Authored by Stephen McBride via GarretGalland.com,
Before yesterday, the S&P 500 and DJIA hadn’t seen a 1% drop since October 2016. For some perspective, Hillary Clinton was the presidential frontrunner the last time markets fell 1%. This was the longest such streak for both indices in over 20 years.
In February, the DJIA recorded its longest “winning streak” since 1987. It closed 2,000 points above its 200-day moving average for the first time ever.
The near-record string of 10 consecutive Dow Industrials record highs, a streak not seen since early 1987, may be about to end if futures, which are currently trading -0.3% lower, fail to stage a rebound.
The Dow Jones "Industrial" Average is suffering one of its worst intraday declines in weeks as a result of a 3.6% drop in UnitedHealth shares, which are sinking on news that the DOJ joined a whistleblower lawsuit against the insurer filed by a former executive claiming the country's largest health insurer overcharged Medicare hundreds of millions of dollars.
The company denied the allegations, with UnitedHealth spokesman Matthew Burns saying in a statement that "we reject these more than five-year-old claims and will contest them vigorously."
S&P equity futures followed Asian and European stocks lower, driven by weakness in Franch and Italian markets, as French political concerns returned; the pound tumbled after UK monthly retail sales unexpectedly dropped pushing the dollar higher and Euro lower.
Today, I want to return our focus to a topic I’ve written about a lot since the start of 2017, the outlook for gold and silver assets, particularly for gold and silver mining stocks. As I stated to start this year, I still believe that 2017 will mark another strong year for gold and silver asset prices, and certainly this year has gotten off to a strong start. As I mentioned in previous articles, we utilized a lot of successful hedges and moved some positions to cash in December prior to the bankers’ significant raid of spot gold and silver prices.