Silver Price Tops Oil as Gold Jumps $100 on Trump's Iran War 'Taco'

ONE OUNCE of SILVER rose back above the price of a barrel of crude oil on Tuesday, something seen only once in history prior to the precious metal's current run of all-time highs, while gold also rebounded after US President Trump tried to calm financial markets by saying that his week-long war on Iran is "very complete, pretty much".

Global stock indices rallied hard from the past week's near-4% plunge, while the Dollar eased back following Trump's overnight call to arch-mainstream media channel CBS.

Crude oil fell as low as $81 per barrel after peaking yesterday at a 4-year high close to $120, echoing silver's dramatic jump to and ensuing crash from $120 per Troy ounce at the end of January.

Silver prices today rose within 1 cent of $90 per Troy ounce in London's bullion market, while US crude oil benchmark grade WTI fell to the low $80s per barrel.

So far this month, that puts 1 ounce of silver just above 1 barrel of oil, extending a 4-month run of the industrially-useful precious metal trading at better than parity to crude.

On a month-average basis, silver only beat the price of oil once before in post-WW2 history, briefly outrunning a barrel of crude as it spiked to $50 in January 1980 amid the Iranian hostage crisis, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and oil barons the Hunt brothers' attempted corner of the global silver market.

As silver prices leapt by more than 5% on Tuesday, gold also halved last week's Iran War drop, rising as high as $5238 per Troy ounce in mid-afternoon London trade.

With gold fixing at $5086 at yesterday's 3pm benchmarking auction, that rebound marked gold's 17th move of more than $100 per ounce in 1 day across the first 9 weeks of 2026.

Prior to this New Year, gold had only ever made 14 one-day swings of $100 or more in history.

"When it comes to the war in Iran, don't go betting on the TACO trade," said Fortune magazine yesterday ahead of Trump's comments, quoting No.1 US bank J.P.Morgan's wealth investment strategist Jacob Manoukian.

"There's a lot of potential paths...[all of them] out of the control of one party or another."

Widely accused of another 'taco' − coined by Financial Times' journalist Robert Armstrong last year because, when faced with financial market turmoil over his policies, 'Trump always chickens out' − the US President was today backed by Israel's foreign minister Gideon Saar, who said that the Jewish state isn't seeking "an endless war" with Iran.

But with Trump's minister of war Pete Hegseth then vowing no ceasefire "until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated," the Islamic dictatorship in Tehran vowed "an eye for an eye" should US-Israeli air strikes hit Iranian energy infrastructure. And thanks to the past 10 days' war, "The Iranian regime's surest route to safety would be to go nuclear," warns FT columnist Edward Luce.

"Good intelligence can keep making a rubble of Iran's nuclear capacity but...[the] logic of dashing to North Korea's status will be compelling. Others, notably Russia's Vladimir Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong Un, may be tempted to help. Regimes everywhere are making the same calculations with fresh immediacy."

Besides January 1980, the price of silver briefly came close to parity with oil when crude prices collapsed during the early 2020 Covid lockdowns crisis, with the price of 1 barrel averaging 1.1 times an ounce of the industrially-useful precious metal that April.