The sale continues this week, with gold down 1% to $1,927 and silver 4% lower to $22.89 on news of a slowdown in Chinese solar panel production. Platinum is down 3% to $905, and palladium is down a fraction to $1,282.
From a year ago today, gold is up 8%, silver is up 11%, platinum is down 5%, and palladium is 43% lower than a year ago today.
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Investing in precious metals is important today due to inflation and stagflation. The Cleveland branch of the Federal Reserve recently estimated that inflation is rising again. The CPI was 3.0% in June, 3.4% in July, and is expected to be 4.1% for August.
While we will discuss the reasons for this in more detail in an upcoming longer article, suffice it to say that oil prices have a lot to do with this. We are down to 16-days worth of petroleum in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and demand for oil is outpacing supply. Oil is up 1.7% so far today, at $84/barrel. The price at the pump is also higher for drivers today, as well.
As you know, energy costs impact inflation in every area of the economy and help put a floor under precious metals prices. They tend to rise in environments like this while other assets struggle.
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byBill Stack