Title:       Here's Why Gold and Silver's Selloff Was an Overreaction
Publication: Prinsights (Substack) — prinsights.substack.com
Author:      Nomi Prins (founder/CEO, Prinsights Global; ex-Goldman Sachs MD)
Date:        2026-SEP-07
URL:         https://prinsights.substack.com/p/heres-why-gold-and-silvers-selloff
Audience:    everyone (public — nothing gated)
Length:      written post (no timestamps)
Note:        Saved verbatim from the public post for personal study. Subtitle and the one chart are
             carried below; the chart is transcribed as a [Chart — ...] block. Subscription-promo
             lines ("Subscribe now", "Share", the closing Pulse Premium / Labor Day Special pitch)
             are kept in place but are promo, not substance. NO securities are named anywhere in
             the post — it is a pure macro note (August payrolls, the Fed, gold & silver as asset
             classes). Never invent tickers from it. The author's typo "sbould" in the closing
             paragraph is left as published.

Subtitle:    The August jobs headline looked strong enough to sell gold and silver. Underneath, it
             was soft, and the selloff already looks overdone.

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As people across the U.S prepared for a long holiday weekend, gold and silver came under pressure
last Friday. Gold dipped to near $4,400 an ounce and silver to near $65.83, as the market reacted to
the initial top banner from the August jobs report.

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Related news stories and Wall Street-driven algorithmic selling kicked in following headlines focused
on the 162,000 payroll expansion. Yet, if you look closer at the data and the calendar the real story
behind the noise indicates this reaction was heavily overdone.

Before that point last week, gold and silver prices and the broader market rallied after Federal
Reserve Governor Christopher Waller indicated a preference for holding interest rates at the September
FOMC meeting. Friday's data does not disrupt that outlook when you break down the composition of the
numbers and account for the holiday trading environment.

Holiday liquidity distortions magnified the move. Because Friday was the day before U.S. Labor Day
weekend, trading volume was notoriously thin.

When liquidity drops, algorithmic programs chasing surface-level headlines can cause outsized price
swings. This sell-off had all the hallmarks of an illiquid pre-holiday overreaction that is likely to
exhaust itself.

When evaluating the landscape further, mainstream and financial news headlines were heavily skewed by
non-cyclical, seasonal hiring figures without examining them in greater detail.

The Real Breakdown

However, food services and drinking establishments added 59,000 jobs, while local government education
added 42,000 positions due to the start of the school year. If we were to strip out those two specific
sectors, it would leave the rest of the private-sector economy with a weak 61,000 job gain, in line
with the low expectations the market actually anticipated.

Meanwhile, the U.S. unemployment rate remains stagnant. The jobless rate held perfectly flat at 4.1%.
A flat unemployment rate does not reflect an overheating labor market that would force the Fed to
shift its stance.

[Chart — "Unemployment Shows No Need to Hike" (Prinsights Global). Two quarterly lines, Q1-2024
 through Q3-2026, in percent. Source line: "Prinsights, BLS unemployment rate, Federal Reserve fed
 funds target midpoint. Quarterly, 2024 to 2026."
   Unemployment rate (red): 3.8 (Q1-24), 4.0 (Q2-24), 4.2 (Q3-24), 4.1 (Q4-24), 4.1 (Q1-25),
     4.2 (Q2-25), 4.3 (Q3-25), 4.2 (Q4-25), 4.1 (Q1-26), 4.2 (Q2-26), 4.1 (Q3-26).
   Fed funds rate (gold): 5.375 (Q1-24), 5.375 (Q2-24), 4.875 (Q3-24), 4.375 (Q4-24), 4.375 (Q1-25),
     4.125 (Q2-25), 3.875 (Q3-25), 3.625 (Q4-25), and flat at 3.625 through Q1/Q2/Q3-2026.
 Read: unemployment has traded in a 3.8-4.3% band for eleven straight quarters while the funds rate
 came down ~175bp and has been on hold for a year — i.e. no labor-market signal that argues for a
 hike.]

Wages are still losing ground to inflation. Average hourly earnings rose 3.1% year-over-year. With
wage growth still failing to outpace sticky inflation (sitting at 3.4%), consumer purchasing power is
actively degrading. The macroeconomic data gives the Fed very little reason to alter the course it
hinted at last week.

President Trump called the report a win that beat every estimate "by double and triple," then in the
same breath told the Fed to "Lower the Rate." That logic doesn't quite follow.

That's because, in a normal environment, cuts accompany waning economies, not "hot" ones. But in
reality, that demand itself signals that the White House knows the overall payroll number was much
weaker than the headline or the response to it.

For strategic investors, Friday's sell-off in precious metals sbould be viewed mostly as an automated
reaction to surface-level headlines, amplified by thin pre-holiday trading. Once the market fully
processes that this print is just localized seasonal noise rather than economic acceleration, expect
the gold and silver weakness to reverse, the same way the post-Jackson-Hole dip did.

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