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Week on week, gold is up 8%, silver 10%, platinum 6% and palladium 8%.

That happened after a stretch of global market volatility that Iran and their proxies started by widening the range of their attacks around the Persian Gulf. Stock market indices in the United States and South Korea tumbled before rebounding. U.S. Treasury values tumbled with their yields spiking higher. And then came the piece that mattered most for us: a major coordinated government intervention by the U.S. and the Japanese in the Japanese yen, which broke the dollar’s recent rally.

It is no wonder precious metals caught a bid.

In my last update I told you the weaker dollar had not buoyed gold yet. Well, precious metals headwinds are now turning into tailwinds, and this week gold finally reacted, with pretty strong conviction.

I am Dana Samuelson, president of American Gold Exchange in Austin, Texas, and what follows is how I am reading my own charts after last Friday’s close. Support and resistance levels, trading ranges, and the other markets that have been material in driving metals values higher.

Platinum and Palladium Broke Out First, a Day Before Gold and Silver

Here is the detail from this week that I want you to have, because what is unusual about this rally is that platinum and palladium actually led it.

Gold and silver really started to move on Wednesday. But platinum and palladium moved higher on Tuesday, a full day earlier. Platinum broke out in the futures contract over $1,680 during Tuesday’s trading. Palladium broke out over $1,310 the same day.

And who called it? Jim Wyckoff, our senior precious metals market analyst. On Tuesday, his daily gold update was headlined “Bullish upside breakouts in platinum, palladium catch gold, silver traders’ attention.” That is exactly what happened. Jim saw it coming, and gold and silver followed platinum and palladium higher on Wednesday.

And by Friday of the same week his update read: “Gold extends gains, sharply up, following surprisingly weak U.S. jobs data.” Congratulations, Jim. We are grateful to have you on our team.

That is the tell I was watching. What I want to walk you through now is the rest of it: the exact levels I am using on all four metals, why the dollar broke down when it did, what the July jobs report really said underneath the headline, and the one number in the oil market that is still working against us even as crude comes down.

Because off this rally I do think the bottoms for precious metals are now in. I will show you the chart formations that make me say so, and I will tell you exactly which levels have to hold for this to be more than one good week.

If you have not done so already, support this Substack by becoming a free or paid subscriber and let me show you what I think happens next.

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The Yen Intervention That Broke the Dollar’s Rally

This is the catalyst that I think really spurred precious metals higher this past week.

The U.S. and Japanese governments intervened together, to the tune of about $60 or $70 billion by market estimates, propping the yen up from its cyclical low at 166.38 to between 156 and 158 yen per dollar. Remember that it now takes fewer yen to buy a dollar, which means the yen is stronger. That move carried it back into the middle of the trading range it has been in, and back to the strong side of the 160 line. That is the line the Japanese wanted to defend.

Now, most of the time interventions do not hold. They typically fail over time. But right now, so far, it is working.

And what was the corresponding reaction? The dollar tumbling.

The dollar had already broken back down below 100.50 on the U.S. dollar index chart, and it finished this past week at about 99.50 on the index. So the move up over 100.50 has indeed, so far, turned out to be a fake out rather than a real breakout, as I thought it might be a month or two ago.

That is the mechanism I want you to hold on to. The dollar and gold have been moving against each other very tightly for two months. When the dollar caught a bid, gold could not make any headway. Break the dollar’s rally and you remove the thing that has been sitting on gold for those two months.

Gold Breaks Above $4,200 Resistance and Holds

The weaker dollar helped to buoy gold, but it took a little bit of time for gold to finally react.

Look at where we were a week earlier, on charts drawn July 31st.

To the left is the U.S. dollar index candlestick chart inverted, which means it is upside down. So the three big red candlesticks near the bottom that are moving up are actually the dollar falling down. I invert the dollar so you can see how directly it has been influencing gold as gold has come down over the last two months. That has been the most direct influencer. And at that point, gold had not yet reacted to the weaker dollar.

This week it did. With the dollar holding below 100.50 in a pretty tight range, gold finally broke higher as of Wednesday, moving sharply above the resistance level at $4,200 and closing out Friday at about $4,350 in the spot market. Actually $4,345.

Where Gold’s Support and Resistance Levels Sit Now

Let me take you through the futures contract, because that is where the levels are cleanest.

Go all the way back to November, to that major support and resistance line at about $4,410 in the gold futures contract. Back in November and December it had a little trouble getting over that. Then it did, and we rallied all the way to $5,400, which is where the price correction started in earnest. On the way back down, gold came to that same $4,410 line and bounced off it, went back over, came down to it a second time, and went back higher again. Then gold finally broke below it over the last three months, selling into a lower trading range. And now we are back up again, probing right up against it in the futures market for the first time in about three months.

That is the bigger picture support and resistance line for gold in the futures contract.

Off to the right of that chart there are two descending upside resistance lines. One goes all the way back to March 1st and runs off to the far right of the chart. The other is shorter term, drawn since June 3rd. Both are material in this rally on the way back up.

At first we moved over the lower, shorter-term upside resistance level, ran right up to the longer-term one, and failed there. The market settled back down. Then it came back and broke over that longer-term line before this rally got moving in earnest.

Drill down a little tighter and you can see that once we broke over those two descending lines, the next upside resistance was $4,175. That level capped the market for three trading sessions, before gold finally broke over it.

Now here is what actually happened this week, hour by hour.

Gold broke over $4,175 in the futures contract Wednesday while we slept, in the Asian markets. We saw follow-through buying in London, and then follow-through buying again in New York, where gold closed out at about $4,300. There was further buying in Asia overnight while we slept. We settled back on Thursday and held support at $4,280. The market started trending higher again overnight and into Friday morning, and then we got that weak jobs report, which pushed gold up over that major upside resistance level going all the way back to November, at least for a few hours. Gold hit a peak of $4,432 in the futures market before settling back and closing out the futures market right at $4,400.

