Markets

Wall Street is anticipating smoother sailing after a tumultuous week led to declines in the three major indexes. Although Apple stock has had a lackluster year overall, it did experience a rise on Friday, breaking a seven-day losing streak.

Finance

Gold’s Curious Rally

"Subdued." "Unanticipated." "Unexpected." Gold prices are reaching unprecedented levels, catching Wall Street analysts by surprise.

Historically, this precious metal is regarded as a safe haven during periods of volatility and geopolitical uncertainty. However, its current surge aligns with investor confidence in the U.S. economy, propelling riskier assets such as stocks to unprecedented highs. Notably, even bitcoin has surpassed its previous peak.

Gold futures have seen increases for the last seven consecutive trading sessions, setting new records in the past six sessions. On Friday, futures for March delivery closed at an all-time high of $2,179 per troy ounce, contributing to gold's overall gains for the year, which now stand at 5.6%.

Economy

U.S Job Market Slowed in February

In February, the U.S. labor market showed signs of slight weakening, indicating a tightening job market, according to a report on job trends.

The Conference Board, a private research group, reported on Monday that its employment trends index decreased to 112.29 in February from a downwardly revised figure of 113.18 in January. This reversal marked the end of two months of improvement.

"While the index remains relatively high compared to its level before the pandemic, and the economy continued to add jobs through February 2024, there are indications that the labor market may slow down, with only modest job gains anticipated in the third and fourth quarters of 2024," noted Will Baltrus, an associate economist at The Conference Board.

The Employment Trends Index, which aggregates eight indicators, serves as a leading composite index for employment. Increases in the index typically signal potential growth in employment, while shifts in its trajectory suggest imminent changes in job numbers in the short term.

Politics

Biden Seeks Higher Taxes on Wealthy Households

President Biden's proposed budget aims to increase federal spending to $7.3 trillion in the next fiscal year while implementing tax hikes on affluent individuals and large corporations. The objective is to reduce the deficit while also mitigating the costs of prescription drugs, child care, and housing.

Although not anticipated to garner significant traction in Congress, this policy vision will serve as a central component of Biden's re-election campaign.

The fiscal 2025 budget is projected to slash the deficit by $3 trillion over the next decade and raise taxes by a net total of $4.9 trillion, representing a more than 7% increase compared to what the U.S. would collect without any policy alterations.

Biden's proposal allocates $895 billion towards defense programs for the upcoming fiscal year, up from an estimated $886 billion in the current year. This increase, amidst global conflicts such as Russia's incursion into Ukraine and Israel's conflict in Gaza, is among several that elevate overall expenditures by $300 billion from the approximately $6.9 trillion the federal government is slated to spend this year.

Tech

NVIDIA States AI Platform Complies with U.S. Law

NVIDIA has stated that its NeMo artificial intelligence platform was developed in accordance with copyright law, following a class-action complaint from a group of authors. The complaint, filed in the San Francisco division of the Northern District of California on Friday, involves authors Abdi Nazemian, Brian Keene, and Stewart O’Nan, who allege that NVIDIA utilized portions of their books without permission to train its NeMo platform—a cloud-native framework designed for building, customizing, and deploying generative AI models.

In response, an NVIDIA spokesperson stated on Monday, "We respect the rights of all content creators and believe we created NeMo in full compliance with copyright law."

NeMo was introduced by NVIDIA in 2022 with the promise of assisting developers in adapting large language models and deploying AI applications for various purposes including content generation, text summarization, code development, and chatbots.

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