US stocks fall while a break in gold fever sends metals prices plunging
[January 31, 2026] By
STAN CHOE
NEW YORK (AP) — Financial markets churned on Friday as investors tried
to figure out what President Donald Trump’s new nominee to lead the
Federal Reserve will mean for interest rates.
U.S. stocks fell, with the S&P 500 down 0.4% after sinking as much as
1.1% earlier in the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 179
points, or 0.4%, and the Nasdaq composite lost 0.9%.
The value of the U.S. dollar rallied, but only after swiveling a couple
times following Trump’s nomination of Kevin Warsh. And some of the
wildest action was again in precious metals markets, where gold and
silver prices plunged following their stellar runs over the last year.
Whoever leads the Fed has a big influence on the economy and markets
worldwide by helping to dictate where the U.S. central bank moves
interest rates. Such decisions lift or weigh on prices for all kinds of
investments, as the Fed tries to keep the U.S. job market humming
without letting inflation get out of control. Trump has been pushing for
lower interest rates, which usually help goose the economy but can also
cause higher inflation.
A fear in financial markets has been that the Fed will lose some of its
independence because of Trump. That fear in turn helped catapult the
price of gold and weaken the U.S. dollar’s value over the last year.
The longtime assumption has been that the Fed should operate separately
from the rest of Washington so that it can make moves that are painful
in the short term but necessary for the long term. To get inflation down
to the Fed’s goal of 2%, for example, may require the unpopular choice
to keep interest rates high and grind down on the economy for a while.
The big question is what Warsh’s nomination, which still requires
approval from the Senate, means for the Fed’s independence.
Warsh used to be a governor on the Fed’s board, so investors are
familiar with him. That could also mean Warsh is familiar with and hopes
to continue the institution of the Fed as an independent operator. And
while with the Fed, Warsh criticized the central bank’s buying of bonds
to keep interest rates low.
Some on Wall Street took Warsh’s nomination as an encouraging signal for
a still-independent Fed that will keep rates high, if necessary. Besides
slowing the economy, higher interest rates would push downward on stock
prices.
But Warsh has also recently been critical of the Fed’s current chair,
Jerome Powell, and has voiced support for lower rates.
“Indeed, Warsh is not the Fed’s guy, he is Trump’s guy, and has shadowed
Trump on monetary policy almost every step of the way since 2009,”
according to Thierry Wizman, a strategist at Macquarie Group. “This
doesn’t necessarily mean that Warsh will push the Fed into rate cuts
soon,” but it could indicate he may be quicker to do so when the time
comes.
On Wall Street, stocks of metals miners tumbled as the price of gold
dropped 11.4% to settle at $4,745.10 per ounce. Gold’s price suddenly
ran out of momentum following a tremendous rally where it roughly
doubled over 12 months. It topped $5,000 for the first time on Monday
and was around $5,600 at one point on Thursday.
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Anthony Spina, left, works with fellow options traders on the floor
of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026. (AP
Photo/Richard Drew)
Silver, which had been on a similar, jaw-dropping tear, fell even more.
It plunged 31.4%.
Prices for gold and other precious metals had been surging as investors
looked for safer places for their money while weighing a wide range of
risks, including a potentially less independent Fed, a U.S. stock market
that critics say is expensive, threats of tariffs and heavy debt loads
for governments worldwide.
The dramatic halt may have been inevitable given how far and how fast
metal prices had surged over the last year. Nothing goes up in price
forever.
Friday’s drops for metals prices helped send the stock of miner Newmont
down 11.5%. Freeport-McMoRan, another miner, dropped 7.5%.
Helping to limit the market’s losses was Tesla, which rose 3.3%. It
bounced back after dropping on Thursday despite delivering better profit
reports for the latest quarter than analysts expected.
Apple added 0.5% after the iPhone maker reported a stronger profit for
the latest quarter than analysts expected.
All told, the S&P 500 fell 29.98 points to 6,939.03. The Dow Jones
Industrial Average dipped 179.09 to 48,892.47, and the Nasdaq composite
sank 223.30 to 23,461.82.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury inched up to 4.25%
from 4.24% late Thursday. It got near 4.28% in the overnight and
early-morning hours before falling back. A rise in a bond’s yield
indicates that its price is weakening.
Yields may have felt some upward pressure from a report released Friday
showing U.S. inflation at the wholesale level was hotter last month than
economists expected. That could put pressure on the Fed to keep interest
rates steady for a while instead of cutting them, as it did late last
year.
In stock markets abroad, indexes rose in much of Europe following a
mixed performance in Asia.
Stocks rose 1.2% in Jakarta after the CEO of Indonesia’s stock market
resigned Friday. Stocks had stumbled there in prior days after MSCI, an
influential company in the investment industry that creates stock and
other indexes, warned about market risks such as a lack of transparency.
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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
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