In This Article:
Stocks (^GSPC, ^IXIC, ^DJI) have underperformed so far in 2025, with all three major averages in the red on the last day of the first quarter.
Yahoo Finance Senior Reporter Ines Ferré joins Morning Brief to explain how commodities and the energy sector have led market gains this year, emphasizing the surge in gold (GC=F) prices.
To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Morning Brief here.
Stocks are underperforming so far this year with all three major averages in the red to wrap up the first quarter. But the big outperformer this year, commodities. Energy has clocked in as the best gainer, biggest gainer year to date. Here with more Yahoo Finance senior markets reporter, Ines Ferre. So energy stocks doing well and underlying prices.
Yeah, that's right. And we have seen that energy stocks have been the leaders, uh, for this year-to-date gains. As we take a look at the YFi interactive, let me just show you our, uh, chart for the sector action. And you can see that XLE is up 8.5%, uh, year to date. So outperforming healthcare, utilities, and this is something that we've seen this rotation going out of tech, out of high growth and going into energy and dividend yielding stocks, despite the fact that oil is relatively low year-to-date. It's negative year-to-date.
And as I know you're also taking a look at gold, obviously, hitting, how many record highs so far this year now? It's 18.
It would now be 18. Today is 18. 18 as of today. So how much more room to run might there be? What are you looking at?
18.
So look, gold right now is up above $3,150 for the futures. It touched 3,127 for spot gold. And geopolitical tensions, trade war, sticky inflation, the risk of stagflation, all of this has been sending gold prices higher. And you have now Wall Street that's been playing catch up with their price targets. So you've got Goldman Sachs is saying by year end 3,300 per troy ounce for gold. You've got Bank of America predicting 3,500 even. JP Morgan, the other day just floated the idea. They did not raise their price target to 4,000, but they floated this idea of 4,000 possibly because of the speed at which we have seen gold going higher, going from 2,500 to the 3,000 level, now to the 3100 level. And you have Societe Generale, the French bank that's saying that they're, the central bank buying has really been increasing so much, and you could see 4,000 because of the Russian frozen assets. If those are to go to Ukraine, you're going to, for the Ukraine rebuilding, a type of settlement, then you're going to be seeing central banks continuing to accelerate their buying of gold. But one warning sign is that we are seeing gold at all-time highs. And one of the banks, Goldman, the other day said you could see a better entry point going forward because if stocks continue to underperform, if stocks go down, you're going to see margin calls. You're going to see traders that are going to be selling anything that they can. And that is a scenario where you can see gold going down.
What about the miners? They tend to sort of magnify the move in the underlying commodity, it feels like. Is that what we've been seeing?
Yeah. Well, as far as the miners is are concerned, they had an underperformance back in 2024 last year. In 2025 though, we have seen them outperforming. So if you take a look at our YFi interactive, this is a year-to-date chart. You're looking 20 at a 28% gain for Newmont. You're looking at Barrick Gold up, uh, year-to-date. You're seeing gains of double digits, up 23%. So you are seeing them with unprecedented profit margins, really. You're seeing them with improved cash flows. So to the, this year-to-date, this quarter, they're really outperforming.
