*****************************************************************************

*                       FIEND'S SUPERBEAR MARKET REPORT                     *

*                               February 4, 2026                            *

*                                                                           *

*                       e-mail: fiendbear@fiendbear.com                     *

*                    web address: http://www.fiendbear.com                  *

*****************************************************************************

Fiend Commentary
================

Milestone Fatigue: Stocks Step Back, Metals Bounce, and the 5% Long-Bond Line Looms

January ended with the kind of whiplash that tends to change market psychology, and Tuesday’s trading reinforced the new reality: the big round-number milestones (Dow 50,000 and S&P 7,000) are not just headlines, they are pressure points.

Stocks slid on Tuesday, led by technology and especially software. The interesting twist is that the selling wasn’t driven by a classic “recession scare” headline. It was driven by a more uncomfortable thought: what if the AI boom doesn’t just lift all boats, but starts cannibalizing entire software business models? In other words, the market started pricing the “disruption” part of AI, not just the “investment” part. That’s why the Nasdaq took the brunt of it even while many non-tech stocks held up better than the index suggested.

At the same time, gold and silver did what markets often do after a forced liquidation: they bounced hard. After Friday’s brutal flush, dip buyers showed up. By Wednesday morning, gold has pushed back above the $5,000 level and silver has clawed its way back toward the high-$80s. That still leaves both well below last week’s extremes, but the message matters: the bid didn’t vanish. It stepped aside, waited for the leverage to clear, and then returned.

The quiet, bigger issue is rates.

The 30-year Treasury yield is sitting around 4.9% again, close enough to 5% that it’s starting to behave like a line in the sand. Whether it’s 4.90 or 4.98 is less important than what it represents: long-term borrowing costs refusing to come down. And long-term borrowing costs touch everything: mortgages, corporate financing, and the government’s own interest expense. If the long bond pushes through 5% and stays there, it becomes much harder for equities to keep floating on optimism alone.

So the setup for Wednesday is a three-way tug-of-war:

Stocks are trying to digest a tech wobble right under major milestone levels.
Metals are trying to prove last week was a leverage purge, not “the end.”
Bonds are quietly threatening to tighten conditions from the long end, even without the Fed lifting a finger.

This is exactly how “something breaks” in modern markets: not with one dramatic headline, but with long rates creeping higher while investors try to pretend they don’t matter. The closer the 30-year gets to 5%, the harder it becomes to ignore the true question hanging over 2026:

Are we heading into another melt-up… or the moment when the cost of money finally bites back?

 

 

Weekly Market Summary Page
[Return to the Fiend's SuperBear Page]