Treasury and gold investors were rocked out of their recent torpor on Wednesday as a series of large trades in the futures markets sent prices tumbling.Not a good day for gold bugs.
At the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, an unusually big sale of more than 100,000 futures on U.S. government debt cascaded across traders' screens shortly after 10 a.m.
The selling spread to the cash markets where 10-year Treasury yields, which rise as prices fall, spiked to 1.99% from 1.93% in minutes.
The trades came just after the release of congressional testimony from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Some traders said Mr. Bernanke appeared less focused on the prospect for a third round of asset purchases, known as QE3, than the market expected.
Despite the huge sell-off in gold shown above (the largest in 3 years), gold (and other asset classes) are doing just fine. The only asset down year to date that EconomPic regularly reports on is long Treasuries (which were up more than 30% in 2011).
Source: Yahoo Finance
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