Gold futures mark highest finish in almost 6 weeks

Published: Oct. 25, 2021 at 1:41 p.m. ET

By

Myra P. Saefong

Gold futures climbed to their highest settlement in nearly six weeks on Monday, with support from weakness in U.S. Treasury yields offsetting pressure from a rise in the dollar. The precious metal's relatively quiet price action "may wind up being the calm before the storm of a significant market move," said Tyler Richey, co-editor at Sevens Report Research. "Real interest rates are as low as they have been since the beginning of the pandemic, which is supportive of gold as rising inflation expectations are outpacing the rise in benchmark interest rates." December gold GCZ21, +0.71% climbed $10.50, or 0.6%, to settle at $1,806.80 an ounce. Prices based on the most-active contract settled at their highest since Sept. 14, after posting a gain of about 1.6% last week, according to FactSet data.

Tesla stock surges toward a record after Hertz reportedly ordered 100,000 Tesla EVs

Shares of Tesla Inc. undefined charged 4.3% higher in premarket trading Monday toward another record, after Bloomberg reported that Hertz Global Holdings Inc. undefined is looking to buy 100,000 Tesla electric vehicles as part of its plan to electrify its fleet of rental cars. Hertz's stock was still inactive ahead of the open. Citing people with knowledge of the matter, the Bloomberg report said the order placed by the rental car company, which just came out of bankruptcy four months ago, would represent about $4.2 billion in revenue for Tesla. The EV market leader's stock has rallied 5.1% the past two days to close at back-to-back records. It rose 7.9% last week to mark a ninth-straight weekly gain, the longest such streak since the 12-week winning streak that ended in February 2020. The stock has soared 41.4% over the past three months while Hertz shares have shot up 47.2% and the S&P 500 undefined has tacked on 3.0%.

Myra P. Saefong

Myra P. Saefong, assistant global markets editor, has covered the commodities sector for MarketWatch for 20 years. She has spent the bulk of her years at the company writing the daily Futures Movers and Metals Stocks columns and has been writing the weekly Commodities Corner column since 2005.