- dollar & metals see intervention on Wed
- Ed Steer drops by the Pfennig today…
Good Day… and a Tub Thumpin” Thursday to one and all… The Team from Cleveland got back to even their series, the Padres did the same with the Cubs, and so did the Yankees… They will play a game 3 today, to decide which team moves on in the Playoffs… I wanted to send out a BIG Thank You to my good friend, Duane, who helped me immensely yesterday! I put my world famous bacon wrapped Turkey in the Big Green Egg yesterday, and by golly it turned out to be the best I’ve ever cooked… So tender, juicy and flavorful… YUM! The night before I did a T-Bone on the Blackstone grill, and it too was Yummy! I have to make for myself this week, and so, I decided to use my outside grills to accomplish that! The O’Jays greet me this morning with their song; Back Stabbers…
Ahh.. It was a long time ago, but I still feel the scar of the back stabbing that was done in 1998… But it’s water under the bridge now, but each time I hear this song playing, I think back to 1998….
The dollar was sinking yesterday, and then suddenly it wasn’t, and ended the day flat as a pancake (Head East)… The BBDXY ended the day at 1,200 the same level it traded at the previous close… The data yesterday wasn’t anything that the dollar bugs could hang their hats on, so to me, it was some entity intervening and buying dollars to bring it back to neutral on the day.
Gold was up $17 in the early trading yesterday, but then it wasn’t up $17, and had to fight hard to keep its head above water. Gold closed yesterday up $5 at $3,865, and Silver gained 67-cents to close at $47.37… I’m seeing more pundits writing about how Gold has made an impressive run higher in price, but investors need to be concerned about this run… I’m not one of them, although shouldn’t you always be aware of the risk in price of anything you own? I’m just saying…
The price of Oil remained trading with a $61 handle yesterday, as I said yesterday, our friends (NOT!) as OPEC is set to announce an increase of production, and that has the Oil traders worried that there soon could be too much supply…
The 10-year Treasury is seeing some volatility with the yield up to this week, rising nearly every day, and now this week its yield has been dropping… The 10-year’s yield closed yesterday at 4.10%…
In the overnight markets last night… The dollar stopped getting bought last night, and the BBDXY is down 1 index point again this morning, to 1,199… The underlying weak trend is digging in folks… Are you ready? This Gov’t shutdown is the latest blast at the dollar’s armor, which right now looks like an all dented up piece of metal… I’m just saying…
Gold is up $20 to start the day today… I guess we’ll see I the SPTs start sniffing around, eh? Silver is also up this morning 20-cents… So, the physical buyers of these two are really pushing the envelope across the desk of higher prices…
The price of Oil remained trading with a $61 handle overnight, and the 10-year Treasury is trading with a 4.10% yield to start the day today…
Good friend, Dennis Miller, sent me a note yesterday, too late for yesterday’s Pfennig, so here it is today… But first, I spent a lot of time talking about the strong 2nd QTR GDP print last week and how it was pumped higher by Gov’t Spending… So, when he saw, Bill Bonner, write about the spending he sent me his quote…
Here’s Bill Bonner from his daily letter, “Alas, US economic growth is a phantom…a statistical artifice caused by the fact that Americans are getting fewer products from abroad. If you look at the first two quarters of the year, you see that housing went down. Both imports and exports went down. “
Chuck again… phony money, goosing up phony GDP…
And Lola is back at making calls that will eventually come true, because? Because what Lola wants, Lola gets… Here’s Goldman Sachs aka Lola on Gold: “Gold prices will gain an additional 6% by the middle of 2026 as fresh demand from key groups of buyers will drive the yellow metal to new record highs, according to Goldman Sachs Research led by analyst Lina Thomas.
The research team predicts the gold price will rise to $4,000 per ounce by the middle of next year
Chuck again… $4,000 by the middle of next year? Most of the calls I’m seeing being made regarding Gold are calling for Gold to rise to $4,000 by year end… I’m just saying…
Ed Steer had something to say about how Silver is really trading at very high prices when bought with currency other than the dollar… Here’s Ed this morning: “With silver now above US$47 spot…it’s sitting at $66 in Canadian fiat — and pushing $72 ‘down under’ in Australian funny money. I remember buying my first ounce of gold back in 1968 for less than that — and wish I still had it.
As myself and others mentioned some years back, silver will become the ‘new gold’ at some point — and one has to suspect that that moment has already arrived…both at home here in North America — and abroad. An ounce of gold is already mostly out of reach for Joe six-pack, but silver…even at $100+…will be no big deal for anyone — and everyone will be able to afford a few ounces.” – Ed Steer 10/2/2025
You can find Ed at: www.edsteergoldsilver.com I rely on Ed’s expertise in the metals quite a bit, and you should probably too!
As I said above, yesterday’s Data prints were not the stuff that you would use to buy dollars… First off, the Case/ Shiller Home Price Index showed that home prices were cheaper again in July… Then the STUPID Consumer Confidence printed and showed that the index number had fallen for a 2nd Straight month… Hmmmm… And then we saw the Job Openings which came in at 7.2 Million..
