Wednesday was a quiet day for markets, and Thursday looks set for the same in what may be a taste of doldrums in the summer ahead.
And market concentration is also more extreme, with U.S. stocks accounting for 56% of the MSCI World Index. In fact, tech giants Apple AAPL, -0.04%, Amazon AMZN, +0.19%, Facebook FB, -0.04% and Microsoft MSFT, -0.09%, electric-car maker Tesla TSLA, +2.39%, and graphics microchip maker Nvidia NVDA, +0.33% have the same market capitalization as the U.K., German, French, Italian, Russian, and Polish indexes…combined.
“Investors’ desperate rush for the holy grail of diversification has reduced the appeal offered by traditionally uncorrelated assets: gold GOLD, , the Yen USDJPY, +0.21%, the Swiss Franc USDCHF, +0.21%, and bitcoin BTCUSD, +2.01% have lost value during recent equity selloffs,” Deluard said, but gold and commodities have proved better protection against recent inflation surprises.
“This barbell portfolio should protect investors against the main risks of 2021 at a relatively cheap price,” Deluard said. “Rare, good news in an otherwise bleak environment.”Tesla is set to make the rare move of paying in advance for semiconductors to secure supply amid a global shortage, according to a report from the Financial Times. It is also considering buying a plant as part of its efforts to overcome chip supply issues facing the automobile industry, the report said.
Shares in Figs, the apparel and lifestyle group for healthcare workers, are expected to start trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday. The company priced its initial public offering at $22 a share — above the $19 top-end of its expected range — as it expanded its stock offering to raise nearly $581 million.