US Stock Market Today: Wall Street’s main indexes opened lower on Monday, Feb. 2, after a violent selloff in precious metals unsettled investors at the start of a week packed with corporate earnings and major economic data. The Dow Jones Industrial Average pulled back 143 points, or 0.3%. Bitcoin dropped below $80,000 for the first time since April, a sign investors were taking more risk off the table following Friday’s sharp declines in gold and silver.
Commodities markets slumped on Monday, led by deep losses in gold, silver, oil and industrial metals, as a selloff unleashed by President Donald Trump’s choice of Kevin Warsh for the next US Fed chair sent precious metals tumbling for a second session. Gold and silver had jumped 30% and 71% to record highs in January before they started dropping.
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Wall Street also turned its attention to Nvidia on questions over artificial intelligence loomed. According to the Wall Street Journal, Nvidia’s plans to pour $100 billion into OpenAI had stalled, with chipmaker executives expressing doubt about the deal. Nvidia shares were down more than 2%. On Monday, Disney reported earnings that beat analyst expectations. However, the stock still fell 8%.
More than 100 S&P 500 companies are due to report this week, including Amazon and Alphabet. The overall reporting season has been strong thus far, but there have been some high-profile post-earnings sell-offs, including Microsoft. Metals continued to see heightened volatility Monday after a violent sell-off at the end of last week.
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Gold futures hit a low of $4423.2 Monday, its lowest level since Jan. 8 before. The contract last traded 0.5% lower to $4,720.20. The bullion traded below the 50-day moving average level of $4,480.4 on an intraday basis for the first time since Aug. 22. Silver futures gained nearly 3% to trade around $80.68 after reaching a low of $71.20, its lowest level since Jan. 2. Silver briefly traded below the 50-day moving average level of 73.916 on an intraday basis for the first time since Nov. 21.
