking Kevin Warsh to replace Jerome Powell as Federal Reserve chair. Conventional thinking at the moment says Warsh was a somewhat hawkish pick, thus perhaps setting off the selling in risk assets.
Road cleared for bitcoin?
Paul Howard, director at trading firm Wincent, spoke for many crypto bulls, saying the parabolic move in commodities in recent months had siphoned risk capital from crypto markets. That dynamic may now be shifting.
“Cryptocurrency markets have been the victim of risk capital flowing into the still popular commodities trade,” he said. He noted growing interest in options markets for upside exposure in February, with the 105,000 BTC calls among the most actively traded contracts.
“The outlook indicates what a lot of crypto traders are feeling right now — that their market is long overdue a commodity-style catch-up,” Howard added.
“What was meant to be a bullish move for the markets appears to have coincided with a broad risk sell-off,” Howard said of the nomination of Kevin Warsh. “The reaction may be more of a knee-jerk as markets recalibrate.”