1. U.S. stock futures popped on Monday, pointing to a rebound from a recent slide as investors weighed the risks to Nvidia ahead of its earnings later in the week. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures climbed 0.8% on the heels of its worst week since October. Contracts on the S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 added 0.5% and 0.4%, respectively. How well Nvidia is navigating the looming tariffs will be closely watched when the AI chipmaker reports its results on Wednesday. Eyes are also on Big Tech’s demand for AI — underlined by signs that Microsoft is pulling back on data center construction, and risks to from China-based DeepSeek’s lower-cost tech. Shares in Nvidia edged up 1% as tech stocks chipped away at recent losses. Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google parent Alphabet all made slight gains.
2. Apple announced Monday that it will spend and invest more than $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years, including plans to build a new manufacturing factory, double its advanced manufacturing fund, and hire 20,000 people. “We are bullish on the future of American innovation, and we’re proud to build on our long-standing U.S. investments with this $500 billion commitment to our country’s future,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement. Apple’s announcement comes just days after President Trump said Cook promised him hundreds of millions of dollars in investment and that the tech giant’s manufacturing would shift from Mexico to the US. Monday’s announcement included plans for Apple and its partners to start producing servers in Houston later this year. A 250,000-square-foot server manufacturing facility in Texas is scheduled to open in 2026. Apple said these servers will play a key role in powering Apple Intelligence, its new AI tools.
3. Silver has quietly had a strong start to 2025, with the price up 12.6 percent. However, it remains significantly underpriced compared to gold from a historical perspective with the gold-silver ratio still above 90-1. While industrial demand has a much bigger impact on the price of silver than gold, silver is still fundamentally a monetary metal, and its price tends to track with gold over time. The gold-silver ratio reflects this relationship. In the modern era, the gold-silver ratio has averaged between 40-1 and 60-1. The current ratio running so much wider than that historical spread indicates that silver is underpriced and is a bargain compared to gold. As with most averages, the gold-silver ratio tends to eventually return to the mean when it gets significantly out of order. Over the last few decades, this snapback has tended to happen very quickly. Given the level of debt and malinvestments in the economy due to decades of easy money, it’s only a matter of time before the Fed is forced to lean back into monetary easing. This could be the catalyst to drive silver higher and close the gold-silver ratio.
4. Consumer confidence declined sharply in February, notching its biggest monthly decline in nearly four years. The Consumer Confidence Index for February came in at a reading of 98.3, a significant drop from January’s revised 105 reading and short of the 102.5 reading expected by economists. The “Present Situation Index,” which measures consumers’ assessment of current business and labor market conditions, fell to 136.5 in February from 139 in January. The “Expectations Index,” which tracks consumers’ short-term outlook for income, business, and labor market conditions, also fell to 72.9 in February from 82 last month. Historically, a reading below 80 in that category signals a recession in the coming year. This was the first time since June 2024 that the index came in below that threshold.
5. The crypto euphoria seemingly is fading. Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, hit a three-month low Tuesday, down 8% over the past 24 hours, its biggest drop in three weeks. Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency fell 10%. Another popular cryptocurrency, Solana, fell more than 12% on Tuesday, hitting its lowest point in five months, before recovering some of those losses. Industry watchers aren’t pinning the sell-off on any single culprit. Instead, they are pointing to a mishmash of negative forces spurring poor vibes, from broader macro uncertainty spurred by talk of tariffs to the recent hack of crypto derivatives exchange Bybit. The pullback is happening despite persistent optimism within the crypto world about a pro-crypto administration and a more favorable stance taken by regulators. But there could be another reason: Not enough new money is entering the market. “If crypto is still a thing next week — and it will be — the most important place to watch for new money coming into the sector is Wall Street, particularly the money center banks,” Ryne Miller, a partner at law firm Lowenstein Sandler, added in an interview.
6. Applications for U.S. jobless benefits rose to a three-month high last week but remained within the same healthy range of the past three years. The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits rose by 22,000 to 242,000 for the week ending Feb. 22, the Labor Department said Thursday. Analysts projected that 220,000 new applications would be filed. The four-week average, which evens out some of the week-to-week volatility, climbed by 8,500 to 224,000.
7. At the time of writing, Brent crude was trading at $73.66 per barrel, with West Texas Intermediate at $69.97 per barrel. Besides the above bearish factors, some worry that OPEC+ will go ahead with its production cut unwinding scheduled for April, even though in a separate report the publication cited unnamed sources as saying the group was hesitant about the move considering the price movements. The worry about the U.S. economy that weighed on oil prices this week was sparked by the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ second estimate for fourth-quarter 2024 GDP, which suggested a slowdown from 3.1% in the third quarter to 2.3% in the final one. For the full year 2024, growth in the world’s largest economy was estimated at 2.8%.
8. After choppy trading for most of the week, the EUR/USD pair plummeted on Thursday, bottoming early Friday at 1.0379, its lowest in over two weeks. It bounced modestly from the level ahead of the close, settling at around 1.0400. The pair attempted to recover the 1.0500 threshold a couple of times throughout the week but quickly retraced from the level.
9. USD/ JPY holds near 149.50 amin risk aversion. The Japanese Yen struggles to capitalize on its Asian session gains against a stronger U.S. dollar. Expectations for more BoJ rate hikes this year should help limit losses for the JPY. Traders now look forward to the release of the crucial U.S. PCE data for fresh impetus.
