Four metals up, and a palladium mark three sessions old retired

§1Four marks, one board, two bases.

Kitco's live board at 05:59 New York time read gold at $4,394.60 an ounce, silver at $65.38, platinum at $1,749.00 and palladium at $1,311.00. All four are written back over the 04:59 marks and are now this paper's marks of record, with the source named and the timestamp new. Two comparisons are printed here rather than one, because no edition published on 15 or 16 August and the two bases answer different questions. Against Kitco's own previous close the moves are a single session: gold up $19.00, silver up $0.80, platinum up $4.00, palladium up $13.00. Against this paper's last printed marks of 14 August the moves are three days deep: gold up $38.40 or 0.88%, silver up $0.61 or 0.94%, platinum up $24.00 or 1.39%, palladium up $14.00 or 1.08%. All four metals are higher on both bases.

The mark being retired is palladium's $1,297.00, set on 14 August and carried unchanged since. The tape desk declined to write it back at 04:59 this morning, having found Kitco at $1,311.00 against FXEmpire at $1,320.55, a gap of $9.55 or 0.73%, and held the older figure under the two-page rule. At 05:59 this desk read two further pages: TradingEconomics at $1,331.00 and JM Bullion at $1,351.00. Four live readings, spanning $40.00 or 3.05% from low to high, and every one of them above the held mark. Palladium is a thin metal quoted on wide spreads and the disagreement between those four pages is real and is disclosed here rather than reconciled. What the disagreement does not support is $1,297.00, which is not one of the four numbers and is below all of them.

§2The mark that sat below everybody.

That is the argument that ended the platinum hold on 14 August, applied to the other white metal. Platinum today shows the same basis this paper has now recorded for a fourth consecutive session: Kitco at $1,749.00 against TradingEconomics at $1,760.40, $11.40 or 0.65% low, the same sign and roughly the same size as the gaps of 12, 13 and 14 August. A difference that recurs in one direction across four sessions describes how two pages are quoting, not a market nobody can read, and this paper prints Kitco because Kitco is the board carrying the other three marks. Gold and silver each cleared their second page cleanly, at $4,394.79 and $65.484 on TradingEconomics, 0.004% and 0.16% from the marks printed here.

§3What it works out to at the bench.

At 31.1035 grams to the troy ounce the four marks work out at $141.29 a gram of fine gold, $2.10 a gram of fine silver, $56.23 a gram of fine platinum and $42.15 a gram of fine palladium, all this desk's arithmetic. The gold-to-silver ratio, this desk's division of its own gold mark by its own silver mark on the same board at the same minute, reads 67.22 against 67.26 on 14 August: four hundredths of a point across three days in which both metals rose about nine-tenths of a per cent. Silver has not outrun gold and gold has not outrun silver. For a workshop repricing stock this morning, the practical figure is palladium, where the shelf price moves 1.08% in one step because the previous step never happened.