Silver Sits 45% Below Its Peak. Gold Sits 21% Below Its Own.

Silver Sits 45% Below Its Peak. Gold Sits 21% Below Its Own.

Gold rose toward $4,400 this morning at $4,395.38, up 0.45% on the day. Silver at 6 a.m. Eastern was $65.48 an ounce, 66 cents above Friday.

Read those as recoveries, not records. Gold is up 9.66% over the past month and 31.90% against this point last year. Silver is more than $27 higher than it was twelve months ago. But Friday closed the other way — gold at $4,364.96, down 0.64%, silver at $64.21, down 0.79% — capping a losing week as profit-takers unwound an inflation-fuelled rally.

The reason given was not bearish. One strategist described the market as simply having no potent catalyst directly in front of it. Soft CPI had removed a rate-hike headwind, PPI pushed back the other way, and tactical money booked profits into the weekend.

The distance from the highs is the number to keep. Gold’s record was roughly $5,590 intraday on January 28; the once-daily London benchmark topped out nearer $5,405. Silver crossed $117 for the first time on January 29 and spot reached $119.30. Against those peaks gold trades about 21% lower today and silver about 45% lower. On August 1 gold sat at $4,042.68, some 27.7% under its record. It has added roughly 8.7% in the sixteen days since.

The demand underneath the two is not the same demand. Central banks bought 289 tonnes of gold in the second quarter, the strongest second quarter on record. Silver’s floor is industrial and structural: a fifth consecutive annual supply deficit, a projected shortfall of 117 million ounces in 2026, mine production flat near 813 million ounces, and roughly 70% of supply arriving as a by-product of copper, lead and zinc. Output answers to those metals’ economics, not to silver’s price.

The gold-to-silver ratio was near 104 in April. It is around 68 now. That compression is four months of history in one number: silver did not merely recover, it recovered faster. And that cuts both ways. One of the larger research desks has said plainly that the unwind of physical tightness from an elevated valuation base sets up a market where, on days gold slips, silver falls considerably harder. Last year’s asymmetry, running in reverse.

Here’s why it lands on your desk: the question is no longer whether the metals came back, because the arithmetic says by how much. It is what carries the next stretch — and whether the thing that moves most turns out to be the metal itself.

Source: Reuters / World Gold Council / Silver Institute

He Watched Silver Fall 52% and Bought More

Four days ago, Robert Kiyosaki posted something on X that 443,000 people saw.

He quoted legendary investor Jim Rogers:

“Gold and silver going to the moon.”

Then Robert laid out what’s happening right now:

“Gold and silver just went through severe retracements. Recently gold hit a high of $5,405 and retraced to $4,006. Silver hit a high of $118 and retraced to $56. Interesting, many ‘speculators’ buy at the TOP then selling at the BOTTOM. During this last ‘retracement’ or ‘crash’ I bought more gold and silver.”

Then he asked a simple question:

“What are you going to do? Buy high sell low. Or: Buy low and get rich?”

Robert’s answer?

“Gold and silver are going to the moon!!!!”

He’s not just talking. He’s buying. Right now. At these prices.

And he’s revealing ONE stock — a streaming company designed to deliver 3X-5X silver’s gains — that could turn this “retracement” into a fortune.

$118 to $56 is a 52% crash.
Robert calls it a buying opportunity.
What do you call it?
— Robert Kiyosaki

940 Branches Closed. Chase Opened 27 in One State.

A tracker built on FDIC institution and branch records counts 940 closed or relocated branches nationwide, refreshed this month.

The concentration is narrow. Among closures reported from January through March, TD Bank, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase accounted for almost half between the three of them. Bank of America updated its published list of 2026 closures on August 5.

The stated reason is traffic. More than a third of Americans open their bank online every day and 92% do so at least once a month — a polite way of saying the average branch now handles a fraction of the transactions it was built for. Each one is expensive to run, mergers create overlapping footprints, and overlap gets consolidated.

But the map is being redrawn, not simply shrunk. Chase announced 27 new branches in Florida and PNC announced 30, both citing population growth, even as Chase closed three of its more than 430 Florida locations in May and June. Nationally the pace peaked years ago: net closures ran 2,928 in 2021, the highest on record, then 1,854 in 2022 and 1,409 in 2023, a year in which 2,454 branches shut and 1,045 opened. The total US branch count actually rose in 2023, to 69,684 from 69,590 — the first increase in over a decade.

Where it hurts is not the average. Closures land hardest on rural areas and lower-income neighbourhoods, and the term for the result is a banking desert: the nearest branch becomes a drive rather than a walk. For anyone who still deposits a paper check, settles an estate, opens a certificate in person, or simply wants a human being to look at a suspicious transaction, that distance is the entire cost.

