GOLD and SILVER leapt on Friday, with the 'safe haven' metal halving the past week's price crash while the cost of borrowing the more industrially-useful precious metal jumped, signalling tight supply-demand conditions in global trading and storage hub London.

The rebound came as Bitcoin, base metals and US tech stocks also rallied while the US Dollar paused its rebound on the currency market.

Trading back at $4950 per Troy ounce − a new all-time high just 2 weeks ago − the price of gold recovered 45.9% of the $1190 plunge made by Monday night from last Thursday's fresh record gold price highs close to $5600 per ounce.

Silver, in contrast, remained 37.5% below that day's all-time high of $121 per ounce. But trading at $76.65 per ounce, London bullion was higher than any New York Comex future as far out as the July contract, signaling tight availability of physical supplies amid strong demand from 'bargain hunting' investors.

London lease rates to borrow silver bullion said the same, with a leap to 6.3% annualized on 1-month deals.

While well below the all-time spike of October 2025's silver squeeze, that nears the previous historic highs seen during last year's dislocation of London bullion by banks and traders moving silver to New York for fear of the Trump White House imposing trade tariffs on imports of metal.

"It seems likely that the bottom is approaching," says former Tokyo trader and now head of the Japan Bullion Market Association Bruce Ikemizu.

"The precious metals mania is just one extreme area of excess in the financial system," says an editorial in the Financial Times.

"In cryptocurrency, private capital markets and indeed the current AI-fuelled stock market boom, periods of spectacular gains should act as red flags, not just a calling card."

US technology stocks last night closed at the lowest in almost 5 months, losing 12.7% from  end-October's all-time high on the S&P Information Technology index before jumping 2.8% at Friday's opening in New York.

Bitcoin last night hit a 15-month low near $60,000, its cheapest since September 2024 − back before the re-election of crypto-friendly US President Trump − but rallied almost 10% on Friday.

Copper meantime rallied hard from a 5-week low but still showed its worst weekly loss since last April's 'Liberation Day' plunge, while nickel also bounced after plunging back towards Monday's new 2026 lows.

"Trump's nomination last week of Kevin Warsh to lead the US Federal Reserve from May helped to stabilise the Dollar and contributed to the cooling in metals markets," says the FT, "[because] the former central bank governor has been viewed by investors as an orthodox pick, relative to other shortlisted candidates."

In particular, BlackRock executive Rick Rieder − who ran strategy and credit at financial-crisis disaster Lehman Brothers − was reportedly interviewed for the Fed chair by Trump in mid-January, with speculators on prediction-market Kalshi then putting his odds ahead of Warsh's prior to the President's announcement.

"I have known him for a long, long time − back in the financial crisis days where he was in public service, and I was minister of finance at the time," said European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde of Warsh this Thursday after holding Eurozone interest rates unchanged.

"So we go back a long way, and I very much welcome the announcement."

Over on the FX market, the Dollar today slipped 0.1% on its DXY index after rallying by 1.7% from last Thursday's 4-year low.

Giant silver ETF the iShares Silver Trust (NYSEArca: SLV) meantime saw a sharp 0.8% contraction yesterday as shareholders liquidated stock.

But for the week so far, the SLV had still expanded to need 724 additional tonnes of bullion backing, growing by 4.7% with its biggest weekly inflow since the #silversqueeze ramp on social media of New Year 2021.

"While $SLV turnover has started to normalise" from last Friday's $40bn explosion of silver ETF trading volume, says derivatives platform Saxo Bank's analyst Ole Hansen, "interest in call options has continued to build as prices fell further, suggesting many traders still view the move as an opportunity.
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"[So] any sharp rebound carries the risk of a repeat as option sellers would be covering their negative gamma though the buying of ETFs or futures" to hedge their price exposure.

Rebounding over $10 per ounce from last night's new 7-week low, silver still fixed at London's midday auction beneath $75 per Troy ounce, its lowest benchmark price since the first trading day of 2026.

Week-to-week in London, silver lost 27.5% from last Friday's fix to 12 noon today, its steepest weekly drop since losing 29.8% from Easter 2011's re-touch of the January 1980 all-time high at $50 per ounce.

With No.1 silver and gold consumer nation China set to shut next Friday for the week-long Chinese New Year celebrations, "The seasonal trends and data indicate one can't be short precious metals if China is increasingly setting global prices into their most important national holiday," says a note from Swiss bullion refining and finance group MKS Pamp's strategist Nicky Shiels.

"[But] that may be a double-edged sword. If the thinking is that the global price setter will be out for 10 days, [that risks] accentuating [volatility in] an already liquidity-and-balance sheet constrained market."