$4,366.10 gold and $1,753.00 platinum: the board is back at 19 August

§1Four metals down, four re-read, four written back.

All four metals on this paper's board fell in Tuesday's early session, and all four were re-read at press time and written back to the tape. Gold is $4,366.10 the ounce, down $82.19 or 1.8476% on Monday's close of $4,448.286. Silver is $64.44, down $2.08 or 3.1272%. Platinum is $1,753.00, down $37.92 or 2.1173%. Palladium is $1,304.00, down $52.11 or 3.8429%. The readings are Kitco's bid at 06:00 ET, checked against CNBC's quote pages at 06:02 ET. Compared like with like, midpoint to midpoint rather than bid to last, the two pages sit 0.0337% apart on gold, 0.1033% on silver, 0.0142% on platinum and 0.1499% on palladium. Palladium's own quoted spread was $40.00, or 3.067% of the bid, and CNBC's last sits on the midpoint of it. That is the trap this desk has been caught by before, and it is a wide quote rather than a disagreement. No outside-source divergence is disclosed this session, because there is none.

§2Thirteen days of trading, handed back.

The comparison that matters is not with Monday. It is with 19 August. On this tape gold read $4,360.00 that morning and reads $4,366.10 now, $6.10 or 0.14% above it. Silver read $63.12 and reads $64.44, up 2.09%. Platinum read $1,726.00 and reads $1,753.00, up 1.56%. Thirteen days of trading have left the three metals a jeweller actually buys within 2.1% of where they started. Measured from the top instead, the highest gold mark this tape recorded in August was $4,643.90 on 24 August, and today's reading is $277.80 or 5.98% below it. Silver's highest was $70.37 on 28 August, 8.43% above today. Platinum's was $1,883.00 on the same morning, 6.90% above. Palladium's was $1,405.00 on 29 August, 7.19% above. Those are marks on this tape, read at the same hour each morning, and they are not intraday highs; outside reporting has gold trading as high as $4,697 on 25 August, which is a different measure and not a contradiction of ours.

§3Rates moved the board, not the counter.

The cause is not new and this desk will not dress it as new. Gold's worst session on our record, $150.10 in a day, ran on 29 August after the Federal Reserve chair's Jackson Hole remarks, and this paper printed it then. Reporting on 31 August has markets moving further toward pricing a rate rise at the September meeting. The published probabilities differ between outlets by more than twenty points, from about a third to about two thirds, so this desk prints the direction and withholds the number until one of them can be stood behind. What the board itself says needs no outside help. The gold-silver ratio is 67.75, from 66.46 on Monday. Silver fell harder than gold, which is what happens when the trade sells the whole complex rather than forms a view on any one metal.

§4The inventory line runs both ways.

For the trade the accounting runs in both directions, and this is the week it turns. This paper reported on 29 August that Chow Sang Sang's profit for the half to 30 June rose 139% on revenue up 17%, and said at the time that a margin doubled by the metal in the safe getting dearer is a business getting lucky rather than getting better. Eight days from the 24 August high, the same line runs backwards.

A retailer holding gold inventory bought against an ounce at $4,643.90 is carrying it this morning against $4,366.10. Nothing about the shop has changed and nothing about demand has been measured; the balance sheet moves anyway. The jewellers who will find this quarter hardest are the ones whose last strong number came from the metal rather than from the counter.