Gold and silver rallied Friday, padding exceptional weekly gains and lifting their settlements to the highest in 11 months and 1.5 months, respectively.
On Friday, gold for April delivery tacked on $50.50, or 2.6%, to close at $1,973.50 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. The settlement was gold’s best since April 18.
"Gold is surging on fears that more bad banking news could appear over the weekend and hopes that the Fed will pause its rate hikes next week," Reuters quoted Tai Wong, an independent metals trader based in New York.
Gold prices soared 5.7% on the week after gains of 0.7% last week and 2.1% in the week ending March 3. They are 8.1% higher on the year to date.
In looking ahead to next week, Kitco News offers the following forecasts via their Wall Street & Main Street surveys:
"This week, 22 Wall Street analysts participated in the Kitco News Gold Survey. Among the participants, nine analysts, or 41%, were bullish on gold in the near term. At the same time, five analysts, or 23%, were bearish for next week and eight analysts, or 36%, saw prices trading sideways.
Meanwhile, 707 votes were cast in an online Main Street poll. Of these, 445 respondents, or 63%, looked for gold to rise next week. Another 169, or 24%, said it would be lower, while 93 voters, or 13%, were neutral in the near term."
Elsewhere, silver for May delivery jumped 77 cents, or 3.6%, to finish at $22.462 an ounce. The settlement was the highest since Feb. 2. Silver prices scored a 9.5% weekly increase after dropping last week by 3.5%. They are 6.6% lower on the year.
In PGM prices on Friday and for the week:
-
April platinum rose $1.50, or 0.2%, to end at $978.60 an ounce, for a 1.7% weekly gain.
- Palladium for June delivery declined $23.20, or 1.7%, to end at $1,386.10 an ounce, trimming its weekly increase to 1.8%.
The pair remain lower on the year so far with losses of 9.6% for platinum and 22.9% for palladium.
US Mint Bullion Sales in 2023
United States Mint bullion sales this week picked up up gold coins. In week-over-week comparisons:
- American Gold Eagles: 41,500 ounces against 12,500 ounces,
- American Gold Buffalos: 14,500 ounces compared to 4,500 ounces, and
- American Silver Eagles: 0 ounces against 450,000.
Below is a sales breakdown of U.S. Mint bullion products with columns listing the number of coins sold during varying periods.
| US Mint Bullion Sales (# of coins) | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Friday | Last Week | This Week | January Sales | February | March | 2023 Sales | |
| $50 American Eagle 1 Oz Gold Coin | 0 | 10,500 | 39,500 | 118,000 | 41,500 | 50,000 | 209,500 |
| $25 American Eagle 1/2 Oz Gold Coin | 0 | 1,000 | 0 | 37,000 | 8,000 | 1,000 | 46,000 |
| $10 American Eagle 1/4 Oz Gold Coin | 0 | 2,000 | 8,000 | 62,000 | 12,000 | 10,000 | 84,000 |
| $5 American Eagle 1/10 Oz Gold Coin | 0 | 10,000 | 0 | 115,000 | 85,000 | 10,000 | 210,000 |
| $50 American Buffalo 1 Oz Gold Coin | 0 | 4,500 | 14,500 | 59,000 | 19,500 | 19,000 | 97,500 |
| $1 American Eagle 1 Oz Silver Coin | 0 | 450,000 | 0 | 3,949,000 | 900,000 | 450,000 | 5,299,000 |
Gold now at $2,007.40 per ounce…I’m loving it! Although it probably means I won’t be buying the 1/10th ounce AGE later this month. This Mint will probably want $500 for it!
Palladium is still the big loser, now hovering around $644 an ounce less than gold.
The mint still wants $2350 for the 2022 Palladium coin or about $900 to press it over spot! I’m sorry, but in this environment we are in, cash is king.
The Mint can want whatever, Craig; who is willing to pay that is another story.
That’s ok, for now Kaiser Wilhelm. This creates a safety net, that makes sure that I don’t sell my last of 2, 2018 APdE’s, which I’d rather keep anyhow. Pretty cool holding and admiring a “hefty”, Merc! The Reverse is spectacular, not to be confused with “Spegtakular” of YT notoriety. Due to debt and rising premiums, what little gold I have is not safe and at risk of being liquidated. Really don’t want to, however the allure of getting debt back to zero and not paying these continually rising interest rates is weighing heavily.
