Are the summer doldrums a thing of the past?

Gold first broke above $2400/Oz on 17 May 2024. Staying above that threshold was not evident. It lasted for three trading days.

The gold price did slide back, but the correction was rather shallow. On 7 and 26 June the NYMEX close dipped just below $2300/Oz. Was the summer doldrum scenario again in the making?

Apparently not: in the first half of July gold went back to the race. The highest NYMEX close at $2468 set a fresh all time high. Gold now stayed above the $2400 threshold for 7 consecutive trading days. The following 'correction' was not really worth mentioning: On 25 July we have seen a close above $2364. Since yesterday 30 July gold quotes again above $2400, now closing the month above this threshold.

How about the white precious metals?

Silver is gold on steroids, you sometimes hear. On the graph below both Silver and Gold are traced over three months. We head off in May and prices are until today July 31st. To make things comparable, the top and bottom reading on the left and right hand graph are approximately 23% apart. This 23% is just enough to include the extreme values for silver, staying above $26/Oz and just below $32/Oz. But the 23% for the gold axis (left) is quite oversized. Silver is indeed a lot more volatile than gold, which kept within a 10% price range.

Gold (blue graph on the left axis) and Silver (red graph on the right axis)

At its second peak above $31/Oz, silver traded at a Gold/Silver ratio below 75. In a historic context this is not low, but the "long time average" for the Gold/Silver ratio of about 50 - 60 (depending on how far you look back) is no longer valid.

The 19th century bimetal standard of 16:1 for gold to silver (which has determined the weight of coinage) is really a relic of the past. Even under the gold standard, silver coins were actually fiat money, since the value of the metal was but a fraction of the purchase power of the silver coin.

For that same reason, silver coins have been used for decades after relatively stable world currencies went de facto off the gold standard. In the US till 1964, in Canada, the Netherlands and Switzerland till 1967.

Note that the $35 US/Oz gold price was an artificial unit of account among the central banks of Western countries during the Bretton-Woods exchange rate system until August 1971.

Platinum and Palladium

Weekly graph

Weekly observations of Platinum and Palladium over the four months.

Until April 2024, Palladium had been quoting above Platinum. This long lasting anomaly ended in May with Platinum now mostly quoting above Palladium. The latter does however not slide much further down. 

Both Platinum and Palladium now have a hard time upholding $1000/Oz. The quadruple digit fear has brought about a Gold to Platinum ratio now close to 2.5. Whereas Palladiium lost its speculative premium, Platinum has consistently been quoting lower than gold for almost a decade. The disparity has only grown over the years, as platinum could not follow the gold rally.

Daily graph of Pt and Pd until today:

Daily observations of Platinum and Palladium prices over the last month.