Carat$119.30 back on gold: the first higher mark since 28 August
Gold $4,426.80, silver $65.58, platinum $1,762.00, palladium $1,348.00 at 05:59 ET, every one higher. Gold recovers 40.17% of the $297.00 it lost after 28 August, and stays $177.70 below that mark.
§1All four re-read, all four written back.
All four metals were re-read off the Kitco board at 05:59 ET this morning, all four had moved off the 05:00 mark, and all four were written back to the tape before this edition built. Gold $4,426.80 the ounce, up $39.80 or 0.9072% on the prior close of $4,387.00; silver $65.58, up $0.37 or 0.5674%; platinum $1,762.00, up $6.00 or 0.3417%; palladium $1,348.00, up $13.00 or 0.9738%. Against this paper's own marks of record yesterday that is gold up $119.30 or 2.7696%, silver up $2.02 or 3.1781%, platinum up $49.00 or 2.8605% and palladium up $62.00 or 4.8212%. The gold-silver ratio is 67.50 against 67.77 yesterday. Every figure here is a Kitco bid, the convention this tape uses for all four metals.
§2Four lower marks across five entries.
The run that ended is worth counting rather than describing. Gold has been marked on this tape at $4,604.50 on 28 August, $4,454.40 on the 29th, $4,454.40 again on Sunday the 30th, $4,444.80 on the 31st, $4,366.10 on 1 September and $4,307.50 on the 2nd. That is four lower marks across five tape entries, with the fifth a Sunday carrying Saturday's reading forward unchanged. Today is the first higher mark since 28 August. It recovers $119.30 of the $297.00 the ounce lost across that span, or 40.17% of it, and leaves gold $177.70, or 3.8593%, below where this tape carried it on 28 August. No source read this morning named a cause for the move and none is asserted here.
Palladium's bid and ask are forty dollars apart. It moved thirteen.
§3The second page agrees, midpoint to last.
The second page agrees. CNBC's quote service, read at 06:02 ET, returned $4,426.78 for gold against a Kitco midpoint of $4,427.80, a gap of 0.0230%; $65.6287 for silver against a midpoint of $65.705, 0.1161%; $1,766.28 for platinum against $1,767.00, 0.0407%; and $1,364.96 for palladium against $1,368.00, 0.2222%. Every one of those comparisons is a midpoint against a last price, which is the like-for-like test this desk adopted after August's palladium episode rather than setting a bid against a mid. All four sit inside the agreement band, so there is no outside-source divergence to disclose this session.
§4A spread three times the day's move.
Palladium is the metal to look at twice, for the same reason it was in August. Kitco quotes it $1,348.00 bid against a $1,388.00 ask, a gap of $40.00, or 2.9674% of the bid. The metal gained $13.00 on the day. The cost of crossing its own spread is therefore just over three times the day's move, which is a liquidity fact rather than a price fact, and it is the fourth consecutive session on which this paper has marked a $40 palladium spread.
A correction printed elsewhere in today's edition revises the length of that metal's August hold from nine sessions to seven tape entries; the spread arithmetic that resolved the hold was correct then and is unchanged now.
One higher mark is not a turn, and this desk will not call it one. What can be said is narrower and more useful. Gold has retraced two fifths of a six-day fall in a single reading, silver and palladium have retraced more of theirs in percentage terms, and the whole complex moved together in the same direction on the same morning, which is the shape of a positioning move rather than a story about any one metal.
A retailer repricing off the board should note that the ounce is still $177.70 below where it stood a week ago and that the wholesale ticket has not caught up with either direction yet.
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