Gold & Precious Metals Corner

Tuesday, 2026-09-15 · covering the last 24h

Market signal

Gold slides to a six-week low as the Fed's two-day meeting opens and the dollar/yield combination does the driving. Spot gold fell to $4,263 (-1.2% on the session), per USAGOLD's daily report, extending Monday's slide from the low-$4,400s; silver eased to $62.82 (-0.7%), while platinum and palladium held roughly flat near $1,768 and $1,287 and the gold/silver ratio stayed near 67.9. The FOMC's two-day meeting began today with a decision due Wednesday at 1800 GMT; CME FedWatch hike odds ticked up to roughly 92% from about 90% yesterday, the dollar index rose to 99.57 (its highest since September 3) and the 10-year Treasury yield touched its highest level since 2007 — both cited as the direct pressure on gold, with the Saudi-pipeline/Hormuz oil shock that started the move (covered yesterday) holding rather than escalating further. USAGOLD · Yahoo Finance

Upstream — miners, streamers & supply

No material company-specific news across the majors, the silver/PGM producers or the royalty-streaming trio this window — the entire move in the complex was macro-driven (see Market signal). The Sibanye-Stillwater USW strike at Stillwater East and Columbus, Montana remains unresolved, with no talks reported between the company and the roughly 420 affected workers since it began earlier this month. The Northern Miner

Physical & official flows — central banks, ETFs & bullion

No new central-bank, ETF-flow or bullion-inventory data broke in the window — those series update monthly. The standing figures stand unchanged: the People's Bank of China's roughly 20-tonne August purchase (its strongest month since October 2023) and LBMA London vault holdings at a three-year high of 9,632 tonnes as of end-August. No fresh Shanghai/India premium moves, duty changes, or COMEX/LBMA delivery dislocations surfaced. World Gold Council · LBMA

Silver & PGMs — the industrial complex

Georgia Tech and Bert Thin Films push a copper-contacted solar cell to 24.3% efficiency, another data point in the silver-thrifting trend. The prototype pairs a copper paste from Kentucky-based Bert Thin Films with laser-enhanced contact optimization on a standard TOPCon cell, firing at roughly 500°C versus the 700°C-plus needed for silver paste, and won IEEE's best-student-paper award at last month's Photovoltaic Specialists Conference. It's a lab result, not yet commercial-scale, but it sits on the same copper-substitution path behind JPMorgan's forecast (covered yesterday) of a roughly 30% drop in 2026 solar-sector silver demand. No new hard data from the WPIC, the Silver Institute or recyclers this window; platinum and palladium fundamentals are unchanged since the WPIC's surplus call earlier this month. pv magazine · PV Tech

The Chatter

Vince Lanci — GoldFix (Substack, cross-posted to ZeroHedge): In "China's Gold Plan Threatens Bessent's Balancing Act," Lanci argues the Treasury Secretary needs low wartime borrowing costs without a weaker dollar, but China's new "Delivery Connect" plumbing — linking the Shanghai Gold Exchange to Hong Kong vaults and clearing, modeled on the Stock/Bond Connect schemes — is turning physical bullion into renminbi-denominated collateral, handing global holders a Treasury alternative just as Washington needs buyers of its own debt. Post

A quiet window otherwise for named commentary; most sector voices were positioning for Wednesday's Fed decision rather than publishing fresh theses.