What does not change when a branch closes: the account stays open, and deposits remain insured to $250,000 per depositor, per bank. The money does not move. The access to it does.

Which leaves the practical question most people never ask until the letter arrives: where is the money actually held, who stands between it and you, and what would you do differently if you found out tomorrow your branch was on the list?

Source: FDIC / S&P Global Market Intelligence

Sixty-Four Closures Announced in a Single Week

Why are bank branches quickly and quietly closing across the country??

Click here to see why — and see how to protect your accounts while there is still time.

In just one week recently, 64 bank branch closures were announced.

What’s going on?

And is your bank branch next?

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SpaceX Built the Towers. Now It Wants the Bill.

On its August 4 earnings call, SpaceX said it intends to launch a direct-to-consumer cellular service mixing satellite and terrestrial coverage — aimed squarely at the three big US carriers.

Until now the arrangement ran the other way. Satellite capacity was sold to carriers to plug the dead zones in their own networks, most visibly through T-Mobile. Selling directly to the customer inverts that relationship entirely.

The scale behind the shift is already overhead. The direct-to-cell layer passed 650 live satellites serving more than 20 countries, working with roughly 60 phone models at a $10 monthly add-on. In January the FCC authorised 7,500 additional second-generation satellites, taking the approved constellation to 15,000. A further $2.6 billion went on buying US airwave rights from EchoStar.

The competing bet is fewer, larger spacecraft. AST SpaceMobile launched BlueBirds 11, 12 and 13 on a Falcon 9 on August 5, bringing its total to 13, and is targeting beta service later this year. Its own guidance puts continuous coverage of key markets, the continental United States included, at roughly 45 to 60 satellites. On August 11 it notified the FCC of planned UK operations on Vodafone spectrum. The timeline has slipped: the New Glenn explosion pushed its broadband rollout into 2027.

The most telling data point is not a launch at all. On May 14, AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon agreed in principle to form a single direct-to-device joint venture — pooling spectrum, developing common standards, investing together — while each retains its own satellite partner. Three companies that compete on everything decided coverage was not worth competing on. Meanwhile the old model is being cleared out: HughesNet, the geostationary pioneer, filed for Chapter 11, and Viasat is retreating from its consumer ambitions.

Coverage is becoming table stakes, and table stakes do not command premium pricing. Which means the money is unlikely to sit in the signal. It sits further down the chain, with whoever ends up owning the device, the relationship or the minutes once the dead zones are gone.

Source: FCC filings / Reuters / company disclosures

The Towers Are Moving Into Orbit

That means millions of phones will soon connect directly to satellites — even in places where cell towers never existed.

No dead zones. No coverage gaps. No limits.

When billions of people suddenly gain reliable mobile connectivity…

And one company already built for that moment is Mode Mobile.

Mode’s technology turns everyday smartphone activity into earning opportunities.

So far the company has already:

But the real opportunity may come next.

As global satellite coverage expands, Mode’s earning technology could reach billions of new users — including rural regions and underserved markets that traditional telecom networks never reached.

In other words:

The infrastructure is being launched from space…

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Three Officials Voted to Hike. The Market Priced One-in-Three.

The Fed held rates at 3.50–3.75% at the July 28–29 meeting on a 9–3 vote. All three dissents were for a hike, not a cut.

Chair Kevin Warsh called the discussion a good family fight. Wednesday at 2 p.m. the minutes land, and they are the clearest read available on whether the committee runs more hawkish than the roughly one-in-three odds now priced for September — down from close to 50% before last week’s data. Odds of at least one hike by year-end still sit near 63%.

The data cut both ways. CPI came in benign; PPI did not. July retail sales posted their steepest monthly drop in more than a year, and consumer sentiment slumped to 51 from 55.2 in July.

Which makes the retail calendar the real test. Home Depot reports Tuesday at an expected $4.73 a share, Target and Lowe’s Wednesday, Walmart Thursday, with flash August PMIs on Friday. Earnings season itself has been strong: of 455 S&P 500 companies reported through late Thursday, 87% beat on earnings and 68% beat on revenue, with second-quarter growth running near 50% year over year.

Positioning says nobody is worried. The VIX fell below 14.4 last week, a new 2026 low, and sits near 14.52 with the index at record highs. Ten- and thirty-year Treasury yields each rose five basis points into Friday’s close, and Brent edged up to $88 a barrel with the Strait of Hormuz still a live flashpoint.

If you are drawing income from savings, the gap between a record-high index and a sentiment reading of 51 has to close in one direction or the other. This week’s four retailers are the ones who will say which.

Source: CME FedWatch / Census Bureau / Bloomberg