What’s behind the surge in the price of gold and silver?
- Written by The Times
Gold and silver don’t usually move like meme stocks. They grind. They trend. They react to inflation prints, central-bank meetings, wars, recessions, and the slow burn of confidence (or lack of it) in paper currencies.
And yet the past year has delivered something closer to a stampede: powerful upside momentum, punctuated by violent pullbacks. In early February 2026, for example, both metals saw sharp sell-offs after a long rally, reminding investors that “safe haven” doesn’t mean “no volatility.”
So what’s actually driving the surge? The short version: gold has been repriced as a strategic reserve asset in a more fragmented world, while silver is being pulled higher by a collision of investment demand and industrial scarcity. The long version is where the real story sits.
1) Central banks have changed the gold market’s centre of gravity
For decades, the “price of gold” was mostly a conversation about interest rates, inflation expectations, and Western investor positioning. That framework still matters, but something structural has shifted: central banks have become persistent, price-insensitive buyers.
The World Gold Council reports that central-bank demand remained resilient through 2025, even as prices repeatedly hit record highs—exactly the opposite of what you’d expect from a typical price-sensitive buyer.
And in its broader reserve-management research, the Council highlights that central banks added over 1,000 tonnes in 2022 and again in 2023, putting official-sector buying in rare historical territory.
Why does this matter? Because central banks don’t behave like ETF investors:
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They buy for reserve diversification, not “momentum.”
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They buy for political risk management, not quarterly performance.
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They can keep buying through dips and rallies because the objective is strategic, not tactical.
In plain English: a large new class of buyer has been bidding for gold with a different rule book.
2) “Sanctions risk” has put a premium on assets without counterparty exposure
Gold’s unique selling point is simple: it is no one else’s liability.
After Russia’s foreign reserves were frozen in 2022, the market absorbed a message that many policymakers and reserve managers cannot unlearn: if your assets sit inside another country’s financial plumbing, they can be frozen, constrained, or politicised.
That idea is repeatedly cited as a key accelerant for official-sector interest in gold.
This isn’t just “de-dollarisation” as a slogan. It’s a pragmatic portfolio question: how much of your national balance sheet is exposed to geopolitical leverage?
Gold is an answer to that question, which means it now attracts flows that are less cyclical and more strategic—and that supports a higher baseline price.
3) Fiscal anxiety: gold as the “anti-IOU” in a world of rising debt
The other macro driver is also political, but domestic: the growing investor unease about structural deficits, rising debt loads, and the temptation to “inflate away” obligations.
Gold tends to outperform when markets suspect that governments will choose a form of “financial repression” (keeping real rates below inflation) or when fiscal trajectories feel unanchored. The Financial Times notes that concerns about surging fiscal spending have been part of the demand backdrop for gold during the rally.
Importantly, this isn’t only an “inflation hedge” narrative. It’s a credibility hedge—a wager that policy trade-offs will become messier, not cleaner, over the next decade.
4) Interest rates still matter — but the market’s sensitivity is evolving
Classic gold logic says:
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Higher real yields (bond returns after inflation) reduce gold’s appeal (because gold yields nothing).
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Lower real yields make gold more attractive.
That relationship still holds, but it has become less dominant when central banks and geopolitics are doing the heavy lifting.
You can see this in the way gold can rally even when rate-cut expectations are delayed—because the marginal buyer isn’t always the same buyer.
And when markets abruptly re-price the future path of rates, gold can move hard in the other direction. Recent volatility in early February 2026 was linked (at least in part) to a sharp shift in expectations about the future stance and leadership of the Federal Reserve after Donald Trump nominated Kevin Warsh to succeed Jerome Powell, lifting the US dollar and pressuring dollar-priced commodities.
Bottom line: gold is still rate-sensitive, but it’s now also system-sensitive.
5) Investment flows: ETFs, bars, coins — and the “fear bid”
Gold rallies feed themselves in a specific way:
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Price rises attract attention.
