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Gold smashes past $4,000 an ounce, cementing its dominance over stocks over the last 1, 5, 10, and 25 years

The precious metal is soaring in value.

All that glitters is gold... especially in today’s market.

On Tuesday, the precious metal climbed above $4,000 per troy ounce for the first time, fueled by worries on inflation, soaring debt piles, the decline of the dollar, and geopolitical volatility (among other reasons).

Long considered a safe haven asset, gold bullion surpassed $1,000 during the financial crisis, $2,000 through the pandemic, and the $3,000 threshold in March, just ahead of President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. More recently, both central banks and individual investors have been pilling into gold, with still stubborn US inflation, Fed cuts, and the ongoing US government shutdown encouraging investors to diversify their exposure away from USD — extending a rally that has sent prices up more than 50% this year.

With this latest run, the simple price return of gold now outshines that of the SPDR S&P 500 Trust across 1, 5, 10, and 25 years (note: dividends not included).

Gold vs Stocks
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So, where do we go from here?

Looking ahead, some of Wall Street has mixed thoughts on gold. Bank of America analysts see the potential for “uptrend exhaustion” that could lead to “a consolidation or correction” in the fourth quarter, with many banks’ price forecasts lagging the price action of the last few weeks. Goldman Sachs analysts, however, also chimed in with a still bullish note this week, hiking their end-of-2026 target price to $4,900 from $4,300, citing central bank and ETF demand.

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Tempus AI shares surge to all-time high

Shares of Tempus AI jumped over 7% Wednesday to reach an all-time high of $99.90. Shares of the AI medical diagnostics company are up over 191% for the year so far.

The company has recently announced a flurry of FDA clearances for its technologies. Most recently, on September 22, Tempus AI was granted FDA clearance for its Tempus xR IVD device, which is used to tailor cancer therapies.

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AST SpaceMobile moons on Verizon deal

Satellite operator AST SpaceMobile rocketed in early trading after announcing a deal with Verizon in which the telecom giant will use AST’s satellites to provide cellular broadband service “when needed for Verizon customers starting in 2026.”

The market seems to view the announcement as a vote of confidence for the recent romp of services-from-space stocks. Planet Labs and Rocket Lab, which also announced a deal for three new launches on Tuesday afternoon, were both up sharply in early trading.

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Semiconductor equipment stocks slump after US House committee slams their sales to China and recommends more export curbs

Semiconductor equipment stocks came under pressure Wednesday morning after a House committee “uncovered alarming new information revealing that companies in America and allied nations — including ASML in the Netherlands, Tokyo Electron (TEL) in Japan, and Applied Materials, KLA Corp, and Lam Research in the United States — fueled semiconductor manufacturing in China and made sizable returns selling equipment to Chinese state-owned and military-linked companies,” according to a Tuesday night press release.

The report, however, does not include an outright accusation that any of these companies have broken the law.

ASML alleviates a key choke point in the manufacturing process for advanced semiconductors by selling systems that etch tiny designs onto tiny wafers.

Applied Materials, meanwhile, came under pressure last week after indicating that enhanced export restrictions from the Commerce Department would result in a $600 million hit to revenues in its fiscal 2026. Both this stock as well as Lam Research have been able to reverse early losses to trade higher amid a broad rebound for much of the AI trade.

At the time, analysts noted that Applied Materials’ peers (KLA and Lam Research) would likely also be adversely impacted by these measures. China is the largest market for all three of these companies in the wafer fab equipment industry.

In its report, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party recommends that Dutch and Japanese export controls be harmonized with US restrictions, expanding country-wide export curbs, widening the list of restricted entities, not allowing allied manufacturers to sell to Chinese military entities, and more.

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