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Gold, silver and platinum jumped to all-time highs on Friday to extend a historic end-of-year rally for precious metals, with support from escalating geopolitical tensions and US dollar weakness.
Spot gold set a new all-time high of $4,540 an ounce and the most active US gold futures for delivery in February traded as high as $4,584 an ounce, before pairing gains to $4,555 an ounce in afternoon trade.
March silver futures surged by more than 9% to $78.30 in New York, trading near the day’s highs in the final hours of regular dealings. Platinum advanced 10% to $2,475 and palladium was up a whopping 13% or $234 per ounce on the day easily vaulting past the $2,000 an ounce mark.
Gold is on track to record its biggest yearly gain – more than 70% – since 1979. The rally has largely been underpinned by robust central bank purchases and inflows into exchange-traded funds with the world’s largest physical gold ETF, SPDR Gold Shares or GLD, growing holdings by more than a fifth in 2025.
Physically-backed gold exchange-traded funds are on course for their biggest inflow since 2020, attracting $82 billion, equivalent to 749 tonnes by December 22, according to the World Gold Council.
John Feeney of Sydney-based gold dealer Guardian Vaults said the dominant drivers for gold right now are the combination of sustained physical demand and renewed sensitivity to macro risk. “We’re seeing momentum reinforced rather than capped, which suggests underlying conviction rather than purely speculative froth,” he told Bloomberg.
Underscoring this demand, bullion bounced back quickly after a retreat from its previous peak of $4,381 in October, when the rally was seen as overheated. Many believe gold is now positioned to carry these gains into next year. Goldman Sachs is among several banks to predict prices will keep rising in 2026, issuing a base-case scenario of $4,900 an ounce.
“With precious metals making record prices so late in the year, when ordinarily one might have found time to write a Christmas card or two, perhaps the biggest takeaway is that investors have not treated the festive break as an occasion to take profits,” Mitsubishi analysts told Reuters earlier this week.
Silver squeeze
Silver’s rally has been even more spectacular than gold’s with an unprecedented 160% rally in 2025. Its recent advance has been buoyed by speculative inflows and lingering supply dislocations across major trading hubs following a historic short squeeze in October.
London’s vaults have seen significant inflows since then, but much of the world’s available silver remains in New York as traders await the outcome of a US Commerce Department probe which could lead to tariffs or trade restrictions on the metal.
[Check the latest silver price here]
“You have a lot of trades or positions on paper: now you need to cover those with physical volume — and there’s not much supply to cover that demand,” said Manav Modi, commodity analyst at Motilal Oswal Financial Services told Bloomberg. “You need to power the paper silver with the actual silver,” he said.
(With files from Bloomberg and Reuters)