Silver has topped $60 per troy ounce

Silver prices have topped $60 per troy ounce for the first time, marking a dramatic rally driven by industrial demand, supply constraints, and macroeconomic factors.

• Gold above $4,200.
• 23-year charts.

SLV vs GLD (YTD Dec 12,2025)

(live chart)

Silver has significantly outperformed gold in 2025, with year-to-date gains often exceeding 100% (reaching record highs above $60–$64 per ounce in December), compared to gold's roughly 60% rise. This has driven the gold-silver ratio down from peaks over 100:1 early in the year to around 70–78:1 by mid-December.The primary reasons for silver's stronger surge stem from its unique dual role as both a precious metal (like gold) and an industrial commodity:

• Explosive industrial demand: Over half of silver's global demand comes from industry, unlike gold which is mostly investment/jewelry. Key drivers include surging use in solar photovoltaics (PV), electric vehicles (EVs), electronics, AI data centers, and green energy technologies. Photovoltaic installations hit peak seasonal demand in late 2025, with industrial consumption remaining near record levels despite minor forecasts of slight declines.
• Persistent supply deficits: The silver market has faced structural shortages for five consecutive years, with deficits projected at 110–150 million ounces in 2025 due to flat or declining mine production (much of silver is a byproduct of other metals) and limited recycling. Inventories are at multi-year lows, exacerbating tightness.
• Investment and speculative inflows: Silver rides gold's safe-haven rally (driven by geopolitical uncertainty, inflation hedges, and central bank buying) but amplifies it with higher volatility. ETF inflows hit multi-year highs, retail demand (e.g., from India and China) surged, and precautionary stockpiling occurred amid U.S. policy shifts designating silver as a critical mineral and potential tariff threats.
• Historical catch-up effect: In precious metals bull markets, silver often lags gold initially but then outperforms dramatically as the gold-silver ratio compresses from elevated levels.

These factors created a "perfect storm" for silver, leading to sharper percentage gains than gold despite both benefiting from similar monetary tailwinds (e.g., weaker dollar, expected Fed rate cuts). While short-term volatility persists, fundamentals point to continued strength for silver into 2026.

Gold forecast to break record highs

Gold has risen more than 40% in 2025 and is on pace for its third straight year of double-digits gains.

Gold is predicted to rise to $4,000 per troy ounce by the middle of next year, driven by strong structural demand from central banks and easing from the US Federal Reserve (which supports demand for gold from exchange-traded funds).

Buyers of gold fall into two broad groups, according to Goldman Sachs Research. Conviction buyers tend to purchase gold consistently, regardless of the price, based on their view on the economy or to hedge risk. These include central banks, ETFs, and speculators. Their thesis-driven flows set the price direction.

As a rule of thumb, every 100 tonnes of net purchases by these conviction buyers corresponds to a 1.7% rise in the gold price.

By contrast, opportunistic buyers such as households in emerging markets step in when they believe the price is right. They may provide a floor under prices on the way down and resistance on the way up.

Gold Confiscation Order

US President’s Gold Confiscation Order issued April 5th 1933

Signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt "forbidding the Hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States".

• The order caused all gold coin production to cease and all 1933 minted coins to be destroyed.

• The main rationale behind the order was to remove the constraint on the Federal Reserve which prevented it from increasing the money supply during the depression; the Federal Reserve Act (1913) required 40% gold backing of Federal Reserve Notes issued.

US President’s Gold Confiscation Order issued April 5th 1933

Gold's standard-free 50 years leave metal behind S&P 500

Gold has a golden anniversary Sunday. Fifty years will have passed since President Richard Nixon said the U.S. government would no longer convert dollars into the precious metal at $35 an ounce, which effectively ended the gold standard. 

While the metal generally had bigger gains since that time than the S&P 500 Index, there was no comparison between the two after accounting for dividends, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The S&P 500’s total return approached 20,000% this week, while gold returned about 4,200%.

Gold is anything but precious by comparison with S&P 500

Gold’s status as a precious metal is belied by its performance relative to U.S. stocks. Comparing the SPDR Gold Shares and SPDR S&P 500 exchange-traded funds shows as much. Monday’s ratio between the gold and stock ETFs was the lowest since September 2005, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The ratio was down 44% from a March 2020 peak and off 78% from a record set 10 years ago this month. A similar comparison was made by Charlie Bilello, chief executive officer of Compound Capital Advisors, in a Twitter post Monday.

Gold hardly looks precious when compared with Nasdaq 100

Gold appears far less precious these days than shares of Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. and their peers among the biggest Nasdaq-listed companies. Comparing the metal’s price with the value of the Nasdaq 100 Index shows as much. The ratio between them closed Wednesday at the lowest level since February 2001, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Wednesday’s reading was down 42% from a high set last March, as a bear market in U.S. stocks ended. Preferring gold to the Nasdaq 100 “looks painful,” J.C. Parets, editor of the All Star Charts blog, wrote Wednesday in a Twitter post with a similar chart.

