Gold Hits $4400 and Silver $69, Yet Comex Bulls Stay Absent

GOLD and SILVER hit fresh highs above $4420 and $69 per ounce on Monday, entering Christmas Week with their biggest annual gains in 46 years on expectations of further Federal Reserve rate cuts in 2026, plus fresh US military strikes near Venezuela, writes Atsuko Whitehouse at BullionVault.

Ahead of the move, and with gold prices dipping last week for the first time in six weeks, speculators held muted Comex futures and options bets according to the latest CFTC positioning data.

"Gold hits new highs amid Venezuela geopolitical risk," says Jeff Toshima, former Tokyo director of the mining industry's World Gold Council and a regular columnist for Nikkei Newspaper.

"Next year's $5,000 gold forecast now appears conservative."

Spot gold prices today rose as much as 1.9% to set the 50th new record high this year at $4420 per Troy ounce, more than reversing its first weekly decline in six.

The price of silver, which now finds nearly 60% of its annual demand from industrial uses, also jumped as much as 3.5%, hitting a peak at $69.46 per ounce on Monday morning and extending its fourth weekly increase in a row.

The grey metal has now risen nearly 140% this year and is also set for its strongest annual gain since 1979.

With US regulator the CFTC now almost caught up reporting Commitment of Traders figures following the government shutdown, data for 9 December shows that hedge funds and other 'Managed Money' speculators in Comex silver futures and options have kept their net bullish betting below its 1-year average since early October in terms of equivalent weight, even though prices have now surged 21.0% since then, reaching new record highs 3 times.

Comex gold futures and options positions have been similarly muted since the end of September, with the net betting by Managed Money traders this month running at barely half the size of late-October 2024, one week prior to President Trump's landslide election victory.

Major financial institutions including Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, HSBC and Société Générale forecast gold prices to reach or approach $5000 per ounce by the end of 2026, while the private bank division of US financial giant J.P.Morgan forecasts a high of $5200 or $5300 by the end of 2026.

The US Dollar today edged lower on the FX market as market consensus continued to say Fed rates will be cut twice in 2026, despite officials from the US central bank predicting only one cut amid softer inflation and a cooling US jobs market, according to the FedWatch tool from derivatives exchange the CME.

The US meantime intensified its campaign to cut off vital oil revenues for the economy of  Venezuela and isolate the government of President Nicolas Maduro, pursuing a third oil tanker off the coast of the Latin American state.

Platinum, which finds two-thirds of its demand from industrial uses led by auto-catalysts, also surged on Monday, gaining as much as 5.1% to a more than 16-year high of $2075 per ounce.

The white metal is on track to record a nearly 130% gain for this year, the biggest since London benchmark prices started in 1990.

The price of palladium – which finds well over 4/5ths of its end-use demand from auto-catalysts to cut carbon emissions from gasoline engines – also climbed as much as 4.6% to a nearly 4-year high at $1802 per ounce before paring one-fourth of the gain.

Palladium is set to post over a 95% annual increase, the biggest since 2010.

Even with the Dollar dropping Monday, all four precious metals also set new record or multi-year highs in all other currencies, including UK Pounds, Euros, Japanese Yen, Chinese Yuan and Swiss Francs.

With only a few trading days remaining in 2025, gold has risen nearly 70% since last New Year's Eve, on track to record its highest annual gain since 1979 − when the second oil shock and sharply heightened Cold War tensions after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan coincided with double-digit inflation across the West.