Investors are holding their breath for perhaps the most influential earnings in a long while, with the poster child of the AI boom, Nvidia, set to report another blockbuster quarter. And yet investors, who have seen the stock skyrocket in the past 18 months on the back of AI frenzy, may still be disappointed if the chipmaker is unable to maintain its astonishing growth. Market participants have scaled back expectations for early and steep interest rate cuts and now anticipate June to be the starting point of the easing cycle.
"The immediate price boost from a Fed driven 100 basis point decline in U.S. 2-year rates is the largest for metals, especially copper (6%), and then gold (3%), followed by oil (3%)," Goldman Sachs said in a note dated Feb. 20. Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange was trading near a three-week high of $8,548 per metric ton as of 0542 GMT on Wednesday, while spot gold was at a near two-week high at $2,030.30 per ounce. The Wall Street bank, however, said it expects no significant price effects on natural gas or agricultural commodities as micro factors such as seasonal inventory cycles and weather outweigh any impact from rate cuts.