Gold is looking very good right now, with the futures contract working between $4,280 and $4,400. That puts spot market support at about $4,240 to $4,360. We closed the spot market Friday at $4,345.

On the one-year chart I have upside resistance at $4,370, and we did not quite break it in the spot market Friday. But you can see that nice rounding bottom I have been pointing out over the last three or four updates. The point where I marked the dollar falling on that chart is where the yen intervention hit. The dollar tumbled from there, and gold has now responded, creating a full U-shaped bottom in the gold market that I have been describing for the last couple of weeks.

So it seemed like this was possible and it was coming. Now we have got the catalyst that has triggered it, and we have got a rally again. Headwinds are starting to become tailwinds.

Silver Clears Its 50-Day Moving Average on a W Formation

We have something similar in the silver chart.

In the futures contract we had descending upside resistance since June 2. We broke over that, and then went into a sideways trading range between about $57 and $60.45, after holding support at $55.00 and $56.10. Those two lows are the floor I have been working from.

Then we broke over the top of that range. More recently silver had been sideways between about $57 and $61 in the futures market, under a second and shorter downward resistance line running back to the third week of July. This week silver gave us the same pattern gold did. Asian market trading took it over that line, then Asian trading pushed it higher twice more, leading into Friday’s New York session, where the futures market peaked at $65.48 before closing at $63.80, with the spot market at about $63.60.

On the one-year silver chart, the blue descending trend line I keep on it has come down to about $60. We have moved over it, so it is support now rather than resistance, and we are back into the trading range that has been descending. But more importantly, we are over the 50-day moving average by just a little bit.

If silver can hold above that 50-day moving average, it is a positive sign. And by the way, gold is sharply over its own 50-day moving average.

We do not quite have the same U-shaped bottom in the silver market. But silver has made a nice W formation instead. So the silver market is looking pretty good as well.

Platinum and Palladium Levels After the Tuesday Breakout

Now back to the two metals that led.

Platinum broke out in the futures contract over $1,680 during Tuesday’s trading and has held a higher trading range over the last three trading sessions, between $1,725 on the low and $1,800 on the high. We closed out the spot market Friday at $1,750, pretty much right in the middle of the range.

Palladium looks very similar. It broke out on Tuesday over $1,310 and is trading now in a $1,360 to $1,410 range, closing out the spot market Friday at about $1,385.

On the one-year platinum chart you can see platinum has been moving sideways in a tight range. Now it has broken higher over its 50-day moving average and over that major support and resistance line I have had on the chart for months at $1,723, which is right where the low of this week’s range has been. I am going to be kind of tentative on the upside there in the short term.

Palladium has been in a modest uptrend, and again it has already broken over its 50-day moving average. Now it is testing its longer-term support and resistance level at $1,380, from above.

All four of these precious metals have made pretty good gains this week. As I said at the top: gold 8%, silver 10%, platinum 6%, palladium 8%. They could give a little back and still hold these nice uptrends that are developing. I do expect we will see a little bit of profit taking, but probably not much.

I do think the trend is your friend here. From a seasonal and a cyclical basis, the timing right now is pretty good to see metals start moving higher again from here. I would expect that move to be a cautious one. But I do think the bottoms for precious metals are now in.

The Weak July Jobs Report Underneath the Headline

Here is one of the reasons why.

We had a really weak jobs report Friday for the month of July, with the U.S. losing 23,000 jobs. June was revised down to 20,000 jobs.

And May has been shellacked. Friday’s report revised it down another 66,000 jobs, to 63,000 net. The revision before that had already taken 70,000 off. May first came in at over 200,000, and two revisions later it stands at 63,000.

So clearly, the trend for job creation in the U.S. is sharply lower.

And what sector has lost 80,000 jobs in the last two months alone? Leisure and hospitality.

Leisure and hospitality and healthcare have been the two pillars of job creation in the U.S. for the last two or three years. Now we have seen leisure and hospitality take a big tumble. Discretionary spending is tightening up. In my opinion, that is what that means.

Some of it could have a little bit to do with the World Cup coming and going. But still, 80,000 jobs lost out of this one very important sector in two months is a big, big change in direction.

Oil Comes Down, But the Diesel Crack Spread Stays Inflationary

Let’s take a look at oil, because this is where my longer-running concern still sits.

This is West Texas Intermediate crude next to Brent crude, and the patterns are very similar. We hit lows when the Memorandum of Understanding was signed and it looked like things were good. Then the flare-up and the military activity punched the oil price back up again. Now, as it looks like the Strait of Hormuz might actually be reopening soon, we are seeing oil come back down again.

But the bigger rub is with the distillates, the products we refine from crude oil: gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. The spread between the oil price and the distillates is called the crack spreads. Funny name, I know.

These figures are as of July 31st, a week ago. The spread between crude and gasoline is just under $50. In January it was $30.

The spread between crude and diesel is $88 against an $86 oil price. That puts the diesel price at more than double the price of the crude it is refined from. Previously, when oil was $60, diesel was $90, a $30 spread.

And what carries everything around the United States? Diesel engine trucks.

So fundamentally, this remains inflationary. Jet fuel is in there as well, at about a $70 spread. It is coming down a bit, and we are seeing gasoline come down a bit as well, because gasoline inventories are starting to rebuild a little. But diesel in particular is problematic, and it is probably going to stay that way for a while. These are EIA’s weekly spot prices for crude, gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.

This could be some of the pressure that President Trump has to get that oil flowing again. We are at that point in time where we could be hitting real tank bottoms. If we go much further in time without getting the oil flowing, we could have some much bigger problems in pricing and in supplies.

That is where I need to update the thesis I have been carrying for months. My concern all along has been that higher oil creates inflationary expectations that pushes yields higher, and higher yields push gold lower. Crude itself is now easing on the prospect of the strait reopening, which takes the edge off that. But the distillate spreads are doing the inflationary work all by themselves, and they are not easing at anything like the same speed.

Strait of Hormuz Negotiations and Whether We Go Big or Go Home

One last thing before I wrap up.

