Palladium fell 2.21%, and the spread you would pay to trade it was 2.91%

§1Four metals re-read at press time, four written back.

All four precious metals were re-read at press time this morning and all four had moved off the tape's opening mark, so all four are written back and print here as the paper's marks of record. Gold is $4,444.80 the ounce, down $9.60 or 0.2155% on Friday's close of $4,454.40. Silver is $66.879, up $0.626 or 0.9449%. Platinum is $1,797.00, down $22.00 or 1.2095%. Palladium is $1,374.00, down $31.00 or 2.2064%. Silver is the only one of the four in the green, and palladium is much the worst of the board.

§2The spread was wider than the move.

The figure worth stopping on is not palladium's fall but what it costs to act on it. Kitco quoted palladium at press time at $1,374.00 bid against $1,414.00 asked, a spread of $40.00. That is 2.9112% of the bid. Palladium's entire move on the day was 2.2064%. The cost of crossing the quote was wider than the thing being quoted moved, which is a plain description of a market too thin to trade in size. Gold's spread was $2.00 on $4,444.80, or 0.0450%. Silver's was $0.25, or 0.3738%. Platinum's was $10.00, or 0.5565%.

§3Correcting the reading of yesterday's divergence.

That spread also explains a disclosure this paper made yesterday and is now correcting the reading of. The tape reported TradingEconomics at $1,426.00 on palladium as a 1.207% divergence from Kitco. Kitco's ask at the same moment was $1,429.00. TradingEconomics was quoting inside Kitco's own bid and ask, not away from the market, and the apparent divergence was an artefact of comparing another venue's mid against one side of a $40 spread. Today all four metals were checked mid to mid against CNBC, and all four agreed inside 0.08%: gold 0.0286%, silver 0.0800%, platinum 0.0455%, palladium 0.0359%. No outside-source divergence is disclosed this session.

§4What the ratios mean at the bench.

For the bench the relevant ratio moved in the direction that helps. Gold bought 66.46 ounces of silver at these marks against 67.23 on Friday, so silver gained just under eight tenths of a point on gold in one session. Platinum sits 59.57% below gold, which is the discount that has been driving substitution enquiries in white metal all year. Gold at $4,444.80 is $1,429.04 per ten grams, which matters in India this week, where the customs tariff value for gold stands at $1,500 per ten grams and now exceeds the metal by $70.96, or 4.9656%, a wider gap than the $67.88 this paper printed on Saturday.