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.
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.