Headlines May 21

Investors were thrown for a loop by the wild trade of high-risk assets like Bitcoin, as well as persistent worries about the outlook for inflation. For the first time in four trading days, oil has risen.

After Fed's Harker said the central bank should talk about cutting bond buying earlier rather than later, the S&P 500 fluctuated between gains and losses.

The NASDAQ 100 fell, while the Dow Jones industrial average rose as investors turned their focus away from growth and toward value stocks like Boeing. After China repeated its warning that it plans to clamp down on cryptocurrency mining as part of an attempt to monitor financial risks, Bitcoin resumed its selloff on Friday.

Earlier in the day, European stocks rose on the possibility of easing lockdowns and as services data indicated a rebound. Asian stocks were mainly higher, with the exception of China, where they fell.

Treasury yields remained unchanged, although the DXY rose. Gold has fallen from its highest point in over four months.
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China has long objected to the anonymity offered by Bitcoin and other crypto tokens, and earlier this week cautioned that financial institutions would not be permitted to accept them as payment. The world's crypto miners, programmers who use vast processing resources to validate transactions on the blockchain, are concentrated in China.