Wall Street Lunch: Gold And Silver Continue To Tumble Following Historic One-Day Drop

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The yellow metal remains under pressure as it nears correction territory. (0:16) Beyond Meat on a wild squeeze ride. (1:04) Meta laying off 600 superintelligence employees. (2:26)

This is an abridged transcript of the podcast:

Our top story so far, spot gold (XAUUSD:CUR) and silver (XAGUSD:CUR) remain under pressure following a historic one-day drop.

Silver is now trading in correction territory, down more than 10% from its recent intraday highs. Gold is down around 8%.

Ole Hansen, Saxo Bank’s head of commodity strategy, says a very technical extended rally has traders focused on protecting gains rather than chasing new highs.

The latest price action also underlines how silver’s liquidity is roughly nine times lower than gold, magnifying both rallies and corrections, he added.

Meanwhile, Spartan Capital’s Peter Cardillo says that the selloff looks more like a “healthy pullback” than the start of a serious correction.

Both metals are off their lows and have a chance to move into the green by the end of the trading day.

Among active stocks, Beyond Meat (BYND) to infinity and beyond? The stock is seeing short squeeze/meme stock action, rallying another 50% today after soaring nearly 150% Tuesday.

Shorts look to be racing to cover, with open short interest north of 50% on the stock. SA analyst Joseph Parrish says the rally has little to do with fundamentals, as “BYND’s valuation now fully reflects its difficult turnaround prospect.”

AT&T (T) beat expectations for key subscriber metrics in Q3, which helped investors overlook profit that only met expectations and a miss on revenue.

The company added 288,000 fiber subscribers, ahead of the Bloomberg consensus estimate of nearly 274,000. Wireless postpaid phone net adds of 405,000 echoed that strength, comfortably ahead of the 331,000 estimate.

Danil Sereda, Investing Group Leader for Beyond the Wall Investing, said the strong postpaid phone net adds and low churn in mobility services, along with a rise in mobility service revenues, means continued core wireless strength.

And Texas Instruments (TXN) is slumping after mixed Q3 results and weaker outlook drew lukewarm reactions from analysts.

Jefferies analyst Blayne Curtis says he plans to continue watching from the sidelines, given the relative valuation of the stock vs. “the least amount of cyclical recovery left in the group.”

In other news of note, Meta Platforms (META) is slashing around 600 jobs at its superintelligence unit for more agility and less bureaucracy.

In a memo seen by Axios, new AI chief Alexandr Wang says after the cuts “fewer conversations will be required to make a decision, and each person will be more load bearing and have more scope and impact.”

The layoffs will come in the company’s Fundamental AI Research lab and its product-related AI and AI infrastructure units but will spare the TBD Lab unit. And affected employees will be invited to apply for other roles within Meta.

And in the Wall Street Research Corner, Goldman Sachs expects companies to keep channeling the bulk of their cash toward capital expenditures and research and development in 2026.

The equity team’s forecasts imply 50% of S&P 500 (SP500) cash spending will go to capex and R&D, 43% to buybacks and dividends and 7% to cash M&A.

Information Technology (XLK) names are among the biggest spenders. The top names in Goldman’s Capex & R&D Basket (ranked by capex + R&D divided by market cap) are:

Intel (INTC) at 27%, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) at 16%, Micron Technology (MU) at 12%, Akamai (AKAM) at 9% and Oracle (ORCL) at 8%.

You can check out all 21 names here.