Gold Makes Worst Losing Run in 4 Decades, Silver Plunge Tests $50 Again

The PRICE of GOLD rallied on Friday but failed to reverse this week's $150 plunge, wilting as bond yields jumped on strong US inflation data and extending its worst stretch of losses in almost 4 decades.

Down 3.5% from last Friday's finish in London − heart of global bullion trading − the price of gold fixed around $3890 per troy ounce, its lowest week-end benchmark level since the start of October 2025.

Priced in US Dollars, that means gold has now matched its 10-in-12-weeks drops of summer 2018, early-autumn 2014, summer 1999 and also twice in 1996, marking the worst such stretch since the 11-in-12 weekly losses recorded in spring 1989.

Silver has meantime fallen 9 weeks in the past 12, dipping back below $50 per troy ounce in late-London spot market trade but avoiding a weekly close beneath that level − formerly the industrially-useful precious metal's all-time silver price tops of 1980 and 2011 − at today's 12 noon London benchmarking auction.

Down 3.8% from last Friday, that still marked silver's lowest week-end price since the end of November last year, down more than 50% from end-January's all-time Friday high.

The London 3pm gold price then set its lowest Friday fix since the start of October 2025.

Washington's budget deficit last month blew past analyst forecasts, US government data said Thursday, hitting an October record at more than $400 billion and equivalent to almost 15% of gross domestic product.

Inflation in prices for manufacturers and other producers meanwhile held at 5.0% per year excluding volatile fuel and food costs, the fastest pace since New Year 2023 according to Friday's data releases.

With headline Producer Price inflation coming in slightly below forecast, betting on Federal Reserve rate hikes into 2027 eased a touch, as did longer-term borrowing costs in the bond market.

But conventional 10-year US Treasury yields still traded at 5.13% per annum, higher by 0.27 percentage points than last Friday's finish with the steepest weekly jump since April 2025's 'Liberation Day' chaos.

Inflation-protected yields also jumped by around one full Federal Reserve rate-rise, with 10-year TIPS adding 0.24 points for the week to offer new buyers 2.87% per annum over and above the rise in CPI.

"There is no silver lining," Reuters quotes one bond-market economist looking at today's PPI data.

"Everywhere you look inflation is pushing forward and making the affordability crisis for Americans that much harder."

As gold and silver rallied only a little on Friday from this week's strong CPI inflation and Fed 'hawk talk' plunges, US stock markets fell once again, cutting this week's rebound in the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index to 1.6% as AI chip giant Nvidia plunged another 3.9% amid growing doubts over media claims that sacked CEO Jensen Huang had an affair with a Chinese spy, taking its losses from early October's all-time high to more than 1/3rd.

For silver prices, "The bull case increasingly requires investment demand not just to remain strong, but to remain exceptionally strong for years," says bearish analysis from Canadian bank BMO, forecasting that this New Year's record price spike above $120 is driving such aggressive thrifting by solar panel manufacturers that the precious metal's global market balance will flip from a supply deficit to a "record high surplus" by 2030.