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From a purely numerical perspective, the fourth quarter of 2025 was characterised by the fact the gold price exceeded $4,000 for the first time ever and showed few signs of falling back. Indeed, once the $4,000 hurdle was cleared at the morning auction on Wednesday, 8 October, the price never dropped below $3,900 and held above $4,000 from Friday, 7 November through to year end, thus gaining over 10% in Q4.
Impressive though these statistics are, they were dwarfed in the quarter – and actually through the year – by silver’s meteoric rise. In Q4 alone, the silver price gained 52.26% rising from $47.280 on Wednesday, 1 October to close 2025 at $71.990, capping off a year which witnessed a gain of 144.82%.
A Return to Normalcy
Primarily regarding gold, only partially silver, it is interesting through Q4 that despite rapidly rising prices, there was, to quote US President Warren Harding over 100 years ago, something of a ‘return to normalcy’. Harding was talking about the US economy after World War 1, but despite the fact that as 2025 drew to a close, the two major military conflicts – Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Palestine – showed little sign of ending, most commentators, analysts and the media focused almost exclusively on the ‘normal’ market drivers: the US economy, the unemployment rate and the strength/weakness of the dollar, and more specifically, any rate change – actual or anticipated – by the Federal Reserve.
Unfortunately, as Q4 began, the data required to enable formal analysis of the economy failed to materialise following the US government shutdown which lasted until Wednesday, 12 November. This disruption appeared to add fuel to gold’s record-breaking ascent with the price, which had broken $3,800 on Monday, 29 September, carried on through $3,900 on Monday, 6 October, and then – fulfilling predictions from Goldman Sachs and HSBC among others, (perhaps rather more quickly than they had anticipated) – smashed through $4,000 two days later hitting a (temporary) all time high on Friday, 17 October (a.m.) at $4,338.25, a gain of 11.6% from the beginning of the month.
Further support for gold occurred during mid-October with questions about whether the tariffs imposed by President Trump on trade with China were counterproductive, i.e. potentially diminishing the strength of the US economy, and moreover opening the possibility of a trade war.
Finally, towards the end of the quarter, the Fed did move to cut its policy rate by 25 basis points thus increasing pressure on the US dollar, which recorded its worst year in the last eight, according to Trading Economics, with the dollar index falling towards 10%. Dollar weakness tends to mean gold strength (and some commentators are forecasting further Fed rate cuts of 75 basis points next year).
Silver in the Spotlight
However, the main story during this period focused on silver, with the price exceeding $50 for the first time ever on Friday, 10 October, and touching $54.10 on Friday, 17 October, from when there was period either of profit taking or consolidation. After that breathing space which lasted until the beginning of December, the silver price moved inexorably upwards, gaining over 25% to the end of the year to close at $71.990.
To quote the Financial Times (Tuesday, 14 October): “The blistering rally has been driven both by appetite from investors, who see the white metal as a proxy for gold … and by industries including electronics and solar panels. In recent weeks, Indian buyers preparing for the wedding season have also poured into silver.”
Tariff Tumult
Critically, the silver market was also briefly impacted by fears that Trump tariffs would be imposed on the metal, which led traders to build unprecedented stockpiles of the metal in New York (with some making the unusual choice to fly supplies across the Atlantic) to cover possible calls for delivery in settlement of Comex positions. This, in turn, led to concerns about the amount of metal held in London although in fact vault holdings rose by 6.8% in October and a further 3.6% in November. Meanwhile on Thursday, 6 November, the United States added silver to its list of critical minerals.
Longer term factors were also to the fore with, for example, the Silver Institute forecasting that 2025 would be the fifth year in succession when demand exceeded new supply. Equivalently, other calculations suggested that the often-repeated 50/50 division between silver investment, and offtake for commercial/industrial use is being replaced by a 60/40 ratio where 60 is commercial/industrial.
This analysis was echoed by Oxford Economics, an advisory firm, which described silver as ‘the next generation metal’ forecasting that demand from the global automotive industry alone would grow by 3.4% compound between 2025 and 2031, and pointing out that any further shift towards electric vehicles would be particularly consequential given that EVs consume 67-79% more silver than internal combustion engine cars and lorries.
Central Banks
Through Q4, and indeed through 2025 as a whole, central banks were not – by and large – deterred by the increasingly high price of gold from increasing their investment holdings. In its most recent published report, dated Tuesday, 2 December, the World Gold Council (WGC), for example, noted that central banks bought a net 53t of gold in October – the highest monthly total recorded in the first 10 months of the year. The two leading buyers were Poland and Brazil together accounting for 32t or 65.6% of the monthly total.
The only bank reporting a net decline in overall gold holdings, according to the WGC, was the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, but the reduction was minimal at -0.13% (to a total of 2,327t).
That said, an increased level of uncertainty about the activities of the People’s Bank of China was reported by the Financial Times: “China’s unreported gold purchases could be more than 10 times its official figures as it quietly tries to diversify away from the US dollar, say analysts, highlighting the increasingly opaque sources of demand behind bullion’s record breaking rally … Analysts at Société Générale estimate, based on trade data, that China’s total purchases could reach as much as 250 tonnes this year, or more than a third of total central bank demand.”
However, official Chinese figures quoted by Bloomberg said that the PBOC has bought gold every month for the last fourteen, to a total – since November 2024 – of 42 tonnes.
Forecasting or Chasing?
Continuing the pattern established in Q3, the media in Q4 was awash with predictions of the future prices of gold and silver, but in many cases, the forecasters found themselves having to ‘chase the price surge’ as BullionVault put it.
As noted earlier in this report, Goldmans and HSBC found themselves talking about $4,000 gold only two days before that number was achieved on Wednesday, 8 October. On the following day, analysts quoted by Metals Focus were talking in terms of $5,000. The Bank of America was one of these and added in a 2026 prediction of $65 silver (a number surpassed on Wednesday, 17 December 2025). However, Macquarie Bank was quoted on Saturday, 8 November, as saying that precious metals prices had peaked. (May be, but it was interesting that, on the same day, there was a press report that precious metals analysts/traders were involved in a hedge fund hiring spree!)
JP Morgan, meanwhile, was reported on Thursday, 13 November, saying that gold could touch or trade at $5,055 during Q4 2026. Was this a bold or plausible prediction given that the a.m. LBMA London gold price on Thursday, 13 November this year was $4,234.30 and $5,055 is only 20% higher? Not unexpectedly, there are a plethora of views. In early December, for example, the WGC said that the gold price “broadly reflects macroeconomic consensus expectations” suggesting it could remain range bound in 2026 although factors like softer economic growth and geopolitical turmoil “are likely to provide support”. A couple of days later the Bank for International Settlements suggested that the price surge had shifted gold beyond safe haven status to becoming a ‘speculative investment’.
In short, only time will tell although it will be interesting to see whether the professional analysts annually polled by LBMA will be rather more bullish than at the beginning of 2025 when the consensus was that gold’s 2025 price average would be $2,736.69.
One of this group, Nicky Shiels of MKS Pamp SA, has predicted $5,400 by the end of 2026, a gain of some 25%. In BullionVault’s ‘Chasing the Price Surge’ article, referred to above, she also summed up the success (or otherwise) of the 2025 LBMA price forecast competition: “2025 is collectively the largest underestimate margin of error for all four metals in the LBMA’s analyst polling history.”