There has not been a lot of discussion the last couple of days about what is going on with the negotiations between Oman and Iran over reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Iran said earlier this month that those talks were in their final stages. President Trump has been remarkably quiet.

Do we truly have a munitions problem, so that we cannot go big like he has threatened to do on several occasions?

An old friend of mine, a wonderful lady I have known for years, had a great expression: go big or go home. And it looks to me like we might be going home, simply to get the oil flowing again. It is very possible.

I truly hope this conflict can come to a resolution and we can get back to business as usual. We may be on the cusp of that now, by going home. Time will tell.

The Levels I Am Carrying Into Next Week

These are the same ones I walked you through above, gathered in one place.

The dollar is the swing factor, and the intervention is the thing to keep an eye on, because as I said, most of the time these do not hold. 100.50 on the index is the line that has mattered.

On gold, $4,370 in the spot market is the line gold could not quite get over on Friday. On silver, it is that 50-day moving average at $62, which we are only just above. Platinum has cleared $1,723. Palladium is testing $1,380. Holding those is what turns a good week into an uptrend.

Those are the levels I will be watching, and they are the ones I would want you watching too.

If You Are Looking at Physical Precious Metals

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Thank you for your time today, and thank you to our loyal clients who have given us your trust and support for the last 28 years. Without you we would not have a business, and we are grateful for you each and every day.

Best wishes for the rest of the summer holiday. The school year will be starting up and the regular business cycle will be starting up again before you know it. So stay cool out there, and let’s see how this precious metals rally develops over the next couple of weeks.

Looks pretty promising to me.

So thanks again for your time, and good luck out there.

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Last Tuesday, Iranian proxies in northern Iraq took shots at an LNG export terminal in the Mediterranean Sea just off the Egyptian coast. Gold went up $100 that day. Oil went up. Equity markets went into a bit of a tailspin.

That is a long way from the Persian Gulf, and that distance is the whole story. Iran and their proxies also fired on the major U.S. Middle Eastern staging base in Jordan. Saudi Arabia now wants to put a coalition together to fight the Houthis in Yemen. A conflict that started in one waterway is now being fought in three.

Meanwhile the Fed held the fed funds rate steady at their just concluded July meeting, and the equity markets, the Treasury markets and the currency markets were anything but steady. South Korea’s KOSPI dropped about 23% in three sessions. The Dow took a big hit. The 10-year Treasury yield spiked. The yen needed a rescue measured in tens of billions of dollars.

What was steady through all of it? Gold. It closed the week at $4,045, and it probed higher along the way.

I want to show you why that steadiness is not luck, and why I think the single most important thing to watch from here is not gold at all. It is a number on the oil chart, and what happens the first time it stops behaving.

The $100 Oil Trigger That Keeps Getting Pulled

I have watched and listened as President Trump has repeatedly come out to talk about how we are entering into negotiations, or a truce is at hand, or we are working on the memorandum of understanding. Jawboning the markets lower for oil in particular.

This past week I heard an interview with Jim Bianco, who is a brilliant analyst, and he said it quite succinctly: every time oil goes over $100 a barrel, President Trump does something to bring it back down. He tries to talk it down, or negotiations start, or a pause gets announced.

So I said, well, let’s put this to the test and see.

Here is my Brent crude chart going back to January 1, with all of the military activity labeled on it. Everything in red is aggression. Everything in green is a lack of aggression or a cease of aggression. Look at where the green labels sit relative to that $100.00 line.

Jim is right. It is as if President Trump has a trigger at $100 per barrel.

And this is a very disturbing sign, because you cannot prosecute a war properly to the final conclusion you desire if you are beholden to financial or commodity markets. We peaked at $100.69 per barrel after the U.S. completed their 13 day bombing campaign, we paused, and now we are punching back up again from about $84 a barrel to a little over $90 with the renewed fighting of the past three or four days.

That is the pattern, and it has worked every single time so far.

Which brings me to the part I actually care about. A trigger like that only works while there is still slack in the system to talk about. There is a point where jawboning stops moving the price, and I believe we are very close to it.

If you have not done so already, join us behind the paywall. Let me show you exactly where that point is, what the refined product market is already telling us about it, and the support levels in gold and silver I am watching to confirm what happens next.

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For most of this year there has been one relationship that mattered more than any other for the gold price, and I have walked you through it week after week. Oil goes up. Inflation expectations go up with it. Treasury yields follow. And gold, which pays you nothing to hold it, gets sold to buy something that does.

That machine has been running cleanly since the conflict with Iran began. This week it stopped.

Since hostilities resumed and the memorandum of understanding was scrapped, oil has punched violently higher, the Strait of Hormuz has closed again, and the 10-year Treasury yield has climbed to a new high for this move. Every one of those inputs says gold should be making fresh lows.

Gold is not making fresh lows. It is grinding higher.

A single week is not a trend, and I am not going to tell you the correction is over when I cannot know that yet. But when an asset stops responding to the thing that has been beating it up, that is usually not noise. That is sentiment changing underneath the price, before the price shows you.

Here is the one piece of evidence that convinced me, and I will give it to you in full.

Two weeks ago the 10-year Treasury yield sat at 4.36%, and gold was at $3,940. As I write, the 10-year has pushed up to 4.71%, a new high for this cycle, and gold is at $4,050. Yields up sharply. Gold up with them. Compare that to mid-February, before any of this started, when the 10-year was at 3.92% and gold was around $5,400. The inverse relationship was intact then. It is not intact now.

That is the break. A market that refuses to fall on its own bad news is a market where someone is quietly accumulating on the other side.

So the question I am spending my time on now is not what happened. It is what happens next. Specifically: who is doing the buying, whether the bid is strong enough to hold if oil makes another run at the highs, exactly where my support and resistance levels sit for gold going into August, and which of the four precious metals I think offers the best value at today’s prices. My answer on that last one may surprise you, because it is not gold and it is not silver.

