The precious metals trade that defined the first half of 2026 has now given back everything. Silver closed Friday near $49.11 an ounce — roughly 58% below the $121.64 peak it set on January 29 — after a weekly loss of about 8.8%. Gold fell 3.6% the same session to its lowest level since October 2025. Both metals bounced Monday morning, but the round trip is essentially complete.
Spot gold rose 0.6% to $3,899.29 in early Monday trade and silver gained 2.3% to $50.24, according to Reuters figures carried by CNBC. December gold futures added 0.3% to $3,908.70. By mid-morning the recovery had extended further: Trading Economics showed gold at $3,935.11, up 1.53%, and silver at $50.65, up 3.58%.
Set against the year, the rebound is a rounding error. Trading Economics puts gold's October loss at 4.94% and silver's at 17.04%. Gold now sits roughly 30% below its January record of $5,608.35. Fortune, citing Friday morning prices, noted silver had fallen 18.59% in a single month — from $61.47 thirty days earlier. The iShares Silver Trust is down 57% from its 52-week high of $109.83.
The Fed Did the Damage
The proximate cause is the Federal Reserve's shift toward tightening rather than easing. The Fed held its benchmark at 3.75%–4.00% on October 28, but two of the twelve voters wanted an immediate increase — and traders read the dissents as a signal. Strong third-quarter GDP and firm inflation data since then have hardened those bets.
How hard depends on who you ask and when. Avalon Capital Research put December hike odds at 72% as of Monday, before payrolls. Norada Real Estate, citing CME FedWatch, reported 85% in the days after the October 28 decision. Yahoo Finance cited a FedWatch range of 75% to 86%. The spread across snapshots is wide enough that any single number should be treated as a timestamp, not a fact — but the direction is unambiguous, and neither metal pays a yield to offset a higher cash rate.
A Demand Problem Underneath
Silver's steeper fall reflects something beyond rates. JPMorgan has warned that solar panel demand for silver could fall 30% a year — roughly 60 million ounces — enough to move the market from structural deficit to oversupply, which was the core of the bull case. Vikas Prakash Singh, an economics professor at Great Lakes Institute of Management, told Yahoo Finance that "the increase in margin money requirement at COMEX and MCX in February and March had already dampened the sentiments."
The technicals are stretched in the other direction. Silver trades about 25% below its 200-day moving average, the widest gap since the March 2020 pandemic liquidity crisis.
Three Catalysts This Week
Monday's bid owed something to oil, which fell more than 4% as Iranian and Qatari officials discussed a deal to end the US-Israeli war on Iran — easing the inflation impulse that had been pushing rate expectations higher. Seven OPEC+ members were expected to leave December production targets unchanged at Sunday's meeting.
Two bigger tests follow. Americans vote Tuesday in midterm elections that Invezz notes most polls expect Democrats to win in both chambers. Then Friday brings October payrolls, with economists looking for about 68,000 jobs after September's 29,000 and unemployment near 4.2%. That number, more than the election, will decide whether December's hike is priced as certain.
Equities offered no shelter Friday. The S&P 500 fell 1.82% to 7,580.07, its worst day since June; the Nasdaq dropped 2.86% to 25,437.00 on AI buildout costs, with Intel suffering its worst session in decades.
Sources: Reuters via CNBC, Trading Economics, Yahoo Finance, Fortune, USAGold, Capital Street FX, Avalon Capital Research, Norada Real Estate, Invezz, CME FedWatch