Gold & Precious Metals Corner

Friday, 2026-09-18 · covering the last 24h

Market signal

Gold and silver round-trip the Fed's first hike in three years. The Federal Reserve raised its policy rate 25bp to 3.75–4.00% on Wednesday in a unanimous, hawkish vote (its median year-end rate projection lifted to 4.1% from 3.8%), and gold fell as much as 1.3% intraday after Chair Kevin Warsh's press conference reaffirmed inflation risk. Bullion reversed within two sessions as the 10-year Treasury yield pulled back from a brief push above 5% to around 4.93% and Brent crude fell over 4% on restored Saudi pipeline flows, easing the inflation case for further hikes; by Friday spot gold traded near $4,369/oz (+0.6% on the day, a weekly high close to $4,440 touched intraday) and silver jumped 3% to about $67, compressing the gold/silver ratio to roughly 65, its tightest all week. Platinum held near $1,800–1,816 and palladium firmed toward $1,294–1,334 as the dollar retreated from a seven-week high. CNBC · USAGOLD

Upstream — miners, streamers & supply

Agnico Eagle reshuffles its junior portfolio and rules out buying into Barrick's IPO. Agnico agreed to sell its Delta polymetallic and Helm Bay gold exploration projects in Alaska to Vizsla Copper for roughly a 20% equity stake, then a day later signed a definitive deal to sell its El Barqueño gold-silver project in Jalisco, Mexico to Luca Mining; the housekeeping came as CEO Ammar Al-Joundi said Agnico has no interest in participating in Barrick's proposed North American spin-off IPO, which Barrick is separately said to be weighing delaying to 2027 from its original year-end 2026 target amid shareholder pushback over the split. Agnico release (Vizsla Copper) · Luca release (El Barqueño) · Mining.com · Mining.com (IPO delay)

The Sibanye-Stillwater USW strike at Stillwater East and Columbus, Montana remains unresolved heading into its third week; no talks have been reported.

Physical & official flows — central banks, ETFs & bullion

No new central-bank purchase data or ETF flow report was published in the window; August's record World Gold Council figures and last week's GLD redemptions, both already reported, stand unchanged. COMEX's registered silver stockpile continues to thin — around 96–97 million ounces as of mid-September against roughly 334 million ounces held across all vault categories — a structural backdrop to this week's price action rather than a fresh release itself. The Vault Report

Silver & PGMs — the industrial complex

No new industrial-specific developments in the window; Friday's silver outperformance (see Market signal) was a pricing move within the metals complex rather than fresh solar or autocatalyst data. WPIC's flip to a platinum-surplus forecast for 2026 and JPMorgan's solar-thrifting call on silver, both already reported, stand unchanged.

The Chatter

Vince Lanci — GoldFix (Substack): In "The Silver Interest is (Very) Bullish," Lanci flags new filings showing Tether's bullion affiliate is now storing, trading and leasing physical silver out of Las Vegas — reading it as a sign that a major gold-bank-adjacent player is pushing beyond bullion into the smaller, tighter silver market, which he takes as a structurally bullish signal for silver's supply-demand balance. Post

Vince Lanci — GoldFix (Substack): In "Goldman: One (Rate Hike) and Done," written ahead of Wednesday's FOMC meeting, Lanci argues Goldman Sachs had been an outlier among banks calling for the Fed to hold rates on the view that inflation wasn't threatening enough to justify a hike — a thesis he frames this meeting as testing, and which the Fed's unanimous hike then rejected. Post