Gold spent most of the week pretending $4,000 was a long way off, and then on Friday it wasn’t. The metal touched $4,187 in the first hours of Monday trading, gave ground in all but one session, and finished at $3,996.18, its first close under $4,000 in our archive since mid-July. The worst of it came Thursday, when a sharp sell-off in technology shares and a rush into Treasuries should, by the usual script, have helped gold. It didn’t. Silver, platinum and palladium all fell harder, and palladium ended at its lowest close in a year of our daily records.
The week in numbers
- Gold: down 4.07%, from $4,165.61 to $3,996.18. Week’s high $4,187.65 (Monday, Oct. 19); low $3,982.80 (Friday, Oct. 23).
- Silver: down 5.40%, from $57.00 to $53.92. Week’s high $58.52 (Tuesday, Oct. 20); low $53.14 (Friday, Oct. 23).
- Platinum: down 5.01%, from $1,635.10 to $1,553.25. Week’s high $1,660.54 (Tuesday, Oct. 20); low $1,544.14 (Friday, Oct. 23).
- Palladium: down 6.26%, from $1,116.35 to $1,046.45. Week’s high $1,138.48 (Monday, Oct. 19); low $1,043.30 (Friday, Oct. 23).
The stories that moved the market
The week opened with gold drifting lower amid the same pressure that has dogged it all autumn: expensive oil and the rate expectations that come with it. By Tuesday Brent crude had touched a five-month high near $111 a barrel, the 10-year Treasury yield was back around 5.14%, and futures markets were pricing roughly a 94% chance that the Federal Reserve raises rates again by December. Gold slipped for a third straight session on Tuesday. Silver went the other way for a day, reaching $58.52 and closing near $57.80, a reminder that it does not always follow gold’s lead.
Wednesday was the calm before it. Gold held in a range above $4,100 and edged higher on a daily-close basis, but the industrial metals were already slipping. Platinum gave up about 2.3% on the session and palladium dropped below $1,075 at one point, which turned out to be a preview rather than an outlier.
Thursday changed the tone. Worries about how much money artificial intelligence projects will need to borrow knocked the Nasdaq down 2.6%, its biggest one-day drop since June, while chip stocks fell close to 7%. Investors poured into government bonds, and Treasury yields posted their largest one-day decline since March 2023. Lower yields usually lend gold a hand. This time gold fell about 2.8% on a daily-close basis and silver about 5.8%, amid reports from Reuters and Bloomberg that some investors were selling precious metals to cover losses and raise cash elsewhere. Over roughly the same 48 hours, the Houthis claimed a wave of attacks on Saudi Arabia, including a strike on an Aramco site at the Red Sea port of Yanbu, and Aramco evacuated its Dhahran headquarters.
Friday finished the job. Brent briefly topped $117 and settled at $116.72, a six-month high and up about 6% on the week. Gold dipped under $4,000 in European trading, steadied briefly, then closed just below the line. One small consolation for holders: the bond rally pulled rate expectations back a little. CME FedWatch data put the chance of a hike at next week’s meeting below 10%, and Reuters reported the odds of a hike by December had eased to around 80%, down from about 90% earlier in the week.
What it means for American gold
For a plain one-ounce American Gold Eagle, the week took roughly $169 off the metal value inside the coin, measured from last Friday’s spot to this Friday’s. That is the melt floor, the worth of the gold itself, and at Friday’s low it had been about $183 lower than where the week began. A one-ounce American Silver Eagle lost about $3 in metal value, a bigger share of its worth than gold gave up.
Older American coins followed the same arithmetic, scaled to what they hold. A Saint-Gaudens double eagle carries 0.9675 troy ounce of gold, so its melt floor eased by a little less than the Gold Eagle’s. That coin exists because Theodore Roosevelt wanted American money to look as fine as anything struck in ancient Greece, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s design first went into circulation in 1907. Morgan dollars, at 0.7734 troy ounce of silver each, gave up about three-quarters of the Silver Eagle’s decline in metal terms.
Proof, graded, commemorative and pre-1933 pieces move on a separate and slower clock. Their premiums rest on collector demand for a date, a grade or a design, and one rough week in spot rarely rewrites that. Our valuation method explains how we keep the metal floor and the collector premium apart, and the full coin catalog shows how each issue is built up from its metal content.
Where this leaves the market
Gold now sits 26.2% below its record close of $5,414.49, set on Jan. 28, 2026, in our daily archive, up from a 23.1% gap a week ago. It is down 7.5% for the year, roughly double last Friday’s 3.5% deficit, and trades about 11.4% beneath its 200-day average near $4,510, a gap that widened from 7.9%.
Silver closed at its lowest level since late November 2025 in our records. It is 53.8% below its own Jan. 28 record close of $116.61, down 24.7% year to date (from 20.4% a week ago) and about 24% under its 200-day average near $71. Because silver fell faster than gold, the gold-silver ratio rose again, from 73.1 to 74.1. Platinum is also down about 25% for the year and palladium about 35%. All four are on our live price charts.
The week ahead
- Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2:00 p.m. ET: the Fed’s rate decision, followed by Chair Kevin Warsh’s press conference at 2:30 p.m. The Bank of Canada also decides that day.
- Thursday, Oct. 29: the first estimate of third-quarter GDP, weekly jobless claims and, at 8:30 a.m. ET, September’s PCE inflation report, the Fed’s preferred gauge. The European Central Bank announces its decision the same day.
- Friday, Oct. 30: the Bank of Japan’s policy decision.
- Tuesday, Nov. 3: the U.S. midterm elections.
Sources
- Gold off three-month lows as oil rally fans inflation worries (Reuters via Kitco)
- Gold Price Today: Below $4,000 as October Hike Odds Near 7% (FinanceFeeds)
- Stocks mixed, day after AI-related selloff; oil prices rise again (Reuters via Yahoo Finance)
- Oil prices rise as Houthis launch another wave of attacks on Saudi Arabia (The National)
- Physical Gold Slips To $4,124 As Oil-Driven Yields Revive Fed Hike Bets; Silver Firms (USAGOLD)
- Weekly Economic Release, 26th to 30th October 2026 (Newsquawk)
Price figures are from FMV Gold’s own minute-by-minute spot archive (UTC trading days).
