On the final trading day of the week and month, prices for gold and silver edged up slightly, rose over 1% for palladium, but dipped a bit for platinum. As for April, gold ended near $2,000 with a modest gain, while silver, platinum, and palladium soared with monthly increases ranging from 2.9% to 8.7%.
On Friday, gold for June delivery inched up 10 cents, or 0.01%, to settle at $1,999.10 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.
"Gold has run into strong resistance just ahead of the all-time high," MarketWatch quoted David Russell, director of marketing at GoldCore. "This is not unexpected in the short term, especially since its dramatic 25% rise since last October."
For the week, gold prices rose 0.4% after losses of 1.3% last week and 0.5% in the week ending April 14. Before then, the yellow metal had scored six straight weekly gains during which prices advanced a combined $209.30 or 11.5%.
As for April, gold prices picked up 0.7%. They have increased by 9.5% year to date.
In looking ahead to next week, Kitco News offers the following forecasts via their Wall Street & Main Street surveys:
"This week, 18 Wall Street analysts participated in the Kitco News Gold Survey. Among the participants, three analysts, or 17%, were bullish on gold in the near term. At the same time, six analysts, or 33%, were bearish for next week, and nine analysts, or 50%, saw prices trading sideways…
Due to a technical problem, Kitco News could not run its weekly online survey; however, a Twitter poll showed that a majority of retail investors remain bullish on gold in the near term.
This week 160 votes were cast in a Twitter poll. Of these, 80 respondents, or 50%, looked for gold to rise next week. At the same time, bearish and neutral positions garnered 40 votes each, 25%."
Meanwhile, silver for July delivery rose by 1.7 cents, or 0.07%, to settle at $25.226 an ounce. For this week, silver prices climbed 0.7% after falling by 1.6% last week and ending a five-week winning streak. In April, silver prices rallied 4.4%. They are up by 4.9% for the year.
In other precious metals prices on Friday, for the week, and in April:
-
July platinum shed $3.10, or 0.3%, to end at $1,090.10 an ounce, padding its weekly loss to 4.3% while slimming its monthly increase to 8.7%.
- Palladium for June delivery tacked on $17.50, or 1.2%, to finish at $1,509.90 an ounce, trimming its weekly drop to 6.1% while advancing 2.9% in April.
In terms of year-to-date performance, platinum has edged up by 0.7%, while palladium has logged a decline of 16%.
US Mint Bullion Sales in 2023
U.S. Mint bullion sales of American Eagle and Buffalo coins slowed or stalled this week. When comparing sales on a week-over-week basis:
- American Platinum Eagles: 0 ounces for a third week in a row
- American Gold Eagles: 37,000 ounces against 48,500 ounces
- American Gold Buffalos: 4,000 ounces compared to 22,000 ounces
- American Silver Eagles: 0 ounces against 450,000 ounces
The table below presents a breakdown of U.S. Mint bullion products sold, with columns indicating the number of coins sold during different time periods.
| US Mint Bullion Sales (# of coins) | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Friday | Last Week | This Week | January Sales | February | March | April | 2023 Sales | |
| $50 American Eagle 1 Oz Gold Coin | 0 | 47,500 | 37,000 | 118,000 | 41,500 | 211,000 | 159,000 | 529,500 |
| $25 American Eagle 1/2 Oz Gold Coin | 0 | 0 | 0 | 37,000 | 8,000 | 1,000 | 8,000 | 54,000 |
| $10 American Eagle 1/4 Oz Gold Coin | 0 | 2,000 | 0 | 62,000 | 12,000 | 10,000 | 12,000 | 96,000 |
| $5 American Eagle 1/10 Oz Gold Coin | 0 | 5,000 | 0 | 115,000 | 85,000 | 10,000 | 35,000 | 245,000 |
| $50 American Buffalo 1 Oz Gold Coin | 0 | 22,000 | 4,000 | 59,000 | 19,500 | 73,000 | 61,000 | 212,500 |
| $1 American Eagle 1 Oz Silver Coin | 0 | 450,000 | 0 | 3,949,000 | 900,000 | 900,000 | 900,000 | 6,649,000 |
| $100 American Eagle 1 Oz Platinum Coin | 0 | 0 | 0 | N/A | N/A | 7,500 | 500 | 8,000 |
Some metals did some things
I’m still amazed the 2023 Proof Buffalo Gold coin hasn’t sold out yet. C’mon man, it’s only $2940 each and it’s my understanding that people are flush with money these days. What better way to spend $941 over spot then to buy one from the mint. Think of it as a 47.07% premium for 24K gold but, in addition to the gold, you also get a premier presentation Red Oak Box. Oh wait, that’s from a different source! If I’m buying gold it would be a bullion 24K Buffalo which I can get for about $2150. A 7.5% premium I… Read more »
You sometimes wonder if they want to sell the Proof Buffalos these days, Kaiser. I have a few of the 2013 RP Buffaloes and was surprised to see I could buy one online(assuming it wasn’t minted in Beijing) for less than what the mint wants for the 2023 Proof Buffalo. I know they minted 47-48,000 of the RP’s, but it’s still an expensive process to mint RP’s vs. a regular Proof. The RP’s were $1640 each, so I’m not complaining.