Those are indeed beautiful coins. Wish I had one but just can’t justify the premium the mint wants. The reverse might be my favourite eagle design ever. What a shame all the great designers are deceased.
You’re so right, Craig; that is one amazing eagle design!
Why is Our eagles head down soon damn low? What does that signify? My guess is We are to be subservient to, who I don’t know. Looks to me like a weak representation. I’m out of this silver and gold coin conundrum. Collectors like Rick tomaska have Illegally obtained machinery and acutrmon to produce New coins. Bombastic!
Indeed, Craig, absolutely the greatest US Mint designers of all time, from America’s Golden Age – Adolph A. Weinman and Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
I’m assuming, Good Sir Rich, that by Golden Age you are referring to that peculiar era when the rich had practically no limits to their spending while the rest of our nation’s residents scrabbled to get by. This is why I am so reluctant to employ the phrase “good old days” since, at least from my own 75 years of experience, I realize there really weren’t any better times in the past unless you were among the privileged few.
Sir Kaiser, I was referring to the “Renaissance Era” in American coinage, the most vibrant and creative era in U.S. numismatics, which began the process of redesigning the nation’s coinage, a process that evolved from 1907 through 1921 and eventually changed the design of all denominations of U.S. coins. It all began with the “Genesis Letter” addressed by Theodore Roosevelt to Secretary of the Treasury Leslie M. Shaw… My dear Secretary Shaw: I think our coinage is artistically of atrocious hideousness. Would it be possible, without asking the permission of Congress, to employ a man like St. Gaudens to give… Read more »
Oops, Good Sir Rich, please forgive the complete misunderstanding. I was clearly led seriously astray by the similarity between the terms “Golden Age” and “Gilded Age” which made me think solely of the so-called Newport (Rhode Island) “cottages” (aka the fabulously built and decorated mansions of the very richest that served as their summer residences) and the enormous, ostentatious New York City townhouses owned by the same group of millionaires (billionaires?). Than ks to your further explanation I now fully understand what you in fact were referring to and it all makes sense to me.
Looks like a little bungalow. Perhaps King Charles will gift it to Prince George as a birthday present.
That is one fantastically beautiful coin, Caliskier, and I sure hope you don’t let it go! Also, don’t feel alone in your finances, as that’s becoming the norm these days.
I don’t know how much debt you have, but there are several 0% cards out there. Discover is great for 0% offers regularly. Citi does the same thing or offer 0.99% I don’t know if you have navy fed but they have the lowest rate card. Usually the fee to balance xfer is 3 to 5%. Sometimes 0% if switching to lower rate instead if 0%. It can be a life saver. Those reward cards cost for what you get. Sometimes they are worth it. But it is good to balance no frills with decent cash back with travel rewards… Read more »
I suppose, Dazed and Coinfused and Caliskier, that Travel Credit Cards are a good choice for the younger set, but we fixed income oldsters prefer our awards to come in the form of good old fashioned cash. I get from 1% to 5% back depending on the card I use and/or the occasional promotion being offered. I also make sure I never put more on any card than what I can pay off in full at the end of each month because interest payments are counter-productive when you are trying to make your money last and/or go further.
Many can’t pay every month, but better than high interest loan. It saved me many times. As my dad would say, I came into this world with nothing, and I still have most of it left. Sometimes you can’t get that loan. Hopefully the info gets him to the point he can pay every month
Caliskier,
I get a kick out of the guy on Youtube whose videos consiste entirely of just reading everything word for word from the US Mint catalog. Those illuminating presentations are meant for the occasional illiterate numismatist, I presume?
One word the U.S. Mint never uses in its printed catalogs or on its website for its “Numismatic Program” products is “investment,” due to legal reasons.
Instead, they use “mementos,” “gifts,” “collections,” “historical,” etc.
One of the reasons is that a very large majority of the Mint’s products issued in “modern” times (basically since 1965), have been horribly bad investments in raw (ungraded) original Mint packaging. For example, you can buy some U.S. Mint 5-coin clad Proof sets for around $5 in OMP!
