As of the close in New York today, February 22, the yield on the 10-year Treasury had climbed another 3 basis points to 1.37%.
Commodities that can act as inflation hedges were up as well. Copper showed no signs of ending its climb, rising 4.17% today to $8909 a ton on the London Metal Exchange today. (The record high for copper was set in February 2011 at $10,190 a ton.)
Even gold and silver joined in with gold up 1.75% to $1808.50 an ounce for April delivery on Comex. Silver gained 3.69% to $28.30 an ounce.
It’s easy to summarize what Wall Street fears–an economic recovery will result in rising inflation. It’s just hard to see real world facts to support those fears.
The rise in industrial commodity prices, on the other hand, has little to do with inflation fears and a lot to do with forecasts for improving global economic growth–and rising demand for commodities such as copper–and with evidence of some supply shortages. (For refined copper from China, for example.)
On the London Metal Exchange spot prices are climbing on evidence of tight inventories for copper and other commodities.
As of the close today, the Standard & Poor’s 500 was down 0.77%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.09%. The big damage came in technology stocks. The NASDAQ Composite was off 2.46% and the NASDAQ 100 was lower by 2.59%. The small cap Russell 2000 was off 069%.
The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM) had fallen 2.94%.
