Sep 2026

Weekly round-up for StoneX Bullion

By Rhona O'Connell, Head of Market Analysis

Focus on Gulf now as the FOMC is in blackout until after next week’s meeting, i.e. 16^th September

Gold and silver ended almost exactly where they started a week ago, which is the least interesting thing that happened to them. Gold opened the period in the $4,430s and was quoted at $4,452 shortly before eight o'clock this morning (7^th September), a gain of roughly0.5%; silver was just above $66 on 31^st August and $66.46 in early trade on the 7th, effectively unchanged. Between those two points gold traded a range of some 3.3% and silver 2.6%— and the round trip is the story, because it was made almost entirely on the markets’ shifting conviction about whether the Federal Reserve will raise rates on 16^th September.

The week began under the influence of Jackson Hole. Chair Warsh's remarks on 28^th August, in which he said the Fed had "work to do" on inflation, had already taken the market's assessment of a September increase from roughly one in three to better than even money, and by Monday 31^st August the CME's FedWatch had it at roughly 64%, rising to 66% during the session. Gold eased marginally to $4,431 on the Monday as the dollar held near a two-week high, but it is worth recording — because it undercuts the simple reading — that gold nonetheless closed August up 9.6%, its best month since January, in a month during which the market repriced from a Fed on hold to a Fed preparing to tighten. That is not the behaviour of an asset trading solely off the rate path.

Tuesday 1^st September was the break. With London back from the bank holiday and Treasury yields pushing higher in a broad global bond sell-off, gold fell $71 on the day to $4,375, a two-week low, and silver took the harder blow, shedding 2.7% to $64.8. The gold/silver ratio widened from 66.8 to 67.6, which is the usual pattern: the industrially-levered metal is punished more when the dollar firms and real yields climb, and silver had further to fall having run up strongly through August. The slide continued into Wednesday, gold trading down through $4,400 and quoted at $4,336 at nine o'clock New York time, the low of the period.

Thursday reversed the move, and reversed it hard. Dovish remarks from Governor Waller took some of the heat out of the hike expectation, the dollar softened, and Treasury yields — real as well as nominal — came off. Gold rose around 2% to settle near $4,480 and silver gained 2.4% to $66.4,reclaiming the handle it had lost on Tuesday. There was a geopolitical component to that day's bid as well, with strikes in the Middle East adding a safe-haven layer ahead of the employment report.

Friday delivered the payroll surprise. Non-farm payrolls rose162,000 against a consensus of roughly 53,000, with unemployment steady at 4.1% —a very large beat, and immediately read as clearing the path for a September increase. Treasury yields jumped, the two-year reaching its highest since January 2025, the Dow fell 0.5% and the S&P 500 0.4%, while gold gave back much of Thursday's gain to trade around $4,420, with silver easing towards $66.. What kept the damage modest was the currency; a surging yen dragged the dollar lower even as the front end of the US curve sold off, and that cushioned the metals against what would otherwise have been a straightforward hostile print.

This morning, with US markets shut for Labor Day and liquidity correspondingly thin, gold was $4,452 and silver $66.5, each off ~0.5%, with the gold/silver ratio at just under 67. The US ten-year stood at 4.80%, the gilt at 5.13% and the Bund at 3.34%, so the bond market has not softened its view. Asian equities were nonetheless bid — the Kospi opened 3.09% higher and the Nikkei 1.91%— on an escalation between the United States and Iran, with US forces having struck three Iranian oil tankers after Iranian ballistic missiles were reportedly fired at US warships. Brent was $97 and WTI $92, which is the uncomfortable part; the same conflict that is supporting gold is also feeding the energy prices that are feeding the inflation that is driving the rate expectations that are working against it.

The most recent picture of the Asian physical market, from late July, showed the world’s two largest consumers pulling in opposite directions to an unusual degree. Chinese dealers were quoting premia of $3 to $6 an ounce over loco London —firmer than the near-par of the preceding week but still below the $5 to $15 range normally considered ordinary, and a long way from the $20 to $80 of the 2024 squeeze— while Indian dealers were offering discounts of up to $56 an ounce, a seven-week high, on top of the 15% import and 3% sales levies. A spread of roughly $60 between the two is wider than the Shanghai premium itself. China has been absorbing modestly on price dips, India has not been absorbing at all. Hong Kong was trading between a $0.25 discount and a $1.70 premium, illustrating that there was no strain in the import pipeline.

