Gold & Precious Metals Corner

Wednesday, 2026-09-09 · covering the last 24h

Market signal

Gold chops around $4,370–4,400 as US strikes on five Iranian tankers barely move the needle. US forces destroyed five Iranian crude carriers in the Gulf of Oman and near Kharg Island on September 8, and Brent briefly topped $100 for the first time in six weeks, yet gold’s reaction was muted next to Tuesday’s sharper drop — a reminder that Fed-hike odds into next week’s September 15–16 meeting, not the war, have been setting the tone since Kevin Warsh’s hawkish Jackson Hole speech. Yahoo Finance · GoldSilver.com

Silver and platinum outrun gold. Silver pushed back above $66.50–67, and platinum jumped roughly 3.4% to its highest close since July on renewed South African supply concerns tied to Eskom’s power-cost crisis at the mines that produce 90% of the world’s PGMs; palladium was little changed near $1,378. The gold/silver ratio slipped to about 66. FXStreet · Startup Fortune

Upstream — miners, streamers & supply

Barrick and Newmont's Nevada settlement clears the runway for Barrick's North American gold IPO. The pair resolved every outstanding dispute over the Nevada Gold Mines joint venture: Barrick is vending in its Fourmile project and Newmont its Mike and Fiberline developments early, building a near-100-million-ounce Nevada gold complex, with Newmont paying Barrick a $1.95bn top-up and formally consenting to Barrick spinning off its North American assets — NGM, Pueblo Viejo and Fourmile — in a New York-primary, Toronto-secondary listing targeted by year-end. Barrick · GlobeNewswire

The Sibanye-Stillwater USW strike at Stillwater East and Columbus, Montana (covered September 7–8) remains unresolved into a sixth day, with no reported movement from either side.

Physical & official flows — central banks, ETFs & bullion

Hong Kong's SGE–HKEX “Delivery Connect” starts letting gold move between mainland and offshore vaults without re-assay. The mechanism, modelled on China's Stock and Bond Connect programmes, links Shanghai Gold Exchange accounts, clearing and approved vaults directly to HKEX-approved Hong Kong storage so bullion can settle across the border without physical reshipment or independent re-assaying — part of a broader Hong Kong central gold-clearing build-out that already counts JPMorgan, Citigroup, UBS and HSBC among its clearing banks. Caixin · GoldSeek

SPDR's gold funds pull in nearly $2bn in a week while silver ETFs bleed. GLD took in $1,378m and GLDM another $590m over the five trading days to September 8 — almost 94% of that week's entire $2.1bn Focused-Precious-Metals ETF inflow — while SLV recorded a modest $29m outflow, a split that keeps favouring gold over silver in the listed-fund channel even as silver outperforms in spot. World Gold Council · GoldSilver.com

Silver & PGMs — the industrial complex

WPIC flips its 2026 platinum call from deficit to a 265koz surplus. The World Platinum Investment Council's latest Platinum Quarterly reverses the 297koz deficit it forecast three months ago, almost entirely on an H1 investment-demand downgrade (ETF holdings now seen down ~12 tonnes for the year) rather than any change in mine or jewellery supply; above-ground stocks still end 2026 at under 3.4 months of demand cover after three straight deficit years, which is why the council frames this as a thin, fragile balance rather than a supply reprieve. World Platinum Investment Council · Business Recorder

The Chatter

Vince Lanci (with Eric Yeung) — GoldFix (Substack): Lanci reads Hong Kong's Delivery Connect not as a headline event but as settlement plumbing China is building before it opens further to international players — renminbi pricing, offshore custody and eventually gold-based collateral markets get built on top of it, in his view, and the point of building it now is to shift where gold's price actually gets set, following the logic that trading power gravitates to the region of demand. Post

GoldSilver.com: Their house take on Wednesday's non-reaction argues the market has already re-priced the Iran war as a known risk, and that what actually moves gold now is the Fed's September 15–16 decision — hike odds that jumped from roughly 35% to the high 50s/60s after Warsh's Jackson Hole remarks are, in their reading, doing more work than any single day's headlines out of the Gulf. Post