Silver at $100 and gold near $5,000: project economics lens for mine planners
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell

First reported on MINING.com
30 Second Briefing
Silver broke through $100/oz for the first time, touching $101.22 in New York after starting the week below $90, driven by safe‑haven flows following a US‑Europe rift and heavy retail buying in China and Western markets. Traders are also pricing in potential US tariffs on silver‑intensive solar components and a looming structural supply deficit, pushing year‑to‑date gains above 25% after the metal more than doubled in 2025. Gold hit a record $4,987.69/oz, up nearly 14% in 2026 after a 40% rise in 2025, with Goldman Sachs now targeting $5,400 by year‑end.
Technical Brief
- Noon ET quote put spot silver at $101.22/oz on 23 January 2026.
- Price move exceeded 5% intraday, from sub‑$90 levels earlier in the same week.
- Retail physical and paper buying reported from Shanghai through to New York trading venues.
- Market narrative now explicitly links long‑term silver pricing to a structural mine‑supply deficit.
- Gold’s latest peak was $4,987.69/oz, achieved within the same trading week.
- Over the last five sessions, gold gained about 7%, its strongest weekly performance since 2020.
- Goldman Sachs’ updated year‑end gold target of $5,400/oz assumes continued private and central‑bank accumulation.
Our Take
With silver above $100/oz and gold nearing $5,000/oz after a 2025 rally that already saw gold above $4,500/oz in our late‑December coverage, project IRRs for marginal US and Latin American precious‑metal deposits will look materially different to the economics used in most 2020–2023 feasibility studies.
Goldman Sachs and Bloomberg also featured in our December 24 gold and silver price piece, signalling that the same macro drivers (central bank buying, ETF flows and safe‑haven demand) are likely underpinning this latest leg higher rather than mine‑supply shocks alone, unlike the copper spikes tied to specific outages.
Among the 732 Mining stories and 1382 tag‑matched pieces in our database, only a handful involve silver moving this far, this fast; that volatility will push operators and lenders to stress‑test project finance models against much wider price bands, especially for silver‑heavy polymetallic projects in the US and Europe.
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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