Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq sink, bitcoin plummets in downbeat start to December

Barrick Mining Corporation (B) said Monday that it’s exploring an IPO of its North American gold assets, sending shares of the Canadian miner up 3% ahead of the opening bell.

Barrick said it would maintain a significant controlling interest in the new company should it spin off its subsidiary as a publicly traded entity.

The new company would control Barrick’s interests in Nevada Gold Mines and the Pueblo Viejo mine in the Dominican Republic, which are both joint ventures with Newmont (NEM), as well as Barrick’s wholly owned Fourmile gold discovery in Nevada. Newmont stock also rose in premarket trading.

The announcement comes after activist investor Elliott Investment Management reportedly built a sizable stake in the company in November and pushed for a breakup. In September, Mark Hill took over as Barrick’s CEO, as rising costs in its North American mines and the company remained locked in a dispute with Mali’s government.

Nvidia (NVDA) announced Monday that it invested $2 billion in Synopsys (SNPS) stock to deepen the companies’ partnership.

Nvidia shares fell 1.5% in premarket trading as a risk-off mood swept markets, while Synopsys stock jumped over 7% on the news. If that holds through the day, Synopsys is on track to wipe away about half of its year-to-date losses.

Synopsys, which designs tools and offers services to companies, is partnering with Nvidia on engineering and marketing activities, including compute-intensive applications, advanced agentic AI engineering, and joint go-to-market initiatives, according to a press release.

Nvidia paid $414.79 per share for Synopsys’s common stock. The AI titan is coming off a rough November, with shares down 11% over the past month. Year to date, however, Nvidia stock has returned 31%.

Crypto stocks took a hit in premarket trading on Monday as a sell-off in cryptocurrencies gained steam.

Strategy (MSTR), which helped pioneer the bitcoin treasury model for businesses, declined by over 5%. Year to date, the Michael Saylor-led firm is down 38%. Meanwhile, Coinbase (COIN) dropped by 5%, and Robinhood (HOOD) slid 4%.

The stocks fell in sympathy with cryptocurrencies, which sold off across the board.

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) fell more than 6% and briefly traded below $85,000. Ether (ETH-USD) shed nearly 7% to trade around $2,800 per token. Ripple’s XRP (XRP-USD) dropped 7% to around $2.

Selling accelerated in the early morning hours after the DeFi platform Yearn Finance said it experienced an “incident” in its yETH LST stableswap pool. Yearn posted on X that the hack led to a $9 million loss.

Bloomberg reports:

Treasurys started the post-Thanksgiving week on the back foot as a slide in Japanese debt spilled over into bond markets globally.

The yield on US 10-year notes (^TNX) rose three basis points to 4.04%, following a jump in the Japanese equivalent to the highest since 2008 on the prospect of a Bank of Japan interest-rate hike later this month. That also pushed up rates on bonds from Europe to New Zealand.

Read more here.

Yahoo Finance’s Jake Conley takes a look at the key events for markets this week.

He reports:

Read more here.

Silver (SI=F) jumped nearly 2% to a fresh all-time peak on Monday as traders eyed tight supply and optimism for a US interest rate cut in December.

The metal was trading above $58 an ounce, having surged almost 6% on Friday to a record high.

Bloomberg reports:

Read more here.

Yahoo Finance’s Allie Canal reports:

Read more here.

Bloomberg reports:

Oil rose as a key pipeline linking Kazakh fields to Russia’s Black Sea coast halted loading after one of its three moorings was damaged in an attack over the weekend.

Brent (BZ=F) traded above $63. The Caspian Pipeline Consortium carries most of Kazakhstan’s crude exports, which have averaged 1.6 million barrels a day so far this year.

Ukraine hasn’t commented on the incident at the CPC facility, although it confirmed separate attacks on an oil refinery and tankers over the weekend.

The incident came after the OPEC+ producer-group led by Saudi Arabia reiterated a three-month plan to halt output hikes in the first quarter of next year. OPEC+ again said the move reflected weaker seasonal market conditions. A major surplus is expected in the early part of next year.

Oil posted a fourth consecutive monthly drop in November as expectations for a swelling surplus weighed on the outlook, with the International Energy Agency forecasting a record glut in 2026. Still, geopolitical tensions from Russia to Venezuela — where President Trump warned airspace should be considered closed over the weekend, add to the bullish risks for prices.

Read more here.

Yahoo Finance’s Myles Udland reports:

The three-year anniversary of ChatGPT’s release was on Sunday.

For investors and the corporate world, a lot more than three years’ worth of change has followed.

Stock prices have soared. Workflows have changed. Staffing needs have been radically altered. A massive domestic infrastructure buildout is underway.

The economy has become increasingly K-shaped, with the distance widening between the financial haves and have-nots in both the corporate and consumer realms.

The transformed state of the economy and markets is remarkable on its own merits. But against the backdrop of the markets from which this artificial intelligence boom emerged, the turnaround is even more impressive.

Simply put, ChatGPT didn’t just catalyze the biggest technological boom in a generation; it offered a catalyst to turn around one of the lousiest market environments investors had been dealing with since the financial crisis.

… And it is with this context that the doubt which has seemed to dog this bull run becomes more explicable.

Read more here in this takeaway from Morning Brief.

Cryptocurrencies fell early Monday morning as a week of sell-off continued despite appearing to stablize at the end of last week.

Bloomberg reports:

Read more here.