If you have not done so already, join us behind the paywall and let me show you what I think happens from here.

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Two weeks ago I told you gold would probably have to slip a little under $4,000, and silver into the $55 to $58 range, before it attracted serious buying. That is exactly what happened. Gold bottomed at $3,955 and silver at $55.75, and both have turned higher since. As I write this on Friday afternoon, gold is back around $4,170 and silver is trading near $62.30. Gold is up roughly $200 from its June 30 low. Silver is up almost $8 from its June 23 low.

So the bounce is here. The only question that matters when a market turns up off a low is whether you can trust it. Is this a real bottom, with buyers stepping in to build a floor under the market, or just a relief rally inside a downtrend that has not finished punishing people yet? I have a firm view on that, and it is not the view most people are trading on right now. It comes down to two things: exactly who did the buying this week, and one price level on the gold chart that almost nobody is watching. The buying tells you whether the bounce is real. That one level tells you whether it holds, or whether the real bottom still sits a few hundred dollars below where we closed today. Get both right and you will know whether to treat this move as the bottom to buy or a trap to wait out.

Let me give you the first piece right now, because it sets up everything else. The very first leg up off the lows was not U.S. buying at all. It came out of Asia, in the middle of the night here in the States, bargain hunters stepping in the moment gold slipped under $4,000 and silver hit the mid $50s. That matters more than it sounds, because who buys first tells you whether a rebound has a real foundation or is just short covering that fades by lunch. Asia buying the dip is a foundation. And it was only the start of the pattern.

That pattern, and where it points gold and silver from here, is the whole picture I want to walk you through today, piece by piece, with the charts that show it. If you have not done so already, subscribe and let me show you what I think happens next.

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Where the Buying Came From: East and West Together

Every leg of this rebound lines up with a specific source of demand on the intraday charts, and the sequence is exactly what these markets have needed. We already saw the first one. Now watch how the rest of the week built on it.

The next leg up was New York buying, after Fed Chair Kevin Warsh spoke in Europe and signaled that inflation expectations had eased a bit, which took the pressure off. So we had Asian buying off the dip, then U.S. buyers following through on top of it. East and West both participating. That is the signature of a move that can actually hold, rather than one side buying while the other quietly sells into the rally.

The third push for gold came on Thursday, when the June jobs report showed just 57,000 new jobs, well short of what the market expected, with the prior two months revised down a combined 74,000 on top of that. A soft labor market tells the Fed it may not need to keep tightening, and gold caught a bid on it. So across those four moves higher, two came from Asia and two came from the U.S. That broad based buying is the first thing I needed to see, and it passed.

But broad based buying only tells you the bounce is real. It does not tell you the bounce will hold. For that I have to look at two more things this week is quietly telling us, and this is where my read splits from the crowd. The first is what the dollar and Treasury yields did while metals were rising. The second is that single level on the longer term gold chart. Let me take them in order, because together they are what decide whether this is a bottom to buy or a trap to sit out.

The Dollar, Yields, and Why Metals Held

Here is the thing that almost never happens on a fake rally, and it is what convinces me this rebound has real support underneath it. Precious metals tend to trade inversely to Treasury yields and the dollar. So when yields and the dollar firm up, gold and silver usually get pressured. This past week we got the opposite of what you would expect, and it is worth understanding exactly why it matters.

The 10-year Treasury yield actually puffed up a little over the last couple of sessions. Normally that is a headwind for metals, and on a weak bounce it is exactly the kind of pressure that rolls prices back over. But gold and silver rose anyway. When metals climb into a rising yield instead of buckling under it, that is real buyers absorbing everything the market throws at them. That is the tell. It says the demand this week is genuine, not just a mechanical snapback that fades the moment conditions turn.

The dollar tells the same story from the other side. A week ago the dollar had pushed higher and looked like it might break out, which would have pressured metals lower. I called that move a breakout or a fake out at the time, because I was not convinced it was the real thing. Sure enough, the dollar has since come back off that peak, and it is now on track for its largest weekly decline since April. With Warsh signaling that inflation is easing, and the dollar softening rather than breaking out, both of the usual headwinds for metals eased at the same moment the buying showed up. That is a good alignment for gold and silver right now.

The Bigger Picture: Support, Resistance, and Backfilling

Now let me pull the lens back, because the two week bounce is only half the story. What matters more is how today’s action fits the trends we have been in for the last two years, and there is a wrinkle here I want you to see clearly.

Gold has been riding a rising trend line all the way back to the start of 2024. That is a two and a half year trend, and gold is still just north of it, which is constructive. Here is the number I am watching, and the one I think almost nobody else is: $3,930. That is the next real support level below where we are trading. Lose it, and the chart under it turns ugly in a hurry, because the drop from $3,930 down to $3,400 is a long stretch with almost nothing to catch a falling price in between. That gap is what concerns me.

When a market runs through a zone quickly on the way up, it often comes back later to backfill that range with the trading it skipped on the way through. Gold did exactly that twice on the way up. The move from $3,400 to $3,930 was sharp, with little trading, and so was the move from $4,350 up to $4,840 before the peak at $5,419. The difference is that the upper zone, between $4,350 and $4,840, has already been backfilled on the way down. The lower one, between $3,400 and $3,930, has not. So if gold breaks under $3,930, and I am not saying it will, that open space is exactly where an ultimate bottom for this consolidation could still form, a few hundred dollars below where we closed today. That is why this bounce, real as the buying is, is not yet something I would call a confirmed bottom. One number decides it.

Why Silver May Be the Healthier of the Two

Silver gives us a similar map with a more encouraging read. It ran sharply from $54.20 up toward $70.50 and then spiked higher still, all the way to a peak around $116.58, before pulling back. On the way down it has already backfilled the zone from $70.50 up into the $94 area, and right now it is working through that lower band between $54.20 and $70.50. In other words, silver is doing its backfilling in real time, right here, rather than leaving an open gap hanging below it the way gold has.

