For three days this week, gold looked like it had found its feet. It climbed back above $4,060 on Tuesday as oil cooled and Wall Street rallied, and it was still up for the week when the Federal Reserve sat on its hands Wednesday afternoon. Then came two days of hot economic data and a fresh explosion in the Strait of Hormuz, and the floor gave way. Gold closed Friday at $3,875.20, its lowest close of the year, and silver slipped under $50 for the first time since November. Every metal on the board finished the week lower.
The week in numbers
Figures below are daily closes (Friday, October 23 to Friday, October 30), used for all four metals so the comparison stays on one basis.
- Gold: down 3.0% on the week, from $3,996.18 to $3,875.20. Closing high $4,067.55 (Wednesday), closing low $3,875.20 (Friday).
- Silver: down 8.9%, from $53.92 to $49.13. Closing high $54.42 (Tuesday), closing low $49.13 (Friday).
- Platinum: down 7.6%, from $1,553.25 to $1,435.00. Closing high $1,544.35 (Tuesday), closing low $1,435.00 (Friday).
- Palladium: down 6.3%, from $1,046.45 to $980.70. Closing high $1,045.90 (Monday), closing low $980.70 (Friday).
The stories that moved the market
The week opened on a hopeful note. Reports that Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan might help restart talks with Iran took some heat out of crude, and gold edged back over $4,000 on Monday. Tuesday extended the move. Brent eased toward $114 and WTI toward $100, and with lower energy prices taking a little pressure off the inflation outlook, gold rose about 1% to roughly $4,058 even as consumer confidence, durable goods orders and new-home sales all came in stronger than expected. The headwinds never left the room, though: the 10-year Treasury yield hovered near 5% and the dollar stayed firm.
Wednesday belonged to the Fed. The central bank held its target range at 3.75% to 4% in a 10-2 vote, with Governor Lisa Cook and Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack both dissenting in favor of a quarter-point hike. The statement upgraded its description of the economy to growth at a “strong pace” and kept the line that the Committee “will deliver price stability.” Chair Kevin Warsh said he doesn’t prejudge meetings, but traders read two hawkish dissents as a signal, and futures moved toward a December hike. Gold barely budged on the day; silver slipped about 1%.
Thursday made the hawks’ case for them. Third-quarter GDP came in at 3.4%, a shade above forecasts, and September PCE inflation rose 0.5% on the month and 3.6% from a year earlier. Metals that pay no interest have a hard time competing with a central bank that may still be raising rates, and gold fell about 1% while silver dropped more than 3%. The European Central Bank held at 2.50% the same day, offering no relief on the dollar.
Friday finished the job. The UK Maritime Trade Operations agency reported that a tanker in the Strait of Hormuz had been hit by explosive devices attached from a small boat, with no one immediately claiming responsibility. Brent pushed back above $110. In another year that headline might have sent money into gold. This year, amid worries that pricier oil keeps inflation warm and the Fed on alert, it did the opposite. Speculative selling and ETF outflows added weight, and gold closed down more than 3.6% on the day. Silver, more exposed to the industrial cycle and to leveraged positioning, fell harder.
What it means for American gold
For a plain one-ounce bullion coin such as the American Gold Eagle, the week took roughly $121 off the metal value, Friday close against Friday close. A one-ounce Silver Eagle lost about $4.80 of metal value over the same stretch. That is the melt floor, the value of the metal alone, and our methodology page explains how we compute it from the spot archive.
Holders of classic silver dollars felt a proportional pinch. A Morgan dollar carries a little over three-quarters of an ounce of silver, so its metal floor moved by roughly that share of silver’s 8.9% weekly slide. Pre-1933 gold followed the same direction on its own scale. The Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle, the design Theodore Roosevelt pushed the Mint to adopt and that was struck from 1907 until 1933, holds just under an ounce of gold, so its melt floor tracked spot gold closely this week.
Proof, graded and commemorative pieces are a separate and slower story. Those coins trade above melt on collector demand, and their premiums rarely mark a week like this one move for move. A sharp spot decline narrows the cushion beneath them; it does not reprice them by the same amount on the same day. The full coin catalog follows each series as spot moves.
Where this leaves the market
Gold now sits about 28% below its record close of $5,414.49, set on January 28, 2026 in our daily archive. It is down roughly 10% for the year, measured from the December 31 close of $4,318.18. The 200-day average has drifted lower too, from about $4,510 a week ago to about $4,491, but Friday’s close leaves gold nearly 14% beneath it, a sign of how one-sided the autumn selling has been.
Silver’s picture is starker. At $49.13 it stands about 58% below its own January 28 record close of $116.61 and roughly 31% lower on the year. The gold-silver ratio jumped from about 74 to nearly 79 over the week, the clearest measure of how much harder silver was hit. Platinum also posted its lowest close in our one-year daily record. A Reuters poll of 30 analysts cited this week put the median 2026 gold forecast at $4,495, a level that would require a meaningful rebound over the last two months of the year. Standard Chartered flagged $3,886 as support worth watching; Friday’s close came in just below it. You can follow the levels on our live charts.
The week ahead
- Monday, Nov. 2: ISM Manufacturing PMI.
- Tuesday, Nov. 3: U.S. midterm elections; JOLTS job openings.
- Wednesday, Nov. 4: ADP employment and ISM Services PMI.
- Thursday, Nov. 5: Preliminary third-quarter productivity and costs; weekly jobless claims.
- Friday, Nov. 6: October employment report, the week’s main event for rate expectations ahead of the Fed’s December 8-9 meeting.
Shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and the oil price remain the wild cards. Markets in recent weeks have treated higher crude as an inflation problem first and a safe-haven story second.
Sources
- Kitco: Gold climbs above $4,050 as Wall Street rallies ahead of Fed decision
- Fortune: Fed holds rates steady days before the midterms, even as inflation runs hot
- Yahoo Finance: Gold price just hit a yearly low. What are analysts saying?
- Yahoo Finance: Gold slips below $4,000 as Mid-East concerns mount
- GSI Exchange: Silver hit a 2026 low as oil climbed and the Fed stayed firm
- FinanceFeeds: FX market summary, 30 October 2026
Price figures are from FMV Gold’s own minute-by-minute spot archive (UTC trading days).
