Record gold and silver prices: planning implications for mine project teams
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

First reported on MINING.com
30 Second Briefing
Gold jumped 2.6% to a record $4,625.34/oz and silver surged 7.2% to $85.73/oz as investors shifted into safe-haven metals amid escalating political pressure on the US Federal Reserve, including a grand jury subpoena for chair Jerome Powell. Gold gained 65% and silver 140% in 2025, with macro strategists such as Nour Al Ali calling a move towards $5,000/oz in early 2026 “highly plausible” as US rates fall and geopolitical risks rise. BMI and Julius Baer flag a continuing silver market deficit in 2026, driven by higher investment demand, industrial consumption and speculative flows from China.
Technical Brief
- Spot gold’s intraday move reached 2.6% on Monday’s session before setting the new peak.
- Silver’s intraday gain was even sharper at 7.2%, reflecting higher volatility and thinner liquidity.
- Gold’s 2025 performance was its strongest since 1979, signalling an extreme macro-hedging environment.
- More than a dozen institutional money managers reported maintaining elevated gold exposure rather than profit‑taking.
- Trump administration pressure on the Fed now includes a grand jury subpoena for chair Jerome Powell.
- Julius Baer’s Carsten Menke identifies Fed interference risk as a key bullish wildcard for 2026 pricing.
- BMI (Fitch Solutions) forecasts a continuing silver market deficit in 2026 driven mainly by investment demand.
- London “silver squeeze” in October, linked to US tariff fears, visibly drained exchange warehouse inventories.
Our Take
HSBC’s earlier call that gold could reach $5,050/oz in H1 2026 frames the current record prices as potentially mid-cycle rather than peak, which may encourage longer-dated hedging strategies by North American and Chilean gold producers rather than immediate profit-taking.
The related 8 January silver piece shows intraday swings from above $80/oz down to the low $70s before this latest spike to $85.73/oz, underscoring volatility levels that will challenge margin management for high-cost silver operations and could make project financing models more conservative on price decks.
With over 500 mining stories and more than 1,000 project-tagged pieces in our database, gold and silver remain among the most frequently covered commodities, suggesting that sustained price uncertainty around the US Federal Reserve is now a central planning variable for both greenfield and brownfield precious metals projects in the USA and Chile.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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