The gold to silver ratio has climbed to about 66.9 to one, which tells me gold is playing a little catch up to silver as this rebound has developed. Put it together and silver looks to me like the healthier of the two metals in the current environment, and riper for rebounds higher, based on how it is respecting these longer term levels. We may not be completely out of the woods on firm bottoms for either metal, but I like what silver is showing me here.

What I Am Watching From Here

A few things stay on my radar. The Iran situation is still unresolved, and energy prices remain the swing factor. Right now oil has eased as flows through the Strait of Hormuz recover, which takes some of the inflation pressure off and helps metals. But that can turn quickly, and a real disruption there would change the calculus fast. I would also point out that Europe and Asia are more exposed to higher energy costs than we are, which is part of why global stocks have been a little tentative, and part of why these metal prices softened in the first place. It is a global economy, and those inputs matter.

What I keep coming back to is the quality of this rebound. Buying from both the East and the West, metals rising even as yields firmed, and the dollar backing off a move I never trusted. Central banks are still in the market too, having added to reserves in May. That is a broad base of demand, and a broad base is what turns a bounce into a bottom. Summer tends to be quieter for metals, so we may still see some chop before this fully resolves. But it is encouraging to see real buyers show up at these levels rather than sellers pressing an advantage.

If we can help you put physical gold or silver to work in your own holdings, that is exactly what we do. For clients looking at value right now, the vintage U.S. gold coin side of the market is where I see the most room, with pieces like the MS64 $20 Saint-Gaudens trading close to bullion premiums while carrying real premium expansion upside over their long term average. It is a way to own gold with a second lever working for you. This is our 28th year doing this, and we would be honored to help. Whatever you decide, watch the levels, trust the broad based buying, and good luck out there.

Dana Samuelson President, American Gold Exchange

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For most of this year, the thing moving gold and silver was the fog of war. Every headline out of Iran sent the metals lurching, and the last week and a half was no exception. President Trump ramped up the rhetoric, we struck Iran, and gold took a hard tumble all the way to $4,024 an ounce before it bounced. Then the Memorandum of Understanding got signed, the metals rallied, and on Wednesday the first FOMC meeting under new Fed chair Kevin Warsh washed them right back out again.

So here we sit today, June 19, with gold at $4,155 an ounce and the war dust finally starting to settle. And that is exactly why this update matters more than the last several. Because when the geopolitical noise fades, the real drivers step back into the light. I can see one of them taking over right now, and I do not think most people watching the metals have clocked it yet.

Here is the one thing I want you to take away before we go further, because it is the tell that separates a passing dip from a trend you have to respect. For the past year the dollar failed, over and over, to break above one line on the chart. This week, on the back of the Warsh Fed, it finally punched through. That single break is the difference between metals drifting sideways through the summer and metals grinding lower. Whether it holds is the question I am watching most closely.

And it was only the start of the pattern.

If you have not done so already, join us behind the paywall and let me walk you through exactly where the support and resistance levels sit on all four metals right now, what the new dominant driver is, and where I think gold and silver head through the summer months.

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Why gold and silver eased lower into the Iran deal

Let me start with what actually happened, because the price action tells a clean story once you strip the war noise out of it.

Gold has been setting a pattern of lower highs, and this past week it carved out a new major lower low. The mechanism was the same one we saw back in March when the President first threatened Iran with overwhelming force. Rhetoric ramped up, kinetic action looked likely, and stocks sold off. Gold sold off right alongside them in a liquidity event, the kind of dash-to-cash where investors sell what they can, not what they want to. That took gold down to $4,024, part of a broader correction off the January highs. As soon as the action stopped and the deal was signed, we got the bounce, up to about $4,382 intraday.

Then Wednesday happened. The Warsh Fed held rates at 3-1/2 to 3-3/4 percent, but the projections underneath the decision leaned distinctly hawkish, with the committee signaling it may be moving toward a rate-hiking cycle rather than the cuts the market had penciled in. Metals sold off on the news, and we came back down through Thursday and eased a touch lower overnight in Asia.

So the violent, war-driven downdraft is giving way to more fundamental price action. But we are still easing lower.

Where the support and resistance levels sit now

Here is where I see the lines drawn today, metal by metal. These are the numbers I am trading against.

Gold. Support at $4,025, where we bounced off that candlestick low. Resistance now at $4,300, which had been major green support on my chart all along. We are violating that level now, which tells me gold is moving into a slightly weaker phase. I think gold tests $4,000 in the coming weeks, and I see us in roughly a $4,000 to $4,300 trading range. The 50-day and 200-day moving averages are both sitting substantially above the market right now, so they are immaterial to the near-term action.

Silver. More constructive than gold. Silver never set a new low the way gold did. It bounced off its prior low right around $61, spiked down to $61 on the liquidity sell-off, and washed back out to $64.90 today. I see silver in a $63 to $70 range, with major support at $61 and the 200-day moving average coming in around $68.10. The bias is a bit to the downside, and I do think we test $61, which is a level I expect will attract significant buying.

With gold at $4,155 and silver at $64.90, the gold-to-silver ratio sits at about 64 to one. That is neutral territory to me, where both metals are in fair value relative to each other.

Platinum and palladium. Both decidedly weaker. Platinum broke down hard under $1,800, set a new low at $1,662 on the liquidity leg, and is closing today at $1,666, a whisker above that low. Palladium bounced off $1,200, below major support at $1,345, and is at $1,266 today. These are more commodity-driven metals, more sensitive to industry and Asian buying, and that demand has been soft. They look cheap to me, but I think they can go a bit lower still in this environment.

The dominant driver stepping into the vacuum

Now to the part that actually matters for where we go from here.

For most of the past year, gold traded in a direct inverse correlation to the 10-year Treasury yield. As yields rose, gold fell, because gold pays you nothing and a Treasury does. When the yield on a Treasury climbs, it makes that bond look more attractive than gold to a longer-term investor, and that competition weighs on the metal. The 10-year has been holding up above 4.45%, the highest level in years, because inflation concerns remain firm even with oil off its highs.