Speaking of Data prints… The ADP Employment Report that showed that payrolls dropped last month so much that they were negative 32,000… The trend is there that payrolls will continue to drop, I’m sorry to report… The ADP report that showed that only 54,000 jobs were added in August was revised downward by 3,000 jobs, no biggie, but shows the direction that the job market is taken on…
Tomorrow, if there’s a deal made in D.C. To continue to spend money we don’t have, then the BLS will issue their take on the Jobs market for Sept… The report comes as the funding impasse in Washington, D.C., has led to the first government closure since late 2018 into early 2019. Failing a deal over the next two days, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ non-farm payrolls report for September will not be released, nor will the Labor Department put out the weekly jobless claims count on Thursday. The last time the BLS payrolls report was delayed was in 2013.
This comes at a time when the Fed Heads are making rate cut decisions to shore up the labor market… Without reports, what will the Fed Heads do? Shoot from the hip, that’s what I think they’ll do… Cut rates blindly.. Oh brother!
I read a report / article yesterday that talked about how the U.S. is already in a recession… Harry Truman is credited with this quote: “It’s a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose yours.”
And with the Gov’t shutdown, up to 750,000 people will be laid off each week… I want to see the BLS account for that!
To recap… the dollar was down to start the day yesterday, but ended up with a mini-rally to bring it back to neutral at the end of the day… Gold had a good day going early in the morning, and then it wasn’t so good… Gold saw the SPTs take out Gold’s rally… Silver saw some SPTs but for the most part rallied through the day. Lola says that Gold is still going to go higher in price, and we all know that whatever Lola wants, Lola gets…. And spending phony money to prop up phony GDP…
For What It’s Worth… I’ve been on the BLS’s case regarding their Jobs numbers for a very long time now, seeing that the jobs market was not as hale as the BLS would have us believe, and calling the BLS broken… Well, this article takes the BLS to the woodshed, and it can be found here: U.S. employment data is broken… and it’s misdirecting the markets and the Fed | Kitco News
Or, here’s your snippet: “The U.S. government shutdown means Wednesday’s ADP employment report – which undershot expectations by over 50,000 jobs – may be the only national snapshot of American jobs that markets receive for some time.
But according to a growing number of economists and market analysts, the government’s premier measure of U.S. employment is antiquated, inaccurate, and serves only to mislead markets and policymakers rather than informing them – and recent policy changes have made nonfarm payrolls less meaningful than ever before.
BLS takes the L
Kevin Grady, president of Phoenix Futures and Options, told Kitco News in a recent interview that serious market participants have very good reasons to discount the jobs data.
“What’s happening now is that people are starting to say, ‘I have to look at the trend, I can’t look at the specific jobs data that’s coming out,’ because we know the next job number that’s coming out is not going to be correct. It’s not going to be accurate,” he said. “We can’t take that like, ‘This is the number, we agree, this is it.’ Everybody has to take the numbers with a grain of salt.”
The markets were salty indeed when the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced on Sept. 9 that the preliminary revisions to U.S. employment subtracted 911,000 jobs – three times more than the 10-year average and the worst print on record.”
Chuck again… So, see? I’m not the only one out there that points out the BLS’s additions to the surveys…
Market Prices 10/2/2025: American Style: A$ .6606, kiwi .5827, C$ .7172, euro 1.1752, sterling 1.3473, Swiss $1.2565, European Style: rand 17.1862, krone 9.9403, SEK 9.3643, forint 330.71, zloty 3.6221, koruna 20.6326, RUB 81.23, yen 146.27, sing 1.2871, HKD 7.7814, INR 88.66, China 7.1214, peso 18.36, BRL 5.3293, BBDXY 1,199, Dollar Index 97.57, Oil $61.44, 10-year 4.10%, Silver $47.57, Platinum $1,595.00, Palladium $1,288.00, Copper $4.96, and Gold… $3,885
That’s it for today, A couple of very tight, low-scoring games that saw late rallies to widen the score ruled yesterday… this should be good today, with all the game 3’s in play… I forgot to mention above that the Dodgers made quick work of the Reds, so they move on… Our Blues are going through their pre-season schedule, and open the regular season on Rocktober 9th… Next Thursday, Good luck to our Blues! I’ll be traveling to San Diego next Thursday for a wedding… I had to take my most recently bought suit to the tailor to have it taken in… The little oriental lady said to me, “You have lost a lot of weight, no?” I said yes… At one time in my life, I thought I would be retiring and moving to San Diego… I used to tell people that I own shack on the beach and sell bait during the morning, and then go visiting all the bars on the beach and stumble home to my shack and do it all over again the next day… Cancer changed that plan… Spirit takes us to the finish line today with their song: Nature’s Way… I hope you have a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday today, and Please Be Good To Yourself!
Chuck Butler