Gold's record rally barely budges mining-stock valuation

Gold’s record-setting surge has done little to bolster the standing of companies that produce the precious metal. The FTSE Gold Mines Index was 16% cheaper than the benchmark FTSE All-World Index as of Wednesday based on projected profit in the next 12 months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Gold miners’ forward price-earnings ratio has trailed the FTSE All-World’s valuation since May 25, a period in which the metal’s price for immediate delivery rose as much as 20% and exceeded $2,000 an ounce for the first time. The stocks’ discount peaked in June at 19%, the biggest since July 2013. 

Gold, silver barely regain strength relative to S&P 500

Record gold prices and a seven-year high for silver this week did little to offset a years-long slump by comparison with U.S. stocks. The ratio between the price of gold for immediate delivery and the value of the S&P 500 Index was down 64% as of Thursday from a peak in August 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Spot silver’s ratio to the S&P 500 was down 81% from a high reached in the same month. Gold and silver prices don’t “look to be unreasonable” from this perspective, Michael Shaoul, Marketfield Asset Management LLC’s chief executive officer, wrote in a report Thursday.

Gold, dollar, S&P 500 send mixed signals on risk aversion

Gold, the dollar and U.S. stocks paint “a mixed picture” of investors’ willingness to take risks, in Citigroup Inc.’s view. Quantitative analysts at Citi contrasted this year’s performance of gold futures in New York trading with the Dollar Index and the S&P 500 Index in a report Wednesday. While the precious metal gained 12% for the year through Wednesday, the currency gauge fell 5.5% from a high in March, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The S&P 500 rallied 40% from this year’s low, also set in March. “Risk aversion is not as high as recent moves in gold would suggest,” Citi wrote.

S&P 500 is seen needing commodity help to solidify rally

• inflation gauge = ratio between Brent crude oil and gold  (8-month chart https://schrts.co/qYpTPXbh)   (https://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=USO%3AGLD&p=D&yr=0&mn=8&dy=0&id=p83486426733)

 U.S. stocks can use some help from commodities for their six-week rally to be “on solid ground,” according to Barrry B. Bannister, Stifel Nicolaus & Co.’s head of institutional equity strategy. Bannister compared the S&P 500 Index with the ratio between Brent crude oil and gold, which he cited as an inflation gauge, in a report Wednesday.

 

The ratio fell eight weeks ago to its lowest level since Brent futures began trading in 1988 and then dropped as much as 57% more through Thursday, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Rebounds in the oil-gold ratio led to S&P 500 lows in 2002, 2009 and 2016, Bannister wrote.

Gold at a five-year high

Gold’s rise to its highest price in more than five years showed central-bank policy changes “may be starting to have unintended consequences in asset markets,” according to Michael Shaoul, Marketfield Asset Management LLC’s chief executive officer. Gold for immediate delivery traded Thursday for as much as $1,394 an ounce, surpassing the high end of its trading range since October 2013, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The precious metal rose after the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank pointed toward interest-rate cuts.

** 4 years later  (Feb 2023) **

Gold's bear market looks worse relative to S&P 500

“Gold investors have good reason to be frustrated” with the precious metal after a seven-year bear market, Michael Batnick, research director at Ritholtz Wealth Management LLC, wrote Tuesday in a blog post. The price of gold was down 38 percent as of Wednesday from its September 2011 peak, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The metal’s ratio to the S&P 500 Index fell even more sharply, 74 percent, and reached its lowest level since December 2005. To be sure, Batnick wrote that gold can still be “a very effective diversifier” because it usually doesn’t track moves in stocks and bonds.

Gold's gain signals the U.S. looks riskier to investors

Gold’s performance is an indication that “the U.S. is perceived to be riskier than other countries,” Richard Bernstein, chief executive and chief investment officer at Richard Bernstein Advisors LLC, wrote in a report this month. He cited a contrast between the precious metal’s price in dollars, which rose 13 percent for the year through Friday, and in euros, which dropped 0.6 percent. Although gold climbed in yen, Swiss francs, British pounds and Australian dollars this year, the gains were smaller than those in dollar terms, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Gold is `tell' for market volatility to BofA Merrill

“Gold is the ‘tell’” for the next round of financial-market volatility, according to Michael Hartnett, chief investment strategist at Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch unit. The metal’s price climbed 8 percent from last year’s second-half low, set Dec. 22, through last week. Rising gold prices combined with higher bond yields to foreshadow stock-market slumps in the late 1960s and 1973-1974, as well as the 1987 crash, Hartnett wrote in a report Thursday.