But that direct inverse correlation to yields has broken down over the last few sessions. In its place, a new driver is emerging, and it is the dollar against other currencies.

For this whole past year, the dollar rose up to but repeatedly failed to break 100.50 on the US Dollar Index, with downside support around 96.77. That 100.50 line was the ceiling. Then in the last couple of trading sessions, on the back of the Warsh Fed and the prospect of a hiking cycle, the dollar broke out above 100.50 to its highest level since May 2025. The real question is whether this is a true breakout or a fake-out. If the market expects the Fed to raise rates, this is likely the real thing.

The dollar and gold, like the dollar and yields, are inversely correlated. And we are seeing the dollar strengthen in particular against the yen, which has been challenging 160 and breaking below it. The US economy is stronger than the Japanese and European economies right now, so this dollar breakout may just be getting started. A stronger dollar over the coming weeks and months would in turn pressure precious metals lower. That is the new driver stepping into the vacuum the war left behind.

What the one-year charts say about the summer

Now that we are in a consolidation phase, the longer-term charts come back into play, and this is where I think the summer sets up.

On the one-year gold chart, the most important feature is the descending blue trend line connecting the three lower daily-close lows: $4,659, $4,379, and $4,072. Extend that line and it points to gold just above $3,950. If that trend holds, and I think it will, we see gold test $4,000 and maybe dip a little under it. A three handle on gold, rather than a four handle, is what I think it may take to attract serious buying into this market. We may get exactly that in the coming weeks.

Silver has a similar downward trend line, a bit more defined but more modest, connecting lows at $70.60, $67.60, and $63.40, which points to about $62.50. Here is why I still favor silver of the four. It has better fundamentals moving forward: a structural supply deficit, high industrial usage, lower overall availability, and limited ability to ramp production since so much silver comes out of the ground as a byproduct of other mining. That is why silver’s chart is holding up a bit better than gold’s to the downside. Of the four precious metals right now, silver looks like the strongest, with gold second, and platinum and palladium weaker still.

So all four metals look soft to me heading into the quieter summer months. The fog of war is dissipating, the fundamental drivers are reasserting themselves, and the dollar is the one to watch.

What I would own into this pullback

If gold does print a three handle in the coming weeks, that is not a moment to fear. It is the kind of level that has historically brought serious buyers off the sidelines. For clients looking at that setup, this is where I like the vintage US gold coins. An MS64 $20 Saint-Gaudens trading near the same premium as bullion eagles gives you the gold exposure plus real premium-expansion potential over its long-run average, which is a second way to win if you are patient. If we can help you position for the summer in physical metal, whether bullion or numismatics, we would be honored to have that opportunity.

This is our 28th year in business, and it is the loyalty and trust our clients place in us that makes that possible. Without you, we would not have a business, and we are grateful for that every day. We are grateful, too, for a little peace in the Middle East, and hopeful it holds.

Good luck out there, and I hope you are enjoying your summer.

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We are now more than three months into the largest oil supply shock in history, and the strangest thing about it is how calm the price looks. Oil has climbed from under $70 a barrel to over $90, but given that the Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed for over ninety days, you would expect far worse. Demand is running near 105 million barrels a day against supply of about 95 million, a deficit of roughly 10 million barrels a day, and yet no violent spike. Not yet.

That gap between how bad the fundamentals are and how contained the price has stayed is the whole story, and it is the reason I recorded this update. Because the only thing standing between today’s price and a genuine spike is a set of cushions that are being drained in real time. When they run out, and I think they will, the move higher could be fast and it could be severe.

Here is the one thing I want you to sit with before we go further, because it is the tell that tells you the clock is running. The single biggest cushion holding this market together is the emergency oil that the US and other nations have been releasing from strategic reserves. That reserve is finite, it is already near its lowest level in decades, and Congress has authorized draining it much further still. The day those releases stop is the day the cushion is gone.

And that is only the first of the pressure points.

If you have not done so already, join us behind the paywall and let me walk you through why the analysts I trust think a spike is coming, what it would do to yields, stocks, and precious metals, and the one wild card almost everyone is missing that could still prevent it.

Why an oil price spike is probably coming

Let me start with the setup, because it is the frame for everything that follows.

The reason prices have not surged already is that the world has been leaning on shock absorbers: strategic reserve releases, inventory draws, and lower imports masking the true tightness. But those are finite, and the analysts who study this market closely think we are approaching the point where they no longer hold.

A senior Exxon executive warned this past week that inventories are approaching unheard-of low levels, and that once you hit that point, the price shoots up. He put the spike target for physical Brent cargoes at $150 to $160 a barrel when inventories bottom. Morgan Downey, who literally wrote the book on oil, said he expects $150-plus oil over the next month or two regardless of what happens, even if there is peace tomorrow, and that the unfortunate thing about $150 oil is that it will kill the economy. And the EIA’s own outlook assumes the Strait of Hormuz stays effectively closed into the summer, with Middle East production shut-ins running above 11 million barrels a day and global inventories drawing down more than 6 million barrels a day this quarter to meet demand. Commodities are not forward-looking the way stocks are. They price the acute physical imbalance when it arrives, not before. That is why the spike, when it comes, tends to come all at once.

How the strategic reserve cushion runs down

The clearest way to see the clock running is the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

We peaked near 726 million barrels back in 2008. We are down under 350 million today, already one of the lowest levels since the early 1980s. And Congress authorized the release of as much as 172 million more barrels as part of a coordinated international effort to cushion the Hormuz shock. If the US drains that full amount, the reserve falls to around 243 million barrels, the lowest level on record.

That is the cushion. It is real, it has genuinely held the price down, and it is running out. Other nations are drawing down alongside us. The closure that these releases are offsetting, meanwhile, is looking more open-ended by the week. The President indicated the strait may not reopen until Labor Day, which means the disruption outlasts the buffers built to absorb it. That is the imbalance the analysts are pointing at.