NumisdudeTX
Seth, I agree about the majority of Mint products being bad investments with negative or low ROR- that’s if you bought at the Mint’s original list price in the release year, adjust with an inflation calculator and compare to what it’s selling for today. Very, very few are winners by that standard. But, like anything, all you have to do is “buy low” and “sell high”. Buying some of these $5 sets may not be such a bad deal when you look at what the individual coins sell for at MS or PR-65+. Bottom line, you’ve got to love coins… Read more »
Amen! I have always believed that U.S. Mint Proof coin sets & Unc. coin sets that I can buy from coin dealers for about $10 or less are a great value. And like the situation you basically refer to Major D., if I ever send in the ones that I think might grade high at PCGS or NGC, I might make enough profit to retire!
NumisdudeTX
I digress, however it’s all, financially and monetarily interrelated. Perhaps I’m incorrect, however would this “Icky”, “Trutfle” shuffle, be happening if the resulting statistics, numbers/data affecting the formula had a resultant negative outlook or prospect? I’d be amazed if this didn’t somehow paint a better picture when, “calculating and statically coming up and out” with reports? Pretty big Corporations/Companies or at least recognized names. I know virtually nada, regarding stocks, bonds, CD’s, Treasuries; however I’d like to think I have at least a few “scents”? LOL “There will also be a reshuffle in some sectors of the S&P 500, with… Read more »
The Wall Street Shuffle is already in progress (regress?). The Big Banks are donating to the Small Banks with the sure historical guarantee that if this action and their own ongoing malfeasance upsets the continuing viability of their own Big Bank existence Joe and Judy Taxpayer will as always be leaned upon to bail them out. This is what is known among the financial power elite as “trickle down economics”.
Trickle down just means somebody is peeing on you and telling you it’s raining
“Please remember, to keep your heads, hands, arms as well as any other body part, inside the vehicle at all times until the ride comes to a complete and total “STOP”! “Just one day after the biggest U.S. banks gave it a $30 billion infusion, First Republic Bank was in talks to sell a piece of itself to other banks or private equity firms, three people with knowledge of the process said, an indication that the imperiled lender is far from conquering its troubles. The deals under discussion, which would involve selling new shares, represent a fresh level of desperation… Read more »
There is clearly and literally no end to the legerdemain of the financial sector; its boundless greed requires it to forever engage in levels of covert criminality the sort of which we wee folk can’t even hope to imagine. If a Big Bank or any of its smaller brethren can make a billion dollars legally it will almost inevitably strive to profit ten times that much by way of gouging its cutomers, paying as little tax as possible and employing a plethora of incredibly sketchy and unbelievably fragile financial instruments. This onerous reality is not thanks to capitalism as such,… Read more »
Kaiser, I think you’re giving too much credit to the “leadership” of these recent banks being taken over by the government. If you replaced “greed” with “stupidity” you’d be on the mark. SVB bought long term treasury bonds and was forced to sell them (at a substantial loss) as their VC accounts were being liquidated. As Kevin “Mr. Wonderful” O’Leary said “The idiots were in charge and they had no risk assessment manager.” Also, why does Mary Daly still have a job as SF Fed President? O’Leary is right.
I don’t think we’re disagreeing here, Craig. What occurs is that the bank “leaders” try to fulfill their excessive ambitions via very foolish means.
Again, Kaiser Wilhelm nails it! Holy smoke, what an appropriate and funny comic! So funny as, i can also see where the scene is flipped and we see a “POW” Blam” or “CRUNCH” being added to these characters, tummies of course! Just loosen them up like when the regulation were loosened by the Fed and or Treasury, in 2018, contributing to this mess.
I prefer to keep my hammer of perspicacity ever at the ready to perform precisely such pounding, Caliskier. Apparently the preparation period for such precise pulverizing is however long it takes, which in my case is 75 years.
Silver and gold price explodes higher on original fear of missing out.
Giddyup “Silver Rider”!
The solution for a bad case of FOMO, Good Sir Rich, is lacking the cash to cure it.
Here’s an interesting, yet confounding occurrence: When the Mint raised its prices for 2023 numismatic products it also did so retroactively for past year products that were still available for sale on the Mint’s catalog site; however, the prices of past year numismatic products on the resale market have either held steady (for clad proof and uncirculated sets) or declined (for silver proof sets). It seems inflation pricing only works retroactively on the Mint’s catalog site.