After the FOMC announcement of no rate hike

• UP: gold, gold miners, biotech
• DOWN: dollar, Dow, S&P500

Citing “recent global economic and financial developments,” the Federal Open Market Committee voted to maintain the near-zero interest rate policy that was put in place during the throes of the economic crisis in December 2008.

In so doing, the U.S. central bank evidently was in accord with major international authorities, notably the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which had urged the Fed not to raise its interest rate target for fear of worsening the turmoil in emerging markets.

(click for live chart)

Inflation, however, continues to fall short of the Fed’s 2% target (which uses the personal consumption deflator, not the more familiar consumer price index). And the Fed sees the risks posed from abroad posing downside risks to prices and the economy. Here’s the key sentence from the FOMC statement:

“Recent global economic and financial developments may restrain economic activity somewhat and are likely to put further downward pressure on inflation in the near term.”

Which translates to the Fed keeping rates lower for even longer than previously projected.

***

the following day:

next day following Fed announcement, Fri 9/18/15

for the week:

Gold (Sept 2015)

(source: resourceinvestor.com)

Gold miners : some notes and observations

In 2014, shares of precious-metal mining companies have been leading the gold price. 

That's different from what we saw in the past couple of years. The gold price outperformed the shares going into the peak in 2011 and through the remainder of that year. Now we are seeing the gold shares outperform the metal price. That typically is characteristic of better things to come.

• All markets are forward looking, so if the stock market is anticipating a better gold price, the shares are going to do better than the gold price at the beginning of an upward move. In contrast, when the price of gold continued to make new highs in 2011, it was front-page news. And yet the shares lagged conspicuously. That was a sign that the move in the gold price wasn't going to be sustained.
• Mining shares are highly leveraged to the gold price because of marginal economics. If the price of gold goes up 10%, that might mean the profitability of mining gold goes up 25%. Every company is a little different. In a way, mining shares are options on the gold price.

Lumber and gold are reasons for worry on U.S. stocks

(Bloomberg) -- Commodity markets are signaling that lower prices and bigger swings lie ahead for U.S. stocks, according to Charlie Bilello, research director at Pension Partners LLC.

This chart illustrates how Bilello reached his conclusion: by tracking the price relationship between lumber and gold. The chart displays a ratio of futures prices at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and New York’s Comex, respectively. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index is also provided for reference.

“When lumber is leading gold, volatility in equities tends to fall going forward,” Bilello wrote in a blog posting three days ago on his New York-based investment firm’s website. “When gold is leading lumber, the opposite is true.”

This year, the ratio has fallen as much as 27 percent as lumber futures have tumbled, reflecting a drop in U.S. housing starts. Gold, which many investors see as a haven in periods of economic and political turmoil, was little changed for the year as of yesterday.

While the S&P 500 gained 2.4 percent for the year through yesterday, the lumber-gold indicator shows investors need to be more defensive, Bilello wrote. “At the very least, if history is any guide, we should be prepared for higher volatility ahead,” he added.

The ratio is the subject of a paper by Bilello and Michael A. Gayed, chief investment strategist at Pension Partners, that won an award from the National Association of Active Investment Managers. The paper covers the use of the indicator to switch between stocks and Treasury securities, and will be published next month. An abstract is now available.

SPY : 23 Apr 2015

Gold-oil ratio's meaning for crude

The highest gold prices relative to oil since the 1990s show crude’s plunge stems from excess supply rather than potential deflation, according to Michael Shaoul, chief executive officer of Marketfield Asset Management LLC.

The chart shows the ratio between the two commodities since 1971, when the precious metal’s price was allowed to fluctuate rather than being fixed in dollars. Spot gold, available for immediate delivery, and historical crude prices compiled by Bloomberg were used in the comparison.

One ounce of gold -- a metal that many investors view as a hedge against inflation -- cost as much as 23.9 barrels of West Texas Intermediate crude yesterday at spot prices, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. This ratio has almost doubled since May and hasn’t been higher at the end of a month since October 1998, when Russia, an oil producer, defaulted on debt.

“Critically, the supply of crude oil advanced in response to an investment boom,” fueled by development of fracking and other drilling technology, Shaoul wrote yesterday in a report featuring a similar chart. The increase “now seems to have overwhelmed demand without the latter deteriorating.”

History shows the ratio may be “driven to an extreme should crude oil’s own price experience a further collapse,” the New York-based money manager wrote.

Gold set a month-end record at 41.4 barrels of crude in June 1973, months before an Arab embargo caused oil prices to surge. The indicator had recorded a succession of lower peaks before its latest advance, as the chart illustrates. The most recent high was 20 barrels, reached in October 2012.

GLD vs SPY performance (Feb 2014)

GLD vs SPY 5 years

GLD vs SPY 2 years

GLD vs SPY 1 year