Depending on coin I buy 2. One to keep and one to sell. Mostly I just try to get 1 of each coin. But here lately, so many additions. So many subsets. So many in population in general. Not gonna lie. My stimulus went to buying 2019 to 2021 silver and gold. Maybe it’ll be rarer later. Perhaps So many suffer ptsd from being lockdown or unemployed or force to be v with spouse. I regret not participating in the George floyd black Friday reparations day looting sale (Marching Looter King day or something) over that summer. Ton of profit… Read more »
Top producers of gold …
https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/200-years-of-global-gold-production-by-country/
I was surprised Kaiser by how much China produces. I knew Russia and Australia were big producers, even the US but I was taken aback what China gets out of the ground.
Zimbabwe’s a good sized miner of gold and may take over South Africa in gold production in the coming years.
Another crisis averted by Jamie Dimon and JP Morgan! They took over FRC on the cheap…way to go Jamie!
J. P. Morgan, the man, said “Gold is money. Everything else is credit.” Wise words to live by.
The bank he founded has been for decades the largest bank in the USA – Chase Bank.
I’m glad I’ve banked there for about 15 years. If Chase Bank ever goes under, everyone head for the hills, or your bunkers!
NumisdudeTX
Seth, If JPM would ever go under, then I’d give kudos to all those “prepper’s” with their $$$ underground bunkers, because chaos would rule the day. Personally, I enjoy living on the surface. J.P. Morgan was right about gold and that’s one of the reasons I’ve never sold any! BTW, if you have any JPM stock, you’re having a great day!
Kaiser, This wasn’t a bail out of FRC. Maxine Watters was just on CNBC and said the money came from the FDIC which is money that banks pay in case of problems like this.No taxpayers money was used. Her words! That clears it all up for me!
Will they release those millions of bags of rocks as the new pet rock 2.0? Maybe they’ll brand the box calling it wireless and no batteries needed. Definitely eco friendly
I still chuckle every time I think about people buying pet rocks! Only in America.
You were reading my mind, Kaiser. I must learn the skill of Occlumency!
Yes, since he literally owned his own bank. Must be nice…
NumisdudeTX
King Tut took everything with him that he needed in the afterlife…but archaeologists dug it up & now he is there without any gold to pay his bills. He must be very lonely & sad, that poor teenage boy Pharoah. The closest I ever got to him was at the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, Germany in 1978 when I was about 1 foot away from the ancient bust of Queen Nefertiti. I put my nose up close to the glass case it was in at the time & stared at her majestic face. I think it is most unfortunate that… Read more »
Nope. Taxpayers save FRC. How? Easy. Money is fdic protected. So it will be taxpayer money. Since they also gave jpm a loan, jpm also gets extra cash to put in their account. For each dollar a person deposits a bank can lend $100. With the several billion from taxpayer, to the fed gubmint, and from fed gubmibt to chase. And of course chase will love to help you get through these hard times of high inflation, shrinkflation, food shortages (beef, chicken, lettuce, tomato, ice cream, pork all having huge recalls or health advisory for salmonella or listeria) and will… Read more »
Dazed, I haven’t paid a cent in interest on any of my CC’s for 20 years. I always pay if full each month and I paid cash for my houses and cars. I don’t like being indebted to anyone, so interest rates don’t affect me financially(aside from it’s effect on stocks/bonds, of course.) “Taxpayers save FRC” what does that even mean? You are right about JMP/government collusion in regards to this “buyout”, but it’s money that is just going to be added to our gigantic debt pile. It’s funny to me, but people must’ve really hated Trump because they are… Read more »
Kaiser, Let’s just hope it isn’t us that has to turn out the lights. Good grief, with the way things are going, anything is possible.
Well. Not all of us were blessed with a leprechaun with a unicorn horn shoved up his backside. The silver spoon I was born with turn out was Ms 69, but later re-graded and deemed a counterfeit. Was actually 100% chrome. I do my best to pay off all cards monthly, but sometimes it’s unavoidable. Card offered better rate than bank loan or whatever. I’ve been debt free twice. Once for about a year. Then couldn’t get a loan to fix home I bought, so was either homeless or high interest card. And with VA dragging their knuckles I was… Read more »
I see these articles all the time. You need 1 mil to retire. You need 2 mil to retire. And when I did the math, was lucky to make even close to 1 million period, much less sock that much away. Even if they base it on 20% of income and using the power of compound interest the total out-of pocket is still a lot. (Been years since I sat down and did the math, but I wanna say it was 500,000 invested and 20 to 40 years of compound interest… math professor, business professor, and accounting professor all used… Read more »