The refining squeeze that makes gasoline the vulnerable one

There is a second pressure point most people miss, and it sits inside the refinery.

Before the war, gasoline traded roughly $9 under diesel and $7 under jet fuel, the normal premium those more-refined distillates carry. Once the crisis hit, that premium exploded, with diesel and jet running $31 to $32 over gasoline at the April peak. Refineries respond to price, so they tilted production toward the distillates that were paying them more. That is exactly why jet fuel has not shocked higher yet, but it comes at gasoline’s expense. We are producing less gasoline than we normally would, which leaves the pump price more exposed than most drivers realize, with gasoline already around $4.50 a gallon heading into the summer driving season.

The wild card almost everyone is missing: China

Here is the part of the picture that could change everything, in either direction.

China was importing about 12 million barrels a day before the war. Since then its imports have fallen by a full 6 million barrels a day, which is more than half of the entire global supply disruption. And yet there is no visible demand destruction inside China. How? Most likely they are drawing down inventories we cannot see, from the largest strategic reserve in the world, over a billion barrels before the war began. It is also possible the market misread pre-war Chinese demand, that a chunk of it was stockpiling rather than true consumption, which is why they can throttle imports now without slowing their economy. They have banned fuel exports and capped prices at the pump, though their refinery margins have collapsed as a result. That is not sustainable forever.

This is the wild card. China is quietly buffering the entire global market by holding its imports down. The tipping point I am watching most closely is the day China starts buying again. If they step back into the market and add their demand on top of a disruption the cushions can no longer absorb, that is the setup for the spike the analysts are warning about. It could play out like last year’s silver squeeze, where the true tightness stayed hidden until it suddenly did not, and then the move came fast.

What a spike would mean for yields, stocks, and precious metals

Now to what actually matters for you, and why I am telling an oil story on a precious metals channel.

An oil price spike feeds straight into inflation expectations, and inflation expectations drive Treasury yields higher. Higher yields raise the cost of financing across the economy, which slows activity, especially anywhere that depends on borrowing. And higher yields, over these past couple of months, have been the most direct headwind for precious metals I have seen in my forty-six years in this business. When yields climb, gold and silver have been skidding, because metal pays no yield and a Treasury does. That correlation is starting to loosen a little in the last week, but the pressure is real.

The economy, for now, is holding up. The May jobs report came in strong, the third month running above 100,000 jobs. But wages are not quite keeping pace, and gasoline at $4.50 is already eating into what consumers can spend. Layer an oil spike on top of that and you have the classic recession ingredient. Since 1945 there have been twelve US recessions, and all but two had an energy supply shock as a major contributing factor.

So here is my read, and it is the reason I wanted you thinking about this now rather than reacting later. In the short run, an oil spike could pressure precious metals lower through the yield channel, the same way it has been. But in the longer run, this entire situation is deeply bullish for gold and silver. A supply shock that stokes inflation, strains the economy, and drains the government’s emergency buffers is exactly the backdrop that sends people back to real assets once the initial liquidity scramble passes.

What I am doing is stress-testing my own portfolio today for the possibility of a near-term spike, so I am prepared rather than knee-jerk reacting if it comes. And if we do get a real sell-off in precious metals on that first move, I will back the truck up, because I think the metals come out the other side of this much higher.

What I would own into it

If we get that sell-off, that is the opportunity, not the threat. For clients positioning ahead of it, this is where I favor the vintage US gold coins. An MS64 $20 Saint-Gaudens trading near the same premium as bullion eagles gives you the gold exposure now, plus real premium-expansion room over its long-run average if the metal moves the way I expect it eventually will. If we can help you get positioned in physical metal, whether bullion or numismatics, we would be honored to have that opportunity.

This is our 28th year in business, and it is the loyalty and trust our clients have placed in us that makes that possible. Without you, we would not have a business, and we are grateful for that every day.

Good luck out there.

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Gold did not fall this spring because the bull market broke. It fell for a reason most investors have completely missed, and once you see it, the entire move makes sense. There has been a lot of noise and a lot of fog in these markets since the Strait of Hormuz closed, and that fog is exactly why so many people are drawing the wrong conclusion right now.

What I have found is a single, specific driver that has moved gold, silver, platinum, and palladium more directly than anything else since early February. It is not the dollar. It is not the Fed funds rate. It is something quieter, and it runs on a chain that starts at the Strait of Hormuz and ends at the price on your screen. Let me show you the whole chain, link by link, so you can anticipate how this plays out over the next several months.

Why the Strait of Hormuz closure started it all

It has now been roughly two months since the conflict with Iran began and the Strait of Hormuz was effectively closed, creating the largest oil supply disruption in history. The war has settled into a stalemate, with Iran blocking the strait from the inside and the United States blocking Iran’s oil exports from the outside. The head of the International Energy Agency testified in Paris this week that we now face the biggest energy crisis in history.

The scale of the disruption is sobering, and it has been getting worse with each update. There was a cushion of oil in storage when this began, about 8.4 billion barrels, but only roughly 800 million barrels of that is truly material as a shock absorber. JPMorgan now estimates the cumulative supply loss has reached 800 million barrels, up from 531 million two weeks ago and 360 million at the end of March. The one factor buying the world time is that higher prices have triggered demand destruction, with lost demand climbing from 2.8 million barrels a day a month ago to 4.3 million a day now. That softening is stretching the supply cushion, but JPMorgan expects it to reach a breaking point by June if the strait stays closed.

You can see the result in the oil price itself. Brent crude was trading between $60 and $72.50 before the conflict. It punched up to $112.57 at the peak, eased to $90.38 when a ceasefire was briefly declared, and as the stalemate dragged on it ran right back toward the highs, closing near $106. West Texas Intermediate followed the same path, trading $57 to $66 before the war, peaking at $112.96, bottoming at $83.85, and running back above $100. That is oil higher for longer, and that is where the chain of cause and effect begins.

