Palladium fell 2.21%, and the spread you would pay to trade it was 2.91%
The week reopened with silver the only one of four metals in the green. Gold $4,444.80, silver $66.879, platinum $1,797.00, palladium $1,374.00, all re-read at press time and written back to the tape.
By Carat Capital Metals Desk
What changed
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.
What it means
- A 2.21% fall in palladium is not a signal when the spread around it is 2.91%, and anyone reading that number as a market view rather than as noise is reading a quote convention. The honest summary of the session is narrower and duller: silver up a point, gold flat, the two white metals soft, and one of them barely trading.
- The number in this piece with real consequences attached is the last one, which is the Indian tariff gap, because that one is settled by a notification rather than by a market and it has widened again.
Key figures
| gold the ounce | $4,444.80 |
|---|---|
| silver, the only one in the green | $66.879 |
| platinum | $1,797.00 |
| palladium, on a 2.9112% spread | $1,374.00 |
Source: the board at press time, against Friday's close
Four metals re-read at press time, four written back
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.
Bid-ask spread as a share of the bid, against the day's move
Source: the board at press time, against Friday's close
The 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%.
| Figure | |
|---|---|
| Palladium Spread | 2.9112% |
| Palladium Move | 2.2064% |
| Platinum Spread | 0.5565% |
| Silver Spread | 0.3738% |
| Gold Spread | 0.0450% |
Palladium is the only metal on the board whose quoted spread is wider than its own move on the day. Gold's spread is one sixty-fifth of palladium's. Kitco bid and ask, read by the Editor at press time 31 August 2026. Carat Capital graphics desk.
Correcting 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.
What 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.
The story so far
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Method
Palladium is the only metal on the board whose quoted spread is wider than its own move on the day. Gold's spread is one sixty-fifth of palladium's.