Rough Week for All Asset Classes with Increased Volatility in Stocks, Crypto, Precious Metals; Bitcoin Down More Than 50% Past Six Months

It's been a trying week for just abot anybody invested in anything. From bitcoin, to stocks, to precious metals, financial markets spent the week gyrating, with most o fthe movement to the downside.

The major average, through Thursday’s close, have been rattled. Of the big three, only the Dow is positive, up a mere 16 points. Any minor drop would send the industrials to its fourth straight weekly loss. The NASDAQ is the biggest loser on the week, down three straight sessions and three consecutive weeks. With Thursday's close, it is down 921 points on the week, a loss of nearly four percent. A fourth straight weekly decline seems almost certain for the once-loved, tech-heavy index.

The S&P 500 has also logged losses the past three sessions. Down just more than two percent, its 140-point loss on the week is troubling. These are America's largest companies and many of them have already reported earnings for the fourth quarter of 2025, with spotty results. A large contingent of S&P companies have beaten estimates but issued sobering guidance, which triggered selling in many issues.

Of particular focus are the companies involved with the AI buildout. Alphabet, Microsoft, and Thursday night, Amazon reported earnings and issued guidance with expanded CapEx spending. They've all been snet lower. Investors got ahead of the trend with Amazon, sending the stock to a four percent loss on Thursday, and another eight percent lower after the close and into the pre-market based on their lavishly-planned AI spending.

Additionally, the crypto space continues to be ravaged and has become a liquidity event. With bitcoin bottoming at $61,395 Thursday night, former "hodlers" and speculators hoping for continued advances have become disenchanted with the entire space. Bitcoin has been more than halved since its all-time highs above $124,00 in early October, 2025, and other popular "coins" have been slashed.

In just the last six months, Ethereum (ether) has shed 46%, Cardano is down 63%, and XRP has dropped 53%. The entire blockchain bonanza has suddenly gone tilt because investors, whales, true believers and suckers alike have found no actual use case in scale for any of it. Originally promoted as peer-to-peer anonymous currency outside the purview of governments and regulations, the entire crypto universe has been turned into nothing short of privacy-invasive tokens, with all transactions recorded, tracked, and taxed, as Wall Street and the D.C. horde descended on the fledgling sector with its usual glaringly-obvious intrusions.

Cyrpto has become a melting pot of criminality, slush funds, and liquidity taps. There's literally no mass adoption of bitcoin and its thousands of imitators and the next shoe to drop will be bitcoin miners giving up, with blockchain rewards dwindling and costs either remaining high or soaring higher, mostly CPU prices and electricity expenses. The dismantling of the entire crypto structure of developers, financiers, and users is likely to happen with more alacrity than most people could have imagined. In the case of a recessionary deflation, many of the "coins" and projects will be left to founders or abandoned and bankrupted. It's a very serious problem, for which neither the market nor the crypto evangelists have any solutions.

After the close Thursday, a few important earnings announcements:

1. Reddit (RDDT) - beat top and bottom, issued strong guidance, $1 billion share repurchase, stock up 6-7% pre-market
2. Amazon (AMZN) - down 8% pre-market after guiding towards excessive CapEx
3. Strategy (MSTR) - hammered lower during cash session on bitcoin losses, down 72% over past six months, up 9% pre-market on bitcoin bounce
4. Roblox (RBLX) - beat, strong guidance sending shares up 8% pre-market

Friday, before the opening bell, a few more earnings releases by:

1. Biogen (BIIB) - minor beat, shares up 1% pre-market
2. AutoNation (AN) - 4Q sales below estimates, stock gyrating, down 5% Thursday, up 4% pre-market
3. Under Armour (UAA) - reports beat, shares up 2%

Beyond stocks and crypto, the usual bastions of safety, gold and silver, have witnessed volatility rarely experienced in the commodities sector, though dislocations and rapid gains and losses are beginning to define what is becoming a 24-hour, global market, especially for precious metals, including platinum and palladium. Silver especially has been whipsawed this week, trading in a range from a low of $65 per ounce to above $91, currently up overnight to $75.35. Gold has been somewhat less volatile, bounding between $4.660 and $5,080 this week. Thursday morning has spot gold at $4,925.50.

Stock futures are ripping higher a half hour before the U.S. opening bell.

Dead cat bounce incoming.

At the Close, Thursday, February 6, 2026:
Dow: 48,908.72, -592.58 (-1.20%)
NASDAQ: 22,540.59, -363.99 (-1.59%)
S&P 500: 6,798.40, -84.32 (-1.23%)
NYSE Composite: 22,733.32, -242.28 (-1.05%)