The silver price was on the rise once again this week — it surged past the US$67 per ounce level on Friday (December 19), hitting a new record before pulling back.
As for gold, it spent much of the period around the US$4,330 per ounce level, although it rose as high as US$4,360 on Thursday (December 18), approaching its own all-time high.
Investors were eyeing November US consumer price index (CPI) data, which came out on Thursday. It was up 2.7 percent year-on-year, while core CPI was measured at 2.6 percent.
Those figures were quite a bit lower than analysts' estimates, and data collection issues caused by the US government shutdown have left market participants questioning the results.
Notably, Bureau of Labor Statistics officials had to make "certain methodological assumptions" because the October CPI report was canceled entirely. The bureau also started November data collection later than usual, driving concerns about a rebound in numbers for December.
US jobs data for both October and November came out this week as well, showing that the unemployment rate for last month rose to 4.6 percent, the highest since 2021.
While 64,000 jobs were added in November, 105,000 were lost in October, and revisions took 33,000 jobs away from the months of August and September.
Outside US economic data, it's worth noting that for silver there's still a lot of focus on behind-the-scenes actions that could be impacting the price.
Here's what Substack newsletter writer John Rubino had to say about that:
"A lot of the discontinuities that we're seeing in the silver market right now are due to the fact that the big exchanges like Comex may not have enough silver to satisfy the demands of futures contract holders.
"In other words, there are a lot more people out there with long futures contracts that could come in and demand silver than there is silver to satisfy that demand. And the number of people who are standing for delivery on futures contracts is rising, and the amount of silver in these exchanges is shrinking."
Bullet briefing — Platinum beats gold, copper hits new record
Platinum price on the move
I'd be remiss if I didn't also take a moment to mention platinum.
While gold and silver have been making headlines, platinum's 2025 rise has been quiet, but significant — it's up over 100 percent year-to-date and nearly hit US$1,980 per ounce this week.
Platinum is somewhat similar to silver in that they both have precious and industrial sides, and they've both seen persistent deficits in recent years.
Platinum's deficit has definitely helped it rise this year, but looking forward to next year the World Platinum Investment Council is expecting a balanced market. When I saw that, I wondered if that would mean lower prices in 2026. But that may not necessarily be the case.
Edward Sterck said there are a couple of nuances in the council's outlook — for example, it's anticipating profit taking from exchange-traded funds, but if that doesn't happen, then the platinum deficit may persist. He also noted that balance in 2026 wouldn't erase years of deficits:
"A balanced market doesn't solve for the fact we've had three years of deficits. It doesn't in any way, I suppose, rebuild aboveground stocks. And it's the shortage of aboveground stocks that seems to be one of the major catalysts behind this price action and behind the market tightness."
Copper price hits new high
It's not only precious metals that have been hitting new highs this year.
The price of copper has been climbing as well, hitting a new all-time high of close to US$12,000 per metric ton last week on the London Metal Exchange.
It's pulled back slightly since then, but market watchers agree the copper outlook remains strong as rising demand meets constrained supply. In fact, I've been asking experts what they think the top-performing asset of next year will be, and copper has been a popular pick.
Lobo Tiggre of IndependentSpeculator.com chose the base metal as his highest-confidence trade of 2025, and he said he's sticking with it next year.
Here's what he had to say about copper:
"Top pick for 2026 is copper. Similar reasons to 2025 —the copper price has been kicked around, up and down by what I think of as sort of extraneous issues. But the fundamentals mean the demand scenario just looks phenomenal, and the supply has been really constrained."
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