Precious metals spent Monday doing the opposite of what the textbook says they should. An oil pipeline carrying seven million barrels a day went offline, Brent crude ran to within pennies of $110, and gold and silver both fell.
Silver December futures opened at $64.79 an ounce, down 0.6% from Friday's close, and spot silver traded at $63.22 later in the session, off $1.38 or 2.14% on the day, according to Yahoo Finance and Trading Economics. Gold December futures opened at $4,375, down 0.8%, and had slipped to $4,332.50 by 7:02 a.m. ET. Spot gold eased to roughly $4,285, USAGOLD reported, with Fortune quoting $4,277 an ounce at 8:50 a.m. ET.
The Bid That Never Came
The geopolitical trigger was real and it was large. Saudi Arabia's Energy Ministry said late Friday it had suspended operations on the East-West pipeline as a precaution after "multiple" attacks in the Riyadh and Madinah regions on Thursday that caused a number of injuries. The line links Eastern Province production to the Red Sea export hub at Yanbu — the kingdom's principal alternative to shipping crude through the Strait of Hormuz, which is already disrupted by the U.S.-Iran conflict.
Oil responded the way anyone would expect. Brent rose 4.83% to $109.44 a barrel at 5 p.m. UAE time, after briefly touching $110, The National reported. West Texas Intermediate gained 4.74% to $104.79.
Metals did not. The reason is that traders read the oil spike less as a risk event to hedge and more as an inflation problem the Federal Reserve will have to answer for on Wednesday.
Rate Odds Repriced Over a Weekend
Market-implied odds of a quarter-point increase at the September 15–16 FOMC meeting climbed to 86.5% on Monday morning from 69.4% on Friday morning, per USAGOLD's tally. A hike would lift the federal funds target range to 3.75%–4.00% from the 3.50%–3.75% band the committee has held at every meeting this year. Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan have both moved their forecasts to include the move.
Higher policy rates raise the opportunity cost of holding metal that pays no coupon, which is why silver — the more industrial and more leveraged of the two — took the larger hit.
Limitless Metals, in a Sept. 10 statement, called this "one of the most unusual market environments of 2026" for gold, describing a market where geopolitical instability and hawkish rate expectations pull in opposite directions and rate expectations are currently winning.
Context on the Tape
The one-year numbers still look nothing like a bear market. Gold is up 19.7% from a year ago and silver 55.7%, even after Monday's decline. Over shorter windows the picture flattens: gold is down 1.2% on the week and up 1.2% on the month, while silver is down 2.6% on the week and 0.3% on the month.
Silver's longer arc is more dramatic. The metal set an all-time high of $121.67 in January 2026 during the London physical squeeze that drove lease rates toward 39%, and has traded between $40.89 and $121.58 on an intraday basis over the past twelve months. Monday's $63 handle sits roughly in the middle of that range and roughly half the January peak.
Wednesday's decision, and the language around it, will settle which of the two forces currently pulling at metals gets the next move.
Sources: Yahoo Finance (gold and silver daily price reports, Sept. 14, 2026), USAGOLD Daily Precious Metals Market Report (Sept. 14, 2026), Fortune, The National, Trading Economics, Business Day, Chase, GlobeNewswire (Limitless Metals release, Sept. 10, 2026)