Spot gold climbed to $4,119 an ounce, up 2.4% on the week, while silver jumped 6.3% to $59, recovering from a stretch of heavy losses. Both moves look more like a technical bounce than a genuine reversal, according to ING commodity strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey, who said the buying appeared to be traders snapping up metals after the recent selloff rather than any shift in the broader economic picture.
That context matters. Gold peaked at $5,589.38 an ounce and silver touched $121.67 back in late January, after a sustained run that started in 2025. Current prices are still nowhere close to those highs, and the conditions that drove the rally have deteriorated: elevated interest rates and a stronger dollar have made non-yielding assets less appealing to institutional money.
The Iran war is adding a layer of complexity. Oil prices surged after a tanker was struck near Saudi Arabia and President Trump threatened strikes on Iranian infrastructure, which is pushing energy costs higher and reviving inflation fears. That changes the calculus for Federal Reserve rate expectations, and by extension, for gold and silver. Patterson and Manthey noted Middle East tensions are providing some floor for precious metals, but investors are now weighing soft U.S. economic data against the risk that expensive energy keeps inflation sticky.
Silver could outperform gold from here if industrial metals hold firm and investors keep rotating into defensive assets. Bitcoin, for its part, crossed $66,000 ahead of a Senate vote on the Clarity Act, with Trump having accepted an ethics provision attached to the bill. Asian markets finished higher overnight, led by South Korea's Kospi, which gained 4.4%. Meanwhile Alphabet dropped 3% after its AI spending forecast reached $205 billion.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
