Author: TechFlow TechFlow
US stocks: Dow Jones leads the charge alone, while tech stocks are still catching their breath.
Yesterday (February 10), the three major US stock indices continued to show a "split" trend at the close.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a new record closing high of 50,188 points, successfully breaking through the 50,000-point mark and continuing its upward trend; however, the S&P 500 fell 0.33% to 6,941 points and the Nasdaq fell 0.59% to 23,102 points, with the shadow cast by the AI narrative still lingering.
What exactly happened?
Two things are weighing on the market at the same time.
First, December retail sales data was disappointing—the actual increase was zero, while Wall Street expected a 0.4% increase. Consumers saved money during the holiday season, which is not good news. On the other hand, the worse the data, the more the market bets on the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates this year, causing Treasury yields to fall and benefiting financial stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. This is a classic example of the counterintuitive logic of "bad news is good news."
Secondly, the "shockwave" of AI hasn't subsided. The biggest concern in the market recently is who AI is actually disrupting. The core logic behind this round of structural division within tech stocks is simple: good chips, bad software. TSMC's January revenue hit a record high, up 37% year-on-year, with Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom all rising; but enterprise software stocks remain in the red—ServiceNow, Salesforce, and others suffered single-day plunges of 6% to 7% last week. The essence of AI is "making machines replace software services," so those focusing on computing power are winning, while those developing application-layer tools are being repriced.
Two things to watch before the market opens today Beijing time : First, the key non-farm payroll data is about to be released, which is the most important piece of the puzzle in the Fed's interest rate cut path; second, Coca-Cola's earnings report disappointed the market, and sales in international markets (including China) are under pressure, so the consumer sector may continue to weaken today.
Gold and Silver: Rebuilding from Ruins After an Epic Crash
If you slept last week, you'll feel like you've traveled through time when you wake up.
The story begins on January 29th. Gold reached an all-time high of $5,598 per ounce that day, while silver surged to a high of $122 per ounce—almost four times its level in early 2025. Then, on January 30th, everything came to an abrupt halt. Trump announced his nomination of Kevin Warsh as the next Federal Reserve Chairman, which the market immediately interpreted as a "hawkish signal." The dollar index soared that day, and the safe-haven logic of gold and silver being "independent of the dollar" instantly collapsed.
The next two days witnessed historic events in the gold and silver markets: gold experienced its largest single-day drop since the 1980s, while silver fell by more than 36% at one point, marking its largest single-day decline ever. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) twice urgently raised margin requirements—from 6% to 9% for gold and from 11% to 18% for silver—leading to forced liquidations like a landslide, with sell orders pouring in like a waterfall.
Today, gold is trading at around $5,040 per ounce , up about 9.6% this month, but has already corrected by more than 10% from its peak; silver is trading at around $82 per ounce , also up about 16% this year, but has already been cut by nearly one-third from its peak.
Goldman Sachs maintained its target price of $5,400 per year, while JPMorgan Chase went even further, forecasting a target of $6,300, citing continued central bank gold purchases and expectations of Fed rate cuts as two long-term supports. UBS, however, remained relatively cautious on silver, cautioning that its unique industrial properties could suppress actual demand if prices were too high, and predicted a year-end price of around $85.
In short : Gold has significant support around $5,000 in the short term, while silver's performance will depend on whether this week's non-farm payroll and CPI data can provide fresh impetus for "interest rate cut expectations".
Crypto Markets: Bitcoin "breathes a sigh of relief" around 69,000, but the confidence hole remains unfilled.
Currently, Bitcoin is trading at around $69,000 . Compared to its all-time high of $126,000 reached last October, this represents a drop of about 45%, or more precisely, a decline of over 50%.
The trigger for this decline was the simultaneous collapse of US stocks, gold, and silver in early February. However, Bitcoin's problems are more complex than those of US stocks and gold.
Gold prices have fallen, but buying interest remains: central banks continue to increase their holdings, and ETFs are seeing renewed inflows. Bitcoin prices have fallen, but buying interest is retreating: CryptoQuant data shows that last year, US Bitcoin spot ETFs saw net purchases of 46,000 Bitcoins, but this year they have turned into net sellers. In other words, Bitcoin ETFs have gone from being a major source of buying pressure to a source of selling pressure.
There's an even more worrying logic: this gold price crash didn't see funds fleeing to Bitcoin; the US stock market turmoil didn't see funds fleeing to Bitcoin either. The narrative of "digital gold" is undergoing its most severe stress test ever. On Polymarket, the probability of Bitcoin falling below $65,000 this year has risen to 82%.
Ethereum is around $2,015, and SOL is around $84. The entire altcoin market is also sluggish.
A variable worth watching : the hearings of the new Federal Reserve Chairman, Warsh. He called Bitcoin the "new gold" for those under 40 in 2021 and publicly stated in 2025 that Bitcoin "doesn't make him nervous." His ultimate policy stance on crypto could be one of the key factors determining whether the market can reverse course in the second half of the year.
In summary, this is a market undergoing repricing : the Dow Jones hitting new highs indicates that the old economy is still profitable; the inflation of tech stocks represents AI reshaping the industry landscape; the plunge and rebound of gold and silver represent global investors' real-time vote on the "independence of the Federal Reserve"; and Bitcoin's slump represents an asset class independently undergoing its own test of faith.
This week's non-farm payroll data and CPI report will be the next referee in all of this.
