Sharp correction

We’re coming toward the end of a geopolitically calm-ish week — no major threats, no major events — but with rising volatility in the metals markets. Yesterday was again marked by a strong rally in gold, silver and copper prices, followed this time by a sharp selloff.

Note that the impressive rally in LME copper was triggered by intense speculative trading in China. So metals markets are fuming right now.

Gold is down to around $5’230 per ounce at the time of writing after flirting with the $5’600 level at yesterday’s peak. That’s insane considering the week started near $5’000. And what was just as insane was the sharp selloff that followed. Gold wiped out around $2.5 trillion in market value in just 30 minutes, sending prices from above $5’500 to around $5’100.

Silver also traded past $121 an ounce before pulling back sharply, and is down again in Asia this morning — same story for copper.

Are we surprised? No, we’re not. Price action in metals was impressive, but it could be expected just by looking at the rising stress through the lens of the gold volatility index.

A major spike there has been telling us a lot about the building stress behind such an impressive rally, which lately became driven more by speculation than fundamentals. That means we could see a meaningful pullback of 8–10%, toward the $4’600–4’800 per ounce range, to relieve some of that stress.

Price pullbacks, however, will likely be seen as opportunities to strengthen long positions, as the major drivers of the metals rally — unsustainable-but-still-rising G7 debt, waning appetite for the US dollar, trade and geopolitical uncertainties, the search for supranational assets able to preserve value in case of further geopolitical chaos, and potentially rising price pressures — remain fully in play.

Tensions between the US and Iran these days don’t only push oil prices higher — US crude briefly spiked past $66 per barrel yesterday — they also point to potential disruptions in major trade routes in the region. So, demand for hard commodities and safe-haven assets is certainly not over. That said, a correction looks healthy at these strongly overbought levels.

Voilà — that’s the take on metals: bullish in the longer run, cautious in the short run. Any geopolitical headline could disrupt the correction process and trigger a premature return to metals.

In currencies, the US dollar is consolidating early-week losses near four-year low levels. The USDJPY is unsurprisingly rising again and likely has room to run toward levels that would make Japanese authorities uncomfortable — namely the 160 level. The EURUSD is struggling as well, having failed to hold above 1.20.

Something notable happened this week: large bets were placed via Euribor options expiring in March and June, betting on a 25bp ECB rate cut before summer. That’s clearly a contrarian trade, as markets are pricing a 25bp cut this year with 25% chance only. But it also suggests some investors are preparing for US-EU relations to worsen before improving, and for European economies to require ECB support.

What’s sure is that, with or without stabilization in US relations, EU governments will likely have to deliver on defence and technology spending, implying meaningful fiscal support.

And we all know what the sweet combination of expansive fiscal and monetary policy means for equity markets: gains. As a result, stimulus expectations keep the Stoxx outlook positive, with defence names the first-line beneficiaries of fiscal flows.

Note that the Stoxx 600 fell yesterday, alongside major US peers. One of Europe’s biggest tech names, SAP, tanked 16% after reporting disappointing earnings — notably a lower-than-expected cloud backlog, meaning revenues already committed by customers for future cloud services but not yet recognized. SAP said negotiations took longer than expected and that AI tools should eventually drive customer migration from on-premise servers to the cloud. That narrative hasn’t convinced investors so far: the stock is down more than 40% since February 2025. Whether this is an opportunity or whether SAP’s AI push turns into a flop remains to be seen.

In the US, Microsoft also had an ugly day — a very ugly one, its worst since the DeepSeek-triggered Nvidia selloff last year. Shares dropped around 10%, rebounding from a critical technical level near $423, corresponding to the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement of the past three-year AI rally.

That level matters: a break below would signal an end to the bullish trend and a return to a bearish consolidation zone, opening the door to deeper losses. If it holds however, the latest dip could offer an entry point for buyers at a more reasonable valuation than two months ago. It all comes down to whether massive AI spending is matching demand.

Microsoft’s latest earnings warned of slowing cloud revenue, triggering yesterday’s selloff. But is the slowdown temporary? Big Tech continues to pour money into AI infrastructure, AI companies and AI models — and all that data has to be stored somewhere. The question is: where?

Finally, a company that clearly missed the AI turn: Apple. Apple is nowhere to be found in the AI race. It has invested far less than peers, has no AI model, and opted instead to rely on Google’s Gemini.

That didn’t stop Apple from delivering strong holiday-quarter sales, which initially pushed the stock higher post-earnings in after-hours trading. But appetite faded quickly as investors worried that rising memory-chip prices could squeeze margins, regardless of Apple’s pricing power.

On the other side of the memory-chip trade, SK Hynix is up again — nearly 7% at the time of speaking. European futures are higher, US futures lower, reinforcing the idea that the rotation from US to non-US markets may continue into the weekly close.

And next week — it’s a new week.