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Attention attracts inflows (ETFs, physical bullion, momentum strategies).
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Inflows tighten the market and reinforce the trend.
The rally has been supported by both physical buying and the return of broader investment interest—an effect documented in the World Gold Council demand reporting.
When that investment wave becomes crowded, the metal can also correct sharply—as we saw with sudden multi-day sell-offs.
That’s not a contradiction. That’s what a market looks like when it’s being pulled by strategic demand underneath, and speculative demand on top.
6) Silver is not just “cheaper gold” — it’s an industrial metal with a supply problem
Silver often gets lumped in with gold as “precious metals,” but structurally it behaves differently because a large chunk of demand is industrial.
The Silver Institute has been warning that the silver market has been running multi-year structural deficits, reflecting the difficulty of ramping supply quickly.
Meanwhile, multiple market analyses point to strong industrial demand tied to:
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Solar photovoltaics
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Electrification and advanced electronics
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Broader industrial applications that use silver’s conductivity
This matters because industrial demand tends to be “sticky.” Manufacturers don’t easily redesign products on a dime, and substitution has limits.
When you combine that with constrained supply, you get a market that can go vertical.
7) Silver’s “dual personality” makes it more explosive — up and down
Silver is what traders call a high-beta metal:
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In risk-on periods, it can outperform gold because it has both precious-metal demand and industrial demand.
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In stress events, it can be hit harder because industrial demand expectations can wobble (think global growth scares).
That helps explain why silver can surge, then suffer dramatic air pockets. In early February 2026, silver’s pullback was even sharper than gold’s.
In other words: silver amplifies the same macro forces that move gold, while adding its own industrial boom-bust layer.
8) Supply-side constraints: mining doesn’t respond quickly to price
A final driver that’s often underestimated: metals supply is slow.
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New mines take years to permit, finance, and build.
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Output is impacted by ore grades, energy costs, labour, geopolitics, and environmental approvals.
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Silver supply is complicated further because a lot of silver is produced as a by-product (from lead/zinc, copper, gold mining), so primary “silver-only” supply response can be muted.
When demand surges quickly (for strategic or industrial reasons), supply can’t just “switch on.” That’s how you get persistent deficits and higher clearing prices.
9) What this means for Australians: it’s not just the USD gold price
Australians experience the gold story through three lenses:
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AUD/USD: If the Aussie dollar falls, the gold price in AUD can rise even if USD gold is flat.
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Local inflation psychology: gold demand often lifts when people feel everyday costs are outrunning wages.
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ASX exposure: Australia’s equity market has meaningful leverage to gold through miners (profits can expand faster than the metal price when costs are contained).
So even if you never buy bullion, gold and silver moves can show up in super funds, ETFs, miners, and broader risk sentiment.
10) The key question now: repricing or bubble?
It’s tempting to ask: Is this a bubble?
The more precise framing is: how much of the move is structural repricing, and how much is speculative overshoot?
Structural forces supporting higher prices:
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Central-bank diversification and reserve strategy
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Geopolitical fragmentation and sanctions-risk hedging
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Silver’s industrial pull plus persistent deficits
Speculative forces that can reverse violently:
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Positioning, leverage, and momentum chasing
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Sudden shifts in rate/dollar expectations
In practice, you can have both at once: a real regime shift and periodic blow-off moves.
Where to from here?
If gold’s price is being underwritten by central banks and a “credibility hedge” narrative, then the metal can stay expensive for longer than old models would predict. A recent Reuters report on analyst views similarly points to ongoing central-bank support and geopolitics as continuing pillars under the market.
Silver’s outlook is trickier: it can keep climbing if industrial demand remains strong and deficits persist, but it can also swing harder if growth expectations roll over. That’s the price of having two engines—precious and industrial—pulling in different directions depending on the macro cycle.
Either way, the surge isn’t random. It reflects something deeper: a world that feels less stable, more indebted, and more strategically divided—plus an energy-and-electronics economy that’s demanding more of the periodic table.