So oil is higher for longer. That part is easy to see. The hard part, the part almost everyone is getting wrong, is what oil is doing to one specific number, and what that number is doing to gold. I can show it to you in a single chart that lines the two up side by side, and once you see it you will not be able to unsee it. Here is exactly how the chain works, and what it is telling me to do next.

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How oil moves Treasury yields, and yields move gold

Here is the transmission, step by step, because this is the part most people miss. Higher oil prices feed directly into inflation expectations. When bond investors anticipate more inflation, they sell bonds, and selling pushes yields up. Why hold a bond paying 4% when newer bonds pay 4.4%? Your older, lower-yielding bond is suddenly worth less. So as oil surged, eased, and surged again, the 10-year Treasury yield tracked it almost step for step. It started the war near 3.95%, punched up to 4.4% on the first oil run, eased to 4.22% as oil softened, then pushed back to 4.4% as oil rose again. Note that the benchmark here is the 10-year, not the federal funds rate, which has held steady at 3.64%.

Now connect that to gold. Gold pays no yield. So when Treasury yields rise, the opportunity cost of holding gold rises with them, and gold becomes less attractive. The result is an almost perfect inverse mirror image. The clearest way I can show you this is to take the 10-year yield, invert it, and set it beside the gold chart. The two move together, almost perfectly, on a daily basis.

There used to be a reliable inverse correlation between gold and the dollar as well, but that link has broken down over the past couple of weeks. Right now, yields are the dominant driver, full stop. That is why I keep my eye on the 10-year above almost everything else when I read these markets.

Gold support and resistance levels to watch

Let me give you the levels I am watching, because the moving averages have become very material here. When gold took its big tumble just before President Trump paused the military action, that selloff carried gold down to $4,098, which touched the 200-day moving average at the time. That average has since risen to just under $4,300, where I see major support now. On the upside, when gold surged back as yields fell, it brushed right up against the 50-day moving average before the rally stalled at $4,891. The 50-day now sits a little lower, near $4,835. With gold closing the week at $4,620, we are right about at the equilibrium point between those two levels.

Silver support and resistance to watch

Silver tells the same story. It tumbled to $60.94 just before Trump paused the military action, so $61 is the bottom-line support, which is also right about where the 200-day moving average sits at $62. The 50-day moving average is the upper resistance. We got over it briefly two weeks ago, but as yields rose the metal slipped back, and the 50-day now sits at $78.40. So I see resistance at $78.40, then again at $82. There is also a rising trend line going all the way back to before silver went turbocharged last fall, and that line puts support today right around $71. With silver closing at $75.75, equilibrium is about $72, with the bias toward support at $66 and major support at $61.

Platinum and palladium are tracing the same two descending parabolas. Platinum has support near $1,800, with its 200-day average just above at $1,810 and resistance at the 50-day near $2,065. Palladium has firm support at $1,375, its 200-day near $1,485, and resistance around $1,585 to $1,615. The throughline for all four metals is the same: their inverse correlation to Treasury yields is the dominant driver right now.

Why the gold-to-silver ratio says buy both

One simple tool I use to decide between the two main metals is the gold-to-silver ratio. With gold at $4,620 and silver at $76, the ratio sits at 60.78 to one, just below the 25-year equilibrium near 62.5 to one. That tells me gold and silver are close to fair value relative to each other. So if you are looking to invest, equal parts of both makes sense at these levels.

Why inflation and the Fed keep oil in the driver’s seat

Inflation is gaining momentum, which is no surprise given what oil has done. The Fed’s preferred gauge, the PCE price index, surged in the latest reading, with headline PCE up 70 basis points from 2.8% to 3.5%. I think the headline number works closer to 5% than not before this is over. Inflation is going to be higher for longer, right alongside oil.

Here is why the Fed cannot easily fix this. The central bank normally raises the federal funds rate to create demand destruction and cool the economy. But the surging oil price is already doing that job all on its own. Raising rates would have virtually no effect on whether the Strait of Hormuz is open or closed, which is the real driver of oil supply and therefore of this entire inflation pulse. In my view, the Fed is largely neutered here. The funds rate held steady at this week’s meeting, and with a changing of the guard from Jerome Powell to Kevin Warsh coming at the top of the Fed, and political pressure to keep rates lower rather than higher, I expect the funds rate to hold and probably move lower over time. Lower rates down the road would eventually be a tailwind for gold, but that is a story for later this year, not today.

What I think happens next for precious metals

Let me speculate a little, based on what has already happened. Even if the Strait of Hormuz reopened tomorrow, we would see a knee-jerk selloff, but the fundamental 800 million barrel supply deficit has not yet hit world market pricing. I think that keeps oil higher for longer, which keeps yields elevated, which keeps pressure on precious metals over the next couple of months. The 10-year has now peaked near 4.4% twice. If it pushes toward 5%, that would pressure gold and silver to fresh near-term bottoms, possibly around $4,450 on gold and $65 to $66 on silver.

There is also a real chance kinetic military action against Iran restarts to force a resolution, which could spike oil again and run the same chain right back through yields into metals. So I would not be surprised by one more modest leg down. But here is how I am positioning my thinking. Summer tends to be quieter and a bit more vulnerable for precious metals, and by the fall there could be meaningful tailwinds building. So I am treating any new dip in gold and silver as a major buying opportunity, not a reason to step away.

If you want to put this into practice, one value play stands out to me right now. We have backdated one-ounce US Gold Eagles and MS64 $20 Saint-Gaudens double eagles trading at the same premium as bullion Gold Eagles. That is unusual. These vintage coins carry meaningful premium-expansion potential, on the order of 15 to 20% above their 10-year average premium, which gives you upside that bullion alone does not. At today’s levels, I think that is a genuinely good value for the right buyer.

This is our 28th year in business at American Gold Exchange, and I want to thank our loyal clients for the trust you have placed in us. Without you, we would not have a business, and we are grateful for it every day we are open. If we can help with any of your physical precious metals needs, buying or selling, we would be honored to have that opportunity.

Good luck out there.

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