Gold Investing Steadies After Iran War Slump

Gold's rises, but silver investing sentiment slips below average...

GOLD INVESTING sentiment rallied in May, edging higher from this spring's dramatic Iran war slump as private investors bought the precious metal at lower prices, reports Adrian Ash at world-leading precious metals platform BullionVault.

Tracking customer trading on BullionVault since 2009, the Gold Investor Index is a unique measure of revealed preference in the precious metals markets. Any reading above 50.0 signals that buyers outnumbered sellers. Last month it rose to 55.6, rallying 0.5 points from April's crash to a 5-month low.

That 5.6-point slump in BullionVault's sentiment gauge marked the steepest drop in 14 years. May's rally then put the Gold Investor Index 1.4 points above its 5-year average, giving a higher reading than 48 of those 60 months.

So while sentiment in gold has fallen hard from the recent blow-off top, it remains well above the longer-term average.

With wholesale bullion prices falling in May to the lowest monthly average since December, users of BullionVault bought more gold as a group than they sold for the third month in a row, the longest stretch of net demand since August 2023.

Last month's inflow grew client gold holdings by another 0.2% to 43.6 tonnes, the largest in 6 months. All vaulted in each user's choice of London, New York, Singapore, Toronto or most popular Zurich, that privately-owned stock of gold bullion is worth $6.3 billion (£4.7bn, €5.4bn).

First-time precious metals investing is also running historically strong despite dropping again in May, when the monthly count of new BullionVault users retreated for the fourth month running.

Falling by 54.9% from the prior 12-month average to the fewest since August, May's figure was the lowest in 10 months. But the number of first-time precious-metals investors still topped the past 60 months' median average by 81.0%.

April's slump in silver sentiment was the steepest drop since April 2020, when the Silver Investor Index reversed 8.1 points of that March's record 20.4-point surge to a series high of 75.1, reached as silver investment demand leapt on the Covid crash in the price of the industrially-useful precious metal.

Here in spring 2026, silver has fallen harder than gold prices from January's new all-time highs. But strong tech demand and tight global supplies continue to underpin the market, with May seeing the precious metal rise after three monthly falls.

In response − and unlike gold investing sentiment − the Silver Investor Index fell for the fourth month running, slipping another 0.1 points from April's 8.0-point crash to read 52.0, its lowest level since August 2025.

Coming 0.8 points below the 5-year average, that reading beat only 27 of the prior 60 months, again contrasting with the picture for gold investing sentiment. But by weight, BullionVault users turned net buyers by weight, reversing over a quarter of April's 6-tonne outflow and growing the stockpile of securely stored silver bullion owned by private investors by 0.2% to 1,129 tonnes worth $2.7bn (£2.0bn, €2.3bn).

Looking ahead, gold and silver continue to see-saw with crude oil as the Iran war's energy-price shock drives interest rate forecasts higher. News of central banks flipping from record gold buying to sporadic selling also upends a key part of the New Year's over-excitement.

But like gold's long-term value in sovereign reserves, the solid bid for silver in green energy, military and the AI-and-data tech industry is undimmed. Private investors are using these lower prices drop to build their holdings.