- U.S. stock indexes finished higher on Friday, capping off a seesaw trading session and a roller-coaster week with wild swings. Meanwhile, the dollar continued to lose ground and Treasury bonds sold off again, as investors fled the onetime safe-haven assets and piled into gold, which saw prices hit fresh highs.
A wild week in financial markets ended appropriately with a seesaw trading session Friday as U.S. stock indexes finished with strong gains.
Meanwhile, investors continued to flee what had historically been safe-haven assets—namely the dollar and Treasury bonds—and piled further into gold, which saw prices hit fresh highs.
After going back and forth between positive and negative territory, the Dow Jones industrial average closed up 619 points, or 1.56%. The S&P 500 leapt 1.81%, and the Nasdaq surged 2.06%.
For the week, the Dow added 5%, the S&P 500 5.7%, and the Nasdaq 7.3%, after diving earlier, then soaring on Wednesday after President Donald Trump put most of his aggressive tariffs on hold for 90 days. The markets then ceded a large chunk of those gains on Thursday.
Friday’s rally came after China raised its duty on U.S. imports to 125% from 84%, after Trump sent U.S. levies on China to 145%. But Beijing signaled it would no longer engage in tit-for-tat retaliation, and Trump said he was optimistic about a deal, offering markets some hope that further escalation could be avoided.
Still, with tariffs that high, Wall Street expects trade between the world’s two largest economies will essentially come to a halt.
Elsewhere in financial markets, the mood was gloomier and pointed to deteriorating confidence in U.S. assets, accelerating the de-dollarization trend.
On Friday, the U.S. Dollar Index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of global currencies, slipped 1% and lost 3% for the week. That’s as the dollar hit the lowest level against the euro in three years.
Prices for 10-year Treasury bonds also fell further, sending the yield up 8.4 basis points to 4.476%. Since dipping below 4% in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s “Liberation Day” rollout of draconian tariffs, yields have soared nearly 50 basis points.
Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers even said Treasuries were trading “like those of an emerging market nation.”
In contrast, yields on 10-year Japanese bonds fell on Friday, as they did throughout the tumultuous week, while the yen also jumped versus the dollar.
Another safe-haven asset, gold, has shot up as the dollar and Treasuries have lost favor. The precious metal spiked 2.4% on Friday to a fresh all-time high of $3,252.60 per ounce, finishing off a 9% weekly gain.
Falling demand for the dollar and Treasury bonds in times of market stress erodes their long-held status as traditional safe havens.
“We are witnessing a simultaneous collapse in the price of all U.S. assets including equities, the dollar versus alternative reserve [foreign exchange], and the bond market,” writes George Saravelos, global head of FX research at Deutsche Bank, in a note this week. “We are entering unchart[ed] territory in the global financial system.”