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Your evening read on the luxury and collectibles markets, by the numbers. Tonight: a two-sided day. Stocks rebounded and luxury shares bounced back on both continents — but the same Fed signal of higher-for-longer rates that lifted the dollar and bond yields drove precious metals sharply lower, with gold and silver both falling hard. Money rotated out of metals and back into equities.
Good evening. It's Thursday, June 18. I'm Sharon, and this is Closing Price from ALT/FNDATA.
This episode of Closing Price is brought to you by ALT/FNDATA, the market intelligence platform for insights on the luxury markets and related public equities. With our data sandbox, you can work directly with the dashboards and datasets behind today's signals to keep your finger on the pulse of the market and drive your competitive advantage. Book a demo at altfndata.com/book.
It was a two-sided day. After two sessions of losses driven by the Federal Reserve's signal that it intends to keep interest rates higher for longer, stocks rebounded, and luxury shares bounced back on both sides of the Atlantic. But that same message, by lifting the dollar and bond yields, hammered precious metals, as gold and silver both fell hard. In short, money rotated out of metals and back into equities.
Start with the luxury names, which recovered much of the ground they lost this week. In Europe, Kering, the owner of Gucci, ticker KER, led the way, closing at 276.55 euros, up about 4.4 percent. Hermès, ticker RMS, gained about 2 percent to 1,763 euros, Watches of Switzerland about 2.4 percent, and Richemont and Burberry each about 1.7 percent. The one laggard was LVMH, ticker MC in Paris, which closed at 505 euros, down about 1.2 percent.
In New York, the bounce was just as broad. Movado, ticker MOV, the watchmaker we described yesterday as a name investors give little credit, actually led the group, closing at 38.46 dollars, up about 3.3 percent. Capri Holdings, the parent of Versace, ticker CPRI, rose about 3 percent, to 20.32 dollars, Ralph Lauren about 2.3 percent, to 413 dollars, and Ferrari, ticker RACE, about 2.2 percent, to 362 dollars. Tapestry, the owner of Coach, was the exception, down about 1.6 percent, to 143.50 dollars.
Ferrari was in the news for a revealing reason of its own. Bloomberg reports that the company is using orders for its new electric car, the Luce, as a kind of loyalty test. The Luce costs about 636,000 dollars and has been coolly received, but clients are being told that buying one helps protect their access to Ferrari's most coveted limited models, cars like the multi-million-dollar LaFerrari Aperta. It is a window into how the very top of the luxury market actually works. The rarest products are not sold to whoever shows up first; they are allocated to the most loyal and highest-spending customers. Demand, in other words, is something Ferrari engineers as much as it meets.
The sharpest move of the day went the other way, in precious metals. Gold fell about 3.3 percent, to around 4,214 dollars an ounce, and silver dropped about 7.3 percent, to around 65 dollars. That is a striking reversal, because only two days ago gold was setting records. The cause is the Fed. When the central bank leans toward higher interest rates, the dollar tends to strengthen, and both higher rates and a stronger dollar work against gold, which pays no interest and is priced in dollars. Oil eased as well, down about 2 percent, to around 75 dollars a barrel.
That sell-off is a reminder that not all hard assets behave the same way. Gold and silver carry a spot price that can swing several percent in a session. The rarest physical objects, the kind that trade in the auction room, have no spot price at all; they trade on scarcity, and right now that market is firm. Just this month, Christie's Magnificent Jewels sale in New York totaled 49.7 million dollars and sold every single lot, even as gold and silver were selling off. Pearls make the point most cleanly of all, because unlike gold they are not a commodity with a daily quote. The most valuable pearl ever sold at auction, a pendant that once belonged to Marie Antoinette, brought 36.2 million dollars at Sotheby's in 2018, setting a world record for a pearl. A value like that does not move when the Federal Reserve shifts its tone; it rests on history and rarity.
Across the broader market, the rebound was led by technology. The Nasdaq rose about 1.9 percent, to around 26,500, the S&P 500 about 1.1 percent, to around 7,500, and the Dow finished roughly flat, near 51,600. Beneath the surface, the post-Fed picture held firm: the dollar strengthened and Treasury yields rose, the same forces weighing on gold. After two days of worry, investors decided the Fed's tougher stance on rates was not, in the end, a reason to keep selling stocks. One footnote from the Fed itself: in his debut, Warsh broke with tradition by declining to publish his own interest-rate projection, the so-called dot, and he launched a sweeping review of how the central bank communicates, a signal that he intends to reshape the institution, not just run it.
In sum: luxury shares rebounded on both continents, led by Kering in Europe and Movado in the US, gold and silver fell hard, and a tech-led rally lifted the Nasdaq about 1.9 percent.
Looking ahead, Art Basel runs through the weekend, and the collector-car world now turns toward Monterey Car Week in August.
That's it on Closing Price for today, Thursday, June 18. Open Bid returns tomorrow morning at 6 AM Eastern, and Closing Price is back tomorrow evening at 5.
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I'm Sharon, from ALT/FNDATA. I'll talk with you in the next episode.
(Prices: Yahoo Finance, closes final after the 4 PM ET bell, June 18; prior = June 17 close.)
