Wall Street muddles around with Fed minutes ahead

Wall Street muddles around with Fed minutes ahead

Tech, communication services are leading percentage gains among sectors, while materials .SPLRCM are showing the biggest decline.In any event, the pause comes as investor optimism has been high over the economic recovery, with last Friday's monthly U.S. jobs data among the latest bits of data to give investors more hope.Here is the early U.S. market snapshot:(Caroline Valetkevitch)*****COMMODITIES: FIRST REMOVE THE FROTH (0919 GMT/1319 GMT)Maybe it's a bubble, or perhaps we should say frothy trade.But whatever we call it, it seems that speculative buying drove some commodity prices recently, and this should come to an end sooner or later, impacting shares in miners."We expect that some of this froth will fade over the summer, with inflation concerns and eventual rate hike pressures weighing on metal prices," according to Berenberg analysts.But it does not seem to be over yet. "The upbeat 'playlist' of stimulus measures and optimism have scope to enable commodity prices to surprise to the upside, at least in the near term."But as new supply is coming, Berenberg analysts expect price corrections in the second half of 2021.They are cautious on gold after net outflows of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and believe it is likely to drift lower unless the pandemic's