Three sessions of silver's gain undone in one

§1Two marks written back, two refused.

It takes 67.95 ounces of silver to buy an ounce of gold this morning, against 66.59 yesterday. Kitco's live board at 06:00 New York time read gold at $4,384.10 and silver at $64.52, and those are the readings this paper's tape now carries: the Editor re-read both metals at press time and wrote the fresher marks back over caratwire's 04:59 figures of $4,374.20 and $64.31, with the timestamp and the source named on the tape. Both were checked against a second page the same morning. TradingEconomics read gold $4,383.54 and silver $64.65, which is 0.01% and 0.20% away from the board this paper used. Measured against this paper's own mark of record 24 hours earlier, gold is down $31.10 or 0.70% and silver is down $1.78 or 2.68%.

Yesterday this desk published a four-session series and said in print that four consecutive narrowings was not yet a trend anybody should trade. One session has now made the point better than the caution did. The ratio ran 68.41 on 9 August, 67.84 on 10 August, 67.49 on 11 August and 66.59 on 12 August, every figure this desk's division of its own published gold mark by its own published silver mark, and this morning it is 67.95. Silver gave back in one session what it took in three. The four-session narrowing was worth 1.82 points; today's widening is 1.36 of them, or 74.7% of the whole run, and the ratio now sits above every reading since 9 August. Fine gold works out at $140.95 a gram and fine silver at $2.07, at 31.1035 grams to the troy ounce, also this desk's arithmetic.

§2One session against four.

Platinum and palladium were not written back, for the second consecutive morning and for a sharper reason than yesterday's. Kitco's board read platinum $1,717.00, down $31.00 or 1.77%. TradingEconomics read $1,731.60 and JM Bullion's board at 06:01 New York time read $1,731.10. The two pages this desk does not use as its mark of record agree with each other to within 50 cents and put Kitco $14.60 low, a gap of 0.85% of the metal, which makes the board this paper reads the outlier rather than the market unsettled. That is not a verified press-time reading, so under the one-price rule caratwire's 04:59 mark of $1,710.00 stands as filed and prints as-is. Palladium has no comparable second page at all this morning: Kitco bid $1,324.00 and the only other board reachable quoted an ask of $1,360.65, which is a different side of the spread and not a check. The 04:59 mark of $1,319.00 stands.

§3The mark this desk would not take, again.

For a bench the practical reading is that silver is still ahead on the week and is now moving in both directions fast enough to matter. Against the $63.46 this paper's tape carried on 9 August, this morning's $64.52 is up 1.67%, so a workshop that repriced silver stock after yesterday's article is not wrong today, merely less right. Gold is the calmer leg and is up 5.43% on the $4,158.30 the tape carried on 5 August. The white metals are where the quoting risk sits: this paper has now declined to take a platinum mark on two consecutive mornings from three different sets of readings, and a jeweller quoting platinum off a single public board today is choosing one of two numbers 0.85% apart without being told there is a choice.