9th July 2017

 Precious metals prices continued to erode on Friday, with gold falling to nearly a four-month low, pressured by stronger-than-expected US jobs data (more on that later). Silver lost $.55 on the day. As an aside, on Thursday we noticed that our silver charts showed an intraday low of $14.30; thinking that this was an error, we did not mention it or duplicate the chart in question in Thursday’s note, but we subsequently did read in the weekend issue of the Wall Street Journal that there indeed was a “flash crash” that set in over silver that day, this after 10,000 contracts traded in the span of several minutes. However, prices quickly recovered to finish slightly lower on the day only to head into yet another selling session on Friday). For what it’s worth, our charts are no longer showing the $14.30 low, so we are not sure whether that trade was considered to be good. In any event, even excluding that print, the silver charts look quite bleak and it seems that we could work somewhat lower over the medium-term. Elsewhere, platinum lost about $6/ounce on Friday, although for the moment it is still defending the $900/ounce mark; palladium finished relatively unchanged, closing at just above $842.