CaratChow Tai Fook's counter fell a fourth session to 1,387 yuan a gram
The brand's gold board has given back 23 yuan since 25 August, or 1.63%. Its platinum jewellery board has given back 20 yuan, 2.74%, while spot platinum rose 3.69% overnight.
§1Two trackers carry the same board, which yesterday they did not.
Chow Tai Fook's mainland counter price for pure gold jewellery reads 1,387 yuan a gram for 28 August, down 8 on the previous board. That figure is carried identically by two independent Chinese price trackers, cngoldprice.com and jinjia.com.cn, which is the two-source test this paper applies to metals and did not have yesterday, when the Bureau could confirm only one page. The board is the fourth consecutive fall: 1,410 on 25 August, 1,399 on 26 August, 1,395 on 27 August and 1,387 today, a total of 23 yuan or 1.6312% on this desk's arithmetic.
§2The platinum counter is the sharper number.
The 25 August figure is the same 1,410 this paper printed on 27 August in its survey of ten Chinese brand counters, which is a useful confirmation that the two trackers and our own earlier reporting are reading the same board rather than three versions of it. The intervening moves also back-solve cleanly. Yesterday's fall of 4 yuan takes 1,399 to 1,395, and today's fall of 8 takes 1,395 to 1,387, both matching the stated changes exactly.
The board is set before the session it is meant to reflect.
§3Timing before anything else.
The platinum board is the sharper number and this paper has not carried it before. Chow Tai Fook's platinum jewellery counter reads 711 yuan a gram today against 715 yesterday, 720 on 26 August and 731 on 25 August, a fall of 20 yuan or 2.7360% across the same four dates. Over that stretch international platinum did not fall. This desk wrote the metal back to $1,883.00 at press time this morning against $1,816.00 yesterday, a rise of 3.6894%.
On the single day where both sets are dated, the shop counter went down 0.5594% and the metal went up 3.6894%.
The explanation is timing before it is anything else, and saying so is the point. The Chinese brand boards are stamped 16:00 China time, which is 04:00 ET, so today's counter was set before the New York session this desk read at 05:59 ET. Today's platinum move could not have reached today's board. The counters are also quoted in yuan a gram against a dollar-an-ounce spot, so the exchange rate sits inside every comparison, and the boards carry a retail making margin that moves on its own schedule. None of that makes the divergence unreal, but it does mean a shop counter is not a delayed spot quote and should not be read as one.
The useful thing about a brand counter is not that it tracks the metal, it is that it shows what a retailer is willing to ask a walk-in customer today, which is a demand statement rather than a price. Four consecutive falls in gold and a 2.74% retreat in platinum jewellery say the brand is trimming rather than holding, in the same week India's festival counters were reported busy at record prices.
If the boards do not turn back up tomorrow, after a session in which platinum added nearly 4%, that is the number worth having.
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