Silver came into the week at $60.83 an ounce and left it at $57.00, and most of that damage was done in a single morning. September’s inflation report landed hotter than forecast on Wednesday, traders suddenly treated an October rate hike as a coin flip, and the dollar climbed toward an 18-month high. Gold fell to $4,075.04, its lowest level since early August, before a bond rally on Thursday handed back most of the loss. By Friday’s close the yellow metal was down only 0.7% on the week. Silver, platinum and palladium were not so lucky.
The week in numbers
- Gold: down 0.69%, from $4,194.61 to $4,165.61. Week’s high $4,212.71 (Monday, Oct. 12); low $4,075.04 (Wednesday, Oct. 14).
- Silver: down 6.30%, from $60.83 to $57.00. Week’s high $61.41 (Monday, Oct. 12); low $55.44 (Wednesday, Oct. 14).
- Platinum: down 3.19%, from $1,689.00 to $1,635.10. Week’s high $1,709.12 (Monday, Oct. 12); low $1,600.99 (Wednesday, Oct. 14).
- Palladium: down 3.12%, from $1,152.30 to $1,116.35. Week’s high $1,167.65 (Monday, Oct. 12); low $1,094.00 (Wednesday, Oct. 14).
The stories that moved the market
Every metal made its weekly high in the first hours of Monday trading, and it was mostly downhill from there. Columbus Day kept the U.S. bond market shut on Monday, so the real test came Tuesday, when the 10-year Treasury yield climbed back above 5.2% and gold failed again at $4,200. Oil added its own pressure amid reports that Iran had stepped up attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Before the inflation data, money markets gave roughly a one-in-four chance of a hike at the Fed’s Oct. 27-28 meeting.
Wednesday rewrote those odds. The Labor Department said consumer prices rose 0.6% in September and 3.7% from a year earlier, up from 3.4% in August and a tenth above forecasts. Gasoline jumped 9.1% in the month. Core inflation, which strips out food and energy, rose to 2.6%. CME FedWatch put the chance of an October hike near 50% within hours, the dollar firmed and the metals sold off together. Silver fell about 6% on the day; in our archive, its close was the lowest since mid-July, and palladium posted its lowest daily close of the past year.
The turn came Thursday, and it came from the bond market. Treasury yields fell sharply, the dollar gave up about half a percent, and hike odds slid back toward 30%. Gold more than made up Wednesday’s closing loss, and silver regained a little over 2%. Part of the bid for government debt reportedly came from investors uneasy about the heavy borrowing companies are doing to build AI infrastructure.
Friday was quieter than it might have been. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, speaking at the IMF and World Bank meetings in Bangkok, said “I don’t prejudge meetings” and declined to signal his next move, while praising what he called a “synchronous tightening” by central banks around the world. Gold firmed briefly toward $4,200 before settling near $4,166. Crude did not cooperate: West Texas Intermediate finished the week up about 11%, and that energy pressure is a big reason the inflation worry hasn’t gone away.
What it means for American gold
For an American Gold Eagle, the week trimmed roughly $29 from the metal value of each plain one-ounce bullion coin, measured from last Friday’s spot to this Friday’s. That is the floor under the coin, the worth of the gold inside it, and a small move given that the floor was about $120 lower at Wednesday’s worst. Silver holders felt more of it. Each one-ounce American Silver Eagle lost about $3.80 in metal value on the week.
Older American coinage followed the same arithmetic, scaled to its metal content. A Saint-Gaudens double eagle holds 0.9675 troy ounce of gold, so its melt floor eased by a little less than a full ounce’s worth. Morgan dollars, at 0.7734 troy ounce of silver apiece, gave up close to $3 each in metal value. George T. Morgan, an English-born engraver who joined the U.S. Mint, designed the coin, and it was first struck in 1878 under the Bland-Allison Act.
Proof, graded, commemorative and pre-1933 pieces are a different story, and a slower one. Their premiums rest on collector demand, and a single bad week for spot rarely changes what a scarce date or a high grade means to a buyer. Our valuation method explains how we keep the metal floor and the collector premium apart.
Where this leaves the market
Gold sits 23.1% below its record close of $5,414.49, set on Jan. 28, 2026, in our daily archive (some intraday prints that month ran higher). That gap widened slightly from 22.5% a week ago. Gold is now down 3.5% for the year, versus 2.9% last Friday, and trades about 7.9% under its 200-day average of roughly $4,523, a touch further below that line than the 7.4% gap a week earlier.
Silver lost much more ground. It finished 51.1% below its own Jan. 28 record close of $116.61, is down 20.4% year to date (from 15.0% a week ago) and trades about 21% beneath its 200-day average near $72. Because silver fell so much harder than gold, the gold-silver ratio jumped from 69.0 to 73.1. Platinum is down about 21% for the year and palladium about 31%. You can follow all four on our live price charts.
The week ahead
- Monday, Oct. 19, 10:00 a.m. ET: NAHB housing market index for October.
- Tuesday, Oct. 20, 8:30 a.m. ET: September housing starts and building permits; pending home sales follow at 10:00 a.m.
- Wednesday, Oct. 21, 1:00 p.m. ET: Treasury auction of $13 billion in 20-year debt, worth watching after a week when yields drove nearly everything.
- Thursday, Oct. 22, 8:30 a.m. ET: weekly jobless claims.
- Friday, Oct. 23: S&P Global flash PMIs for October at 9:45 a.m. and the final University of Michigan sentiment survey, including inflation expectations, at 10:00 a.m.
- Looking further out: the Fed decides on rates Oct. 28, and the midterm elections are Nov. 3.
Sources
- Gold slides on US yields surge ahead of CPI (FXStreet)
- Gold And Silver Prices Fall As Inflation Boosts Interest Rate Hike Bets (Forbes)
- Gold Rebounds From Steep Losses As Treasury Yields And U.S. Dollar Fall (Forbes)
- Fed’s Warsh sees AI boosting productivity but gives no signal on next rate hike (Euronews)
- Gold prices slip for the week as oil gains offset weaker dollar, U.S. bond rally (Investing.com)
- What to Look Out for in Economic Data This Week (Kiplinger)
Price figures are from FMV Gold’s own minute-by-minute spot archive (UTC trading days).
