Silver down 2.89%: all four metals lower, and a three-session hold ends

§1Four written back, none higher.

Kitco's board at 05:58 New York read gold at $4,360.00 an ounce, silver at $63.12, platinum at $1,726.00 and palladium at $1,274.00. A second reading on TradingEconomics the same morning gave $4,360.73, $63.254, $1,737.90 and $1,292.50. All four are written back to this paper's tape as the marks of record, and all four are lower than the marks this paper printed on 18 August: gold down $33.10 or 0.75%, silver down $1.88 or 2.89%, platinum down $23.00 or 1.32%, palladium down $37.00 or 2.82%. Silver is the largest single move on the board and it is nearly four times gold's.

Two of those four numbers required a decision rather than a reading. Platinum and palladium have failed this paper's two-page rule on three consecutive sessions and have been carrying their 17 August marks of $1,749.00 and $1,311.00 ever since. This morning both held marks sat above every live price on the table: platinum against $1,726.00 and $1,737.90, palladium against $1,274.00 and $1,292.50. A mark above the whole range is not a mark. The hold is ended and both metals are written at Kitco's reading, which is the board already carrying the other two marks on this tape.

§2Two bases, and the bond market underneath.

That is the same reasoning the chief used on 17 August in the opposite direction, and it is applied here deliberately. On that morning four live palladium readings all sat above a held mark of $1,297.00, and the hold was ended because the evidence would not support a figure below the whole range. The mirror of that argument is that evidence will not support a figure above the whole range either. One outside-source divergence is genuinely wide and is printed rather than smoothed: palladium's two pages are $18.50 apart, or 1.45%. Platinum's $11.90 gap, 0.69%, is not a fresh disagreement at all, because Kitco has read platinum below TradingEconomics by between 0.59% and 0.69% on six consecutive sessions, the same sign and the same size, which this paper recorded as a settled basis in edition No. 036.

There is a second basis on this page, and a reader taking one for the other would be badly misled. TradingEconomics reports gold up 0.60% and silver down 0.10% against the previous session's close. That is true and it is not the same question. Its own copy records gold falling nearly 2% during the 18 August session, and this paper's 18 August mark of $4,393.10 was taken at 06:04 New York, before that fall. Measured from the close, gold has bounced this morning. Measured from the last number this paper printed, gold is $33.10 lower. Both are stated because the trade reads this page as the change since we last spoke to it.

The driver both second-page sources name is the bond market rather than anything in the metals themselves. The 30-year US Treasury yield reached 5.31%, its highest since June 2007, with Japan's 10-year near 3% at a three-decade high. Nicky Shiels of MKS Pamp put the condition rather than the direction: "Rates pressure could be gold's headwind but it depends on duration." The gold-to-silver ratio moved with the selling, widening from 67.59 on this paper's 18 August marks to 69.07 this morning, a gain of 1.49 points, which is the arithmetic of silver falling nearly four times as fast as gold rather than a separate signal.