Will silver play catch-up?

5 kwi

Last Wednesday, gold closed above $2,300 for the first time ever. It then pulled back a touch, and weakened further following Friday’s strong payroll numbers, before surging to fresh highs. Gold has been on quite a tear over the last six months. Back in early October, it came within a few dollars of breaking below $1,800 per ounce. Since then, it has rallied around 28%, just a few points below the 30% gains made by the NASDAQ 100 over the same period. Silver also experienced a sharp fall on Friday morning, losing over 100 cents from Thursday’s high - a decline of