Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during morning trading on February 29, 2024 in New York City.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images
A new day, a new all-time high. From stocks to bitcoin, asset classes across the board have been hitting uncharted territories.
Why?
There are a few reasons at play.
Unabating artificial intelligence hype, hopes that global interest rates may fall, and more specific to the crypto space: bitcoin ETF approvals.
A fiery rally in tech stocks powered the Nasdaq 100 to a fresh record and helped the S&P 500 finish above the 5,000 mark for the first time ever last week. AI ecstasy has also boosted individual tech stocks to historic levels, with Nvidia‘s stock market value smashing a $2 trillion valuation for the first time ever.
Since those peaks however, Wall Street equities have pulled back as borrowing rate uncertainty weighs on investors’ minds.
In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 has echoed an eye-popping performance with the country’s stock market index newly crossing 40,000 points on Monday. That’s after the Nikkei zoomed past 1989 highs last month – with the gains largely driven by robust earnings and corporate governance reforms.
Over in the alternative asset world, a combination of investors pouring money into U.S. spot exchange-traded crypto products, and bitcoin’s upcoming halving event supercharged the world’s largest cryptocurrency above $69,000 — a price level not seen in more than two years.
Stellar prices for gold have also stolen investor attention, with the precious metal scaling a new record of over $2,100. The gains have been fueled by U.S. rate cut expectations and China economic woes, with gold traditionally rallying in times of economic stress.
The record-breaking numbers for markets, however, haven’t stopped some investors from worrying about three key issues.
Inflation resurgence
After months of cooling, U.S inflation is proving itself to be more stubborn than experts had predicted.
Though January’s
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