Introduction: Gold and silver rally resumes
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.
And welcome to Turnaround Tuesday too. After tumbling on Monday, precious metals and Asia-Pacific stock markets are both recovering today.
Gold’s up 4.5% this morning at $4,877 an ounce, quite a recovery from yesterday’s $4,403oz, while silver’s picked up 6.5% to $84.70.
That still leaves gold 12% shy of last week’s record highs, after its worst day since the early 1980s on Friday, when silver experienced its worst intraday collapse ever.
But it’s possible that the worst of the “metals meltdown” is behind us, after some highly speculative, leveraged traders were driven out of the market by the turbulence of recent days.
Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote, says:
With leveraged speculative positions flushed out, investors may feel they are returning to a freshly cleaned playground, albeit cautiously.
The long-term outlook for gold remains bullish. The factors supporting gold prices since last year remain firmly in place: trade and geopolitical uncertainty persists; G7 debt dynamics look increasingly unsustainable and are likely to worsen — not only in the US with the “Big, Beautiful Bill”, but also in Japan and in Europe amid rising defence spending.
The agenda
-
9.45am GMT: Treasury Committee hearing on government’s financial inclusion strategy.
-
8:00am GMT: UK grocery inflation figures for January
-
3pm GMT: US JOLTS job openings report
-
3pm GMT: Chief Secretary to the Treasury to give evidence to Economic Affairs Committee
Key events
FTSE 100 hits record high as miners recover
Britain’s FTSE 100 share index has hit another record high at the start of trading.
With a risk-on mood gripping markets, the Footsie has gained 21 points, or 0.2%, to touch a fresh intraday high of 10,362 points.
This means the index has risen by 4.3% so far this year.
Mining stocks are back in the top risers; gold and metal producer Endeavour has jumped by 5%, followed by rival Fresnillo (+4%).
Copper producer Antofagasta (+2.5%) and Anglo American (+2.3%) are also benefitting from a pick-up in commodity prices.
India’s stock market rallies on US trade deal
India’s stock market has jumped after Narendra Modi and Donald Trump agreed a trade deal.
Trump announced last night that India has agreed to stop buying Russian oil as he announced plans to cut US tariffs on Indian exports.
US tariffs on Indian exports are set to fall from 25% to 18%, the president said, claiming that India would “likewise move forward to reduce their Tariffs and Non Tariff Barriers against the United States, to ZERO”.
Although full details of the deal haven’t been released, the Sensex stock index has jumped by 2.8% so far today.
India’s currency has also strengthened, with the rupee gaining 1.4% to 90.20 per dollar.
Jim Reid, Deutsche Bank’s market strategist, credits the recovery on strong US economic data yesterday:
Markets have seen a huge turnaround over the last 24 hours, with the S&P 500 (+0.54%) closing just shy of its record high, with another +0.25% gain in futures this morning after being over -2% lower than current levels this time yesterday.
The recovery had several drivers, but the biggest was the ISM manufacturing index, which unexpectedly surged to its highest level since 2022. So that led to growing optimism on the 2026 outlook, along with a classic risk-on move.
South Korea’s KOSPI index has also bounced back strongly from hefty losses yesterday.
The KOSPI, which fell over 5% on Monday, has surged by 6.8% today – its biggest daily rise since 24 March 2020.
Nikkei closes at record high
Japan’s Nikkei share average has surged by almost 4% today, amid a wider stock market rally.
The Nikkei 225 rose 3.92% to close at 54,720.66, a record high and its biggest daily gain since October 25, as the rebound in gold and silver helped to calm market nerves.
SpaceX buys xAI in $1.25tn deal
The biggest business news of the morning is that Elon Musk’s SpaceX has acquired his artificial intelligence business xAI for $250bn.
The move consolidates two key part of Musk’s empire, giving the newly merged company a paper valuation of $1.25trn…. as SpaceX prepares to to public later this year.
Received the merger docs for xAI. This is a done deal with spaceX valued at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion. SpaceX now owns xAI. $tsla
— Ross Gerber (@GerberKawasaki) February 2, 2026
The two companies announced the deal on Monday in a statement on SpaceX’s website, saying the merger would form..
“the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform”.
SpaceX, one of the world’s most valuable private companies, will gain xAI properties such as its Grok chatbot and the social media platform X. The acquisition comes as Musk has pursued plans to put datacenters and solar-powered satellites in space as a means of powering artificial intelligence, an immense and exorbitantly expensive undertaking.
Introduction: Gold and silver rally resumes
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.
And welcome to Turnaround Tuesday too. After tumbling on Monday, precious metals and Asia-Pacific stock markets are both recovering today.
Gold’s up 4.5% this morning at $4,877 an ounce, quite a recovery from yesterday’s $4,403oz, while silver’s picked up 6.5% to $84.70.
That still leaves gold 12% shy of last week’s record highs, after its worst day since the early 1980s on Friday, when silver experienced its worst intraday collapse ever.
But it’s possible that the worst of the “metals meltdown” is behind us, after some highly speculative, leveraged traders were driven out of the market by the turbulence of recent days.
Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote, says:
With leveraged speculative positions flushed out, investors may feel they are returning to a freshly cleaned playground, albeit cautiously.
The long-term outlook for gold remains bullish. The factors supporting gold prices since last year remain firmly in place: trade and geopolitical uncertainty persists; G7 debt dynamics look increasingly unsustainable and are likely to worsen — not only in the US with the “Big, Beautiful Bill”, but also in Japan and in Europe amid rising defence spending.
The agenda
-
9.45am GMT: Treasury Committee hearing on government’s financial inclusion strategy.
-
8:00am GMT: UK grocery inflation figures for January
-
3pm GMT: US JOLTS job openings report
-
3pm GMT: Chief Secretary to the Treasury to give evidence to Economic Affairs Committee