The missing factor here, Major D, is how the resale market prices compare to the Mint’s original catalog prices. If in fact the former were already higher than the latter that might go a long way toward explaining why resellers aren’t raising their prices retroactively.
Kaiser, I’ve gotten in the habit of monitoring prices at sellers like APMEX because I’m interested to see if certain coin sets are trending up or down. What I see are prices for uncirculated/mint sets and proof sets (those from 1968 to 2021) have been really stable with very little to no price changes over the course of the last two years, despite the inflationary trends elsewhere. Silver sets, on the other hand, have varied up and down based on the changing spot price, but not really showing inflation trends either. Certain sets have really increased in price, but I… Read more »
Lots of money piling into big tech and gold with the banking crises. Gold is up 5.58% this week and 9.1% YTD. The other metals not so much. Silver is up 8.99% this week but still -5.41% YTD, Platinum up 0.71% but -9.42% YTD, Palladium was up 1.72% but still the big loser YTD at -20.94%. The curious thing to me is what is happening in the bank CD offerings. Until this week there were hundreds of offerings at 5%+ for all maturity dates. Today my brokerage has zero new issues for 6mo, 9mo, 1yr, 18mo, and 2yr and only… Read more »
And credit card interest rates at 20-30% APR while savings stuck around 3%. How banks can be in trouble with that kind of disparity is beyond me.
I would imagine, Major D, that it is exactly that extra cash that the banks generate by charging 17 to 27 percent more interest to their customers than they pay out that is then available for them to invest in very high yield but perhaps even more precarious financial instruments that far too often end up failing them completely, and what possibly makes things even worse is that the bankers seemingly appear to neither learn nor care about any prior calamitous experiences.
With the FED’s lending rate increasing steadily, Roger, I would think that seed money for the private banks must be more expensive and as such tighter, which likely inhibits their ability to offer and pay out attractive rates of interest themselves.
If that were the issue, I would expect they would just lower the rates on their offerings not stop offering anything at all.
Perhaps it is just an issue in the brokered CD market or just my brokerage as the secondary market has disappeared as well.
It will be interesting to see what happens at the next meeting of the FED. Perhaps everyone is waiting to see what they are going to do next week.
I’m not that intricately acquainted with banking practices, Roger, to be able to parse out all those possibilities and eventualities. It’s been my understanding that as goes the rate of the FED so go the rates of the banks.
I could be wrong but I’ve always thought that banks used deposits as the seed for the money they loaned to borrowers (mortgages, etc.) and offered depositors rates 2-3% less than what they charge borrowers to make their profit. At the same time they are in competition with Treasuries for deposits. With treasuries paying upward of 4% they have had to raise their rates to compete.
Perhaps with lending rates so high there is a deficit in borrowers?
You are right on the money (pun most certainly intended), Roger, that the FED is nowhere near to being the primary source of capital for the banks; rather, it acts as a lender of last resort and one that charges a higher rate of interest than other financial institutions would. For that matter, I think your supposition about the shortage of borrowers is likely right on target, and that situation would account for the apparent beginnings of a slowdown in the nation’s (and possibly the world’s) economy. By the way, Roger, I believe I’ve been able to increase my understanding… Read more »
Well I think I’ve solved my curiosity about the disappearance of new CD issues. Last week the yield on the 2yr treasury dropped precipitously which coincided with the decline in CD offerings.
Today the yield is rebounding and the banks are once again slowly increasing the offering of new CD’s.
I should clarify that by saying the banks probably never stopped issuing new CD’s it’s just that I think my brokerage does not list bank CD offerings that fall below their US Govt. Money Market yield which is currently 4.2%.
It’s very interesting to me how extremely sensitive those CD returns are to such short term market movements; I don’t see how one couldn’t help but develop an ulcer trying to keep up with this.
It’s rather sad if rising by all of 77 cents an ounce is considered “soaring” for silver.
How many times have you seen “soar” and “silver” in the same sentence lately, let alone in a headline? Soaring like a silver eagle reminds me of Led Zeppelin.
I’ve always been under the impression “silver soaring” was a Silver Surfer thing.
I was going for defying physics and gravity.
That, Major D, would require jumping into the nearest quantum sinkhole.