US Market Briefing | November 4, 2026 — Why Stocks and Gold Rose Together After the Midterms

On Wednesday, November 4, two investors who had made quite different choices could both open their accounts to good news. The S&P 500 rose 1.58%. Gold for December delivery gained 3.37% at settlement. A third investor, who owned a basket of large Nasdaq companies, had a different story to tell. Even after a 0.91% gain, the Nasdaq-100 was worth 8.74% less than on October 7. The first session after the midterms brought some relief. Where you felt it depended on what you owned and when you bought it. AP market report · Nasdaq index history · Reuters metals report

Stocks use the 4 p.m. New York regular close, 6 a.m. on November 5 in Seoul. The COMEX December 2026 gold and silver contracts are in dollars per troy ounce. Their settlement windows end at 1:30 p.m. and 1:25 p.m. New York time, respectively. DXY uses the first quote in the five-minute interval beginning at 4 p.m. in New York each day. It measures the dollar against six currencies and excludes the Korean won. The comparison dates are November 3, October 28 and October 7. S&P 500 · Nasdaq-100 · Gold · Silver · Silver settlement · Dollar index observations

What hospitals and discount stores had in common

The Dow gained 1,569.40 points to close at 53,356.12. Among the more striking moves were hospital operator HCA Healthcare, up 10.3%, and discount retailer Dollar Tree, up 9.6%. Their customers’ finances help explain the connection. A hospital needs to know how a visit will be paid for. A discount retailer cares how much a household has left to spend after the bills. With Democrats set to control both chambers of Congress, investors started weighing the prospects for health coverage and support for lower-income households. Share prices could adjust to those possibilities long before either company saw another dollar of revenue. AP reporting · Index closing figures

An election also has a cost simply because the result is unknown. An investor who wants protection against a sharp swing may pay extra for it before the count is in. One measure of that price fell on Wednesday. The VIX, derived from S&P 500 options and reflecting expected fluctuations over roughly 30 days, slipped from 20.83 to 16.61. That tells us investors were pricing in smaller swings than a day earlier. It tells us much less about which way shares will go when they next move. Daily VIX observations

Start both stock indexes at 100 on October 7 and follow them to the right edge of the chart. Before dividends, the S&P 500 finishes around 98.55 and the Nasdaq-100 around 91.26. Both lines turn up at the end. Yet an investor concentrated in the large nonfinancial companies that make up the Nasdaq-100 still has a much deeper hole to climb out of. That can make a perfectly accurate headline about a strong session sound oddly distant from a reader's experience. S&P 500 history · Nasdaq-100 history

Why gold could rise with stocks

Imagine buying an ounce of gold with income earned outside the United States. If your currency strengthens against the dollar, you can afford more gold even if the dollar price stays still. Meanwhile, falling bond yields slightly reduce the income advantage of holding a Treasury over holding a metal that pays no interest. Both conditions showed up on Wednesday. A softer dollar and lower yields help explain how buyers could find gold attractive on a day when stocks also rallied. Closing prices alone cannot tell us how many dollars of the gain to assign to either influence. Reuters on gold and the dollar · Treasury yield data

The U.S. Treasury's two-year par yield moved from 4.61% to 4.58%. Its ten-year yield fell from 4.95% to 4.90%, a decline of five basis points, or 0.05 percentage point. Think of an outstanding bond whose payments are fixed. The more an investor pays for those payments, the lower the yield the purchase offers. These were changes in market interest rates. Oil offered another possible influence as Brent traded below $95 a barrel during the day. A lower oil price, if sustained, can take some pressure off fuel costs and inflation. Treasury daily yields · AP on energy prices

Silver rose even faster than gold, gaining 5.08%. Now look across the same row in the table. Silver still stood 13.29% below its level twenty sessions earlier. Gold's smaller daily gain was enough to lift it above its price five sessions earlier. Silver's larger move still left it short of that mark. For readers valuing either metal in Korean won, there is one more step. The won value of a dollar matters, and Wednesday's move in the six-currency dollar index cannot be substituted for the USD/KRW exchange rate. Gold futures history · Silver futures history · Dollar index

AMD's sales and its share price kept different clocks

AMD released its third-quarter figures after Tuesday's regular close. Wednesday gave investors their first full regular session to trade on them. Revenue for the quarter ended September 26 reached about $13.4 billion, up 45% year over year. Data center sales reached about $8.5 billion, almost two-thirds of the total and up 97% from a year earlier. AMD shares, which had ended Tuesday at $483.90, closed Wednesday at $488.78, a gain of 1.01%. AMD earnings filing · AMD regular-session prices

How does 45% sales growth translate into a 1% rise in the stock? The two comparisons start in different places. Revenue growth compares products sold this quarter with products sold a year ago. Wednesday's share-price move starts from what shareholders were already willing to pay on Tuesday, with their expectations for growth built in. Management put fourth-quarter revenue at about $17 billion, plus or minus 3%. The next earnings statement will show how quickly orders and shipments turn into booked sales. A single closing price gives no precise measure of how much confidence investors placed in that forecast. AMD results and outlook

The dates on the jobs and fund-flow reports

ADP said Wednesday morning that private employers added 86,000 jobs in October. Economists had expected 67,000. ADP also revised September's gain from 90,000 to 86,000. An investor comparing October with expectations saw an upside surprise. Someone comparing it with the revised previous month saw hiring continue at exactly the same pace. The two-year Treasury yield finished lower despite the stronger-than-expected figure, one reason to be cautious about reading the entire session through the lens of the jobs report. ADP release · Economists’ forecast · Treasury yields

The Treasury also laid out a financing plan on Wednesday. Of the $125 billion in securities on offer, approximately $97 billion will refinance privately held debt coming due. That leaves about $28 billion of new cash to raise. Counting the entire $125 billion as extra borrowing would exaggerate the fresh demand on investors’ cash. The auctions will provide a more direct reading of the yields buyers require. Treasury quarterly refunding statement

Who bought the stocks that rose after the election? A fund report published on November 4 offers a view of investors’ money with one important catch. Its measurement period ended a week earlier.

For ETFs, net issuance counts shares created less shares redeemed, expressed in dollars. For mutual funds, the estimate counts money coming in less money going out. An increase in the value of existing ETF shares from a market rally does not create new shares. The combined figure shows a net addition for the week through October 28. It cannot identify a saver who sold a mutual fund and bought an ETF, or tell us whether a particular pension fund increased its stock holdings after election night. Investment Company Institute weekly estimates

The next jobs comparison comes on Friday, November 6, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics is due to release its October employment report at 8:30 a.m. in New York, 10:30 p.m. in Seoul. Government payrolls are part of that release too. Look first at whether its private-sector reading points in the same direction as ADP's. Then watch the two-year yield and the dollar to see whether Wednesday's declines hold. Those are two prices that helped stocks and gold share a good day, and the next piece of economic news could give their owners quite different experiences. BLS release calendar

Research cutoff 08:39 KST on November 5. Equity figures exclude after-hours trading.