14th October 2017

 By the end of the Friday session, gold settled up by about up $9/ounce, finishing over the $1300 mark. Silver also tacked on roughly 1% to finish at $17.36, close to a three-week high, while platinum hit a one-month high of $946.10 at one point. Palladium continued its solid run, finishing almost 2% higher after hitting a 5 1/2 week high of $996.90 late in the day. News of President Trump putting the Iran nuclear deal on conditional review helped boost the precious complex, as the move once again stoked tensions in the region and produced a fiery backlash from the Iranians. In addition, weakerthan-expected US inflation data also provided gold support; although CPI readings rose by .5% last month, the increase came in shy of the .6% forecast. More importantly, the bulk of the rise stemmed mostly from soaring gasoline prices related to hurricane-related production disruptions at Gulf refineries, but the increase will likely not be duplicated next month. (In fact, excluding energy, core CPI was up by only .2%). The new inflation readings have trimmed the odds for a year-end Fed hike, with probabilities now dropping to about 82% from the low 90% mark seen about a week ago.