Two held marks come off the tape. Gold $4,482.20, platinum $1,799.00

§1Four written back, none lower.

Kitco's board at 06:02 New York read gold at $4,482.20 an ounce, silver at $66.59, platinum at $1,799.00 and palladium at $1,308.00. A second reading on TradingEconomics the same morning gave $4,484.81, $66.754, $1,813.80 and $1,328.50. All four are written back to this paper's tape as the marks of record. Against the marks this paper printed on 19 August, all four are higher: gold up $122.20 or 2.80%, silver up $3.47 or 5.50%, platinum up $73.00 or 4.23%, palladium up $34.00 or 2.67%.

Two of those four required a decision rather than a reading, and it is the reverse of yesterday's. The tape desk filed at 04:59 and held platinum and palladium at their 19 August marks of $1,726.00 and $1,274.00, because Kitco and TradingEconomics were 0.85% and 1.57% apart and neither pair cleared the two-page test. At press time the gaps are still there, 0.82% and 1.57%. But both held marks now sit below every live reading on the table: platinum's $1,726.00 against $1,799.00 and $1,813.80, palladium's $1,274.00 against $1,308.00 and $1,328.50. A mark below the whole range is not a mark either.

§2Yesterday's session, and two bases that point opposite ways.

Yesterday this paper ended a three-session hold because the held marks sat above the entire live range, and printed that reasoning as a mirror of the chief's ruling of 17 August. Twenty-four hours later the same rule points the other way, and it has to be applied the other way or it is not a rule. Both metals are written at Kitco's reading, the board already carrying gold and silver on this tape. The outside-source divergence is disclosed rather than smoothed: platinum's two pages are $14.80 apart and palladium's $20.50, and on palladium that is a third consecutive session above 1.4%.

What moved was yesterday's session, not this morning's. Kitco reported gold at $4,518.90 on 19 August, up about 4% on the day with a session high of $4,524.50, its first move above $4,500 since early June, after the Treasury said it would roughly double its buyback operations in 10-to-30-year maturities from 9 September. The 30-year yield fell as much as 10 basis points to 5.18% and the 10-year 6 basis points to 4.65%. This paper printed 5.31% for the 30-year yesterday as a 19-year high. Platinum rose 6.14% in the same session to about $1,815, with a high of $1,830, which is why a mark of $1,726.00 could not survive the morning.

So there are two bases on this page again and they point opposite ways. Against this paper's own marks of record every metal is sharply higher, because the 19 August marks were taken at 05:58, before the rally. Measured on the session, Kitco has all four lower this morning: gold 0.88%, silver 0.45%, platinum 0.94% and palladium 0.91%. On platinum the two outside sources disagree on the sign and not merely the size, TradingEconomics printing it up 0.18% on the day where Kitco has it down 0.94%. Gold has slipped back under $4,500 on both boards.

By this desk's arithmetic on the marks above, the gold-to-silver ratio is 67.31 against 69.07 on 19 August, 1.76 points narrower, because silver outran gold by 2.69 points of percentage. Gold is $144.11 a gram and platinum $57.84, against $55.49 for platinum yesterday.