Inflation cooled down in January, according to the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, contradicting signals from an earlier official report this month. The cost of living rose 2.5% in January over the last 12 months as measured by Personal Consumption Expenditures, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said on Friday. That was less than the 2.6% annual increase in December, marking the first time in four months the inflation measure decreased. The report marked a rare instance where the government’s two major measures of inflation showed opposite trends for the same month. The benign inflation reading, which matched economists’ expectations, could ease concerns among consumers and investors about the possibility of inflation accelerating, which would keep the Fed from lowering interest rates.
Hackers believed to be from North Korea have stolen around $1.5 billion worth of cryptocurrencies in what has been called the biggest crypto heist of all time. Ben Zhou, the CEO of Bybit said the crypto was taken from a ‘cold wallet’ – a digital wallet usually stored offline and so supposedly more secure, that was used for ether tokens. The Lazarus Group, a North Korean hacking collective that has been run by the country since 2010, is believed to be behind the attack. Western businesses have been terrorized by the group for more than a decade now. With this most recent attack the hackers have already stolen more than they did in the whole of 2024 when they took around $1.4billion in digital coins. The crypto industry has suffered a series of thefts, prompting questions about the security of customer funds, with hacking hauls totaling more than $2 billion in 2024 – the fourth straight year where proceeds have topped more than $1 billion. The hack underscored vulnerabilities in the burgeoning decentralized finance – DeFi – sector, where users lend, borrow and save in digital tokens, bypassing the traditional gatekeepers of finance such as banks and exchanges.
U.S. mortgage rates dropped last week to the lowest level this year, but not enough to spur a rebound lending activity. The contract rate on a 30-year mortgage declined 5 basis points to 6.88% in the week ended Feb. 21, according to Mortgage Bankers Association data released Wednesday. Mortgage rates track Treasury yields, which have fallen in the past week as investors seek safe havens amid a selloff in stocks and oil markets. Economic data have also contributed to the recent drop in yields, including weak January retail sales and an uptick in consumers’ long-run inflation views to the highest since 1995. The MBA survey, which has been conducted weekly since 1990, uses responses from mortgage bankers, commercial banks and thrifts. The data covers more than 75% of all retail residential mortgage applications in the U.S.
U.S. economic growth slowed in the fourth quarter, the government confirmed on Thursday, and the loss of momentum appears to have persisted early this quarter amid cold temperatures and concerns that tariffs will hurt spending through higher prices. Gross domestic product increased at a 2.3% annualized rate last quarter after accelerating at a 3.1% pace in the July-September quarter, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) said in its second GDP estimate for the fourth quarter on Thursday. The economists polled had expected that GDP growth would be unrevised. GDP growth was revised up by less than 0.1 percentage point, which after rounding matched the 2.3% rate that was estimated last month. The economy grew 2.8% in 2024 after expanding 2.9% in 2023.
Volatility should be expected to remain high as investors will be closely watching for hints on the upcoming monetary policy direction. Many investors have redoubled their efforts to ensure that their portfolios are sufficiently diversified in the hope that they will be able to withstand corrections in multiple market sectors. Many of these investors have included physical precious metals as part of their diversification plans, given their long history as a hedge against both inflation and during times of economic turmoil. Remember, the key to profitability through the ownership of physical precious metals is to own the physical product and hold it for the long term. Always remember that you should never overextend your ability to maintain ownership of your precious metals over the long run.
Trading Department – Precious Metals International Ltd.
Friday to Friday Close (New York Closing Prices)
| Feb. 21, 2025 | Feb. 28, 2025 | Net Change | ||
| Gold | $2,936.85 | $2,837.80 | -99.05 | -3.37% |
| Silver | $32.64 | $30.95 | -1.69 | -5.18% |
| Platinum | $973.43 | $941.13 | -32.30 | -3.32% |
| Palladium | $980.10 | $919.85 | -60.25 | -6.15% |
| Dow | 43428.02 | 43840.72 | 412.70 | 0.95% |
Month End to Month End Close
| Jan. 31, 2025 | Feb. 28, 2025 | Net Change | ||
| Gold | $2,808.44 | $2,837.80 | 29.36 | 1.05% |
| Silver | $31.49 | $30.95 | -0.54 | -1.71% |
| Platinum | $984.95 | $941.13 | -43.82 | -4.45% |
| Palladium | $1,025.76 | $919.85 | -105.91 | -10.33% |
| Dow | 44544.19 | 43840.72 | -703.47 | -1.58% |
Previous Year Comparisons
| Mar. 1, 2024 | Feb. 28, 2025 | Net Change | ||
| Gold | $2,084.62 | $2,837.80 | 753.18 | 36.13% |
| Silver | $23.13 | $30.95 | 7.82 | 33.81% |
| Platinum | $885.25 | $941.13 | 55.88 | 6.31% |
| Palladium | $958.51 | $919.85 | -38.66 | -4.03% |
| Dow | 39098.04 | 43840.72 | 4742.68 | 12.13% |
Here are your Short-Term Support and Resistance Levels for the upcoming week.
| Gold | Silver | |
| Support | 2855/2825/2804 | 30.54/30.12/29.87 |
| Resistance | 2895/2965/2995 | 31.88/32.56/33.21 |
| Platinum | Palladiumn | |
| Support | 946/928/887 | 926/895/850 |
| Resistance | 976/987/1006 | 957/979/1004 |