Recently, I’ve noticed a fairly interesting shift in the market. On Tuesday, U.S. stocks rebounded across the board: all three major indices rose together. The Dow gained 0.76%, the S&P 500 rose 0.77%, and the Nasdaq jumped even more, up 1.04%. At the same time, however, gold fell 1.59% to $5,142.4 per ounce, and silver also ended its four-day streak of gains.

The logic behind this is actually quite clear. Anthropic, an AI startup, issued a major signal—they plan to collaborate with partners such as Intapp and FactSet to launch AI agents for professional services firms, covering areas like investment banking, accounting, law, human resources, and more. The key is that they’re sending a message of “collaboration rather than replacement,” which directly alleviates the market’s concerns about AI disrupting the software industry—so the software sector overall warmed up.

On the other hand, Meta and AMD also announced a large-scale partnership. Meta will deploy AMD chips with computing power equivalent to 6 gigawatts, representing a multi-year order worth about $60 billion. Such big-ticket investment in AI infrastructure has, to some extent, also boosted market risk appetite.

Interestingly, the VIX fear index dropped by nearly 7%, and consumer confidence was also better than expected, coming in at 91.2. As safe-haven assets, gold and silver naturally faced pressure amid improving risk sentiment. This pullback in gold and silver, to a certain extent, reflects the market’s reassessment—and repricing—of economic prospects.

From the Federal Reserve’s perspective, recent comments by several officials are also quite thought-provoking. Cook mentioned that AI could drive generational shifts in the labor market, and that short-term neutral interest rates might rise. Goolsbee emphasized that it’s still too early to cut rates based solely on expectations of productivity improvements; only when inflation truly declines would rate cuts be considered. In practice, these remarks are laying the groundwork for the subsequent policy stance.

The Bank of England’s Governor Bailey also indicated that whether there will be a rate cut in March remains undecided, and monetary policy here is still on hold and under review. Geopolitically, the U.S. is also still concerned about the yen exchange rate. Reports say that in January, U.S. authorities proactively sought quotes on exchange rates and are preparing to coordinate intervention together.

On the commodities front, Citi is bullish on copper and expects it to rise to $14,000 per ton in the next three months. However, gold and silver have already been under short-term pressure. Instead, it’s the AI-related chips and software companies that are seeing demand. Thomson Reuters’ stock surged 14.2% at one point on news of Anthropic’s enterprise AI tools, and AMD also closed up 8.77%.

The shift in market sentiment is quite obvious—from worrying that AI will steal people’s jobs to growing optimism about the productivity gains and business opportunities that AI can bring. The weakness in gold and silver perfectly reflects this transition from defense to offense. Interestingly, reports suggest Stripe is still considering a full or partial acquisition of PayPal, and competition in the payments space is quietly changing as well.

Overall, this rebound is driven by a renewed reassessment of the progress of AI commercialization and optimistic expectations for corporate earnings. The pullback in gold and silver is only a surface manifestation of this market sentiment shift; the real story is still unfolding within the AI and technology sectors.