Two structural changes are worth keeping in view when reading Asian volumes from here. The first is that four large Chinese banks — ICBC, Postal Savings, Ping An and Guangfa — stopped offering retail clients leveraged precious metals trading linked to the Shanghai Gold Exchange after the clearing session on 24^th July. That is a narrower measure than some headlines suggested — physical purchases, accumulation plans, ETFs and institutional SGE access are all untouched —but it thins the domestic retail order book, and on the evidence of the first week it removed demand rather than supply, since a leveraged client facing a closing deadline after a 30% drawdown is far more likely to liquidate than to stand for delivery. The second is that CME's twenty-four-hour, seven-day gold futures have now been running through weekends since July. Taken together, the direction of travel is the opposite of the popular narrative: Western venues are extending their coverage of continuous price discovery while one Chinese retail access channel has narrowed.

The World Gold Council has put central bank net buying at a record 289t in the second quarter, roughly five times the first, and the People's Bank of China had extended its run of consecutive monthly reported additions to nineteen months as of May. That is the patient bid underneath a tape that has otherwise been driven by the rate debate. Meanwhile the news that the Netherlands has shifted 56t of gold from the States into London, reportedly on fears of asset freezing in the US (and following French selling US-located holdings and buying in Europe), has caught the headlines. The LBMA Vaulting figures show a disproportionate increase in gold holdings and it is entirely possible that this number was swollen by Dutch material.

The dominant influence remains the Federal Reserve, and specifically the question of whether the 15th–16th September meeting produces the first increase of this cycle. Warsh has made the inflation case explicitly, Waller has pushed back, and the market has spent the week swinging between the two — which is why gold traded a 3.3% range and finished flat.

Key long bond yields, long-term and the 5Y-30Y spread; yield curve continues to ease

Source: Bloomberg, StoneX

We continue to keep an eye on the private credit sector, which is catching increasing interest from the press. The FT has noted that after the global financial crisis, authorities clamped down on “duration mismatch” (banks borrowing short term and lending long. This, incidentally, is effectively what the US Treasury is doing in its expanded buyback programmes that get underway today, 9^th September for eight weeks). The FT points out that some of that activity shifted into the private banking sector and the way that this has evolved has brought some life assurance companies onto the scene and suggests that the continued geopolitical issues and persistent inflation mean that a rise in credit defaults may result. The most recent development is the emergency funding of A$3.4Bn (US$2.5Bn) for the insolvent Australian builder Bathla, which has put pressure on Australian real estate and private credit markets

Note the increasing correlation between Brent and the ten-year yield as they both respond to Gulf developments

Source: Bloomberg, StoneX

Gold; next support is $4,246

Silver's next support $63,12

COMEX metal inventories continued to build slowly over the week to 4th September, gold stocks adding 7.9t, or 0.9%, to 851.5t and silver adding 9.2t, a rise of less than 0.1%, to 10,534.7t; both remain heavily down on the year, gold by 276t and silver by 3,444t against their 31st December positions, so the recent accumulation has done little to reverse the drawdown of the first half. Exchange traded funds moved the same way in gold, holdings rising 12.3t or 0.4% to 3,093.0t as of 4th September and now marginally above where they began the year, but the other way in silver, where33.1t came out to leave 24,875.9t, a fall of 0.1% on the week and of 1,945t since the turn of the year.

Within the ETFs there has been continued buying interest but in keeping with consolidation in price action, the activity was slower than in the previous week. The latest numbers from the World Gold Council run as far as the 14^th August; in the preceding week 24t were added, taking the total to 4,114t. In percentage terms Europe was the most active, adding 1% or 15t; North America seven tonnes (0.4%) and Asia, one tonne (0.2t). Subsequent Bloomberg figures (not as comprehensive as WGC) report steady buying last week although there was a touch of profit taking on Wednesday; on the day after the Treasury announcement some 18t (net) were bought for a gain over the period of 29t, implying a year-to-date net creation of 119t. Silver ETFs (Bloomberg numbers) were mixed over the week for a net redemption of 11t – although the on the 19^th the net inflow was 93t; closing figures last week were 24,812t, a net loss ytd of 2,009t.

Managed money took profits in both metals in the week to 1^st September: the gold net long fell 24.8t, or 5.5%, to 425.4t, and the silver net long fell 241.3t, or 10.5%, to 2,059.5t, in each case driven by liquidation of longs rather than by fresh shorting, since gross shorts were also reduced — gold shorts from 46.9t to 40.3t and silver shorts from 1,142.7t to 1,019.9t.

Gold COMEX positioning, Money Managers (t)