Silver Springs to $36 for 'No Clear Reason', Gold's Ratio Falls to Pre-Trade-Tariffs Low
Thursday, 6/05/2025 15:10
The PRICE of SILVER leapt on Thursday in London, sending the industrially-useful precious metal to 13-year US Dollar highs above $36 per Troy ounce, and crushing gold's relative price ratio, despite continued weakness in global economic data.
Copper prices touched 2-month highs but crude oil held unchanged at what were 4-year lows when reached in late-March.
Japanese equities fell but Chinese and European equities edged higher, while Western government bond prices rose − nudging longer-term borrowing costs lower − as the European Central Bank cut Euro interest rates as expected following weak consumer and now factory-gate inflation data for May.
Jumping 4.2% from yesterday's LBMA benchmarking auction in London, today's midday silver price made its sharpest 1-day gain since 21 October 2024,
when gold ran to new all-time highs ahead of the US election and silver broke above $34 per ounce for the first time in 12 years.
Today's surge to the highest silver price since February 2012 crushed
the Gold/Silver Ratio − a simple measure of the 'safe haven' metal's value in terms of its more industrially-useful cousin − squashing it towards 94.
That's down by 10 ounces of silver from the
post-Covid high of more than 100 seen as gold touched its current all-time Dollar high of $3500 in late April.
It's also the lowest reading for the Gold-to-Silver price ratio since 2nd April, the day that US President
Trump announced his 'Liberation Day' trade tariffs, spurring a brief but severe slump in industrial commodities and global stock markets.
"No specific reason for silver as far as I can see," says a note from bullion-market specialist Rhona O'Connell at brokerage StoneX.
"But given its recent underperformance against gold (because of economic concerns...) it looks to me that there could be some ratio trading going on now that it’s dipped below the 100 level."
Turning higher in August 2022, one month earlier than gold prices, silver has now doubled since then in US Dollar terms, only just lagging gold's 109% move with a rise of 104%.
Silver's year-on-year gain today leapt to 21.0%, but that annual pace was beaten by the 24.6% gain shown this time last month, and the 40.2% gain shown in late-March.
Volume in the CME derivatives exchange's July Comex silver future leapt to match the hourly peak seen at Monday's New York opening, when the price also jumped by more than $1.
Silver in Sterling terms peaked Thursday lunchtime in London at £26.53 per Troy ounce, more than £2 higher from last weekend but still 30 pence beneath last October's 13-year high for UK investors.
Euro silver prices also touched 10-week highs, leaping to €31.51 per ounce but peaking 2.4% beneath October's 13.5-year high.
Ahead of Trump's trade-tariff hit to global growth forecasts, the price of
silver set new record month-average highs in both UK Pounds and the Euro in February.
Gold on Thursday meantime peaked above $3400 per Troy ounce for the first time in 4 weeks, while
platinum − industrial use of which is still dominated by autocatalysts to reduce harmful emissions from fossil-fuel engines − leapt to $1138 in spot market trade.
That's the highest
price for platinum since March 2022, when sister-metal palladium − more than 2/5ths of which is mined in Russia − spiked above $3400 per ounce amid President Putin's all-out invasion of Ukraine.
"The platinum market is very tight," says O'Connell at StoneX, "with high lease rates" to borrow the metal following its
price spike during last month's Platinum Week events in London.
"Investor demand is strong in the physical markets in the Middle and Far East, and normally while London banks would offset the tight London position on NYMEX [US futures contracts], the market is fighting shy of New York exposure due to the concern about tariff risk in the States."
Palladium jumped with platinum and
silver prices on Thursday, but only to 2-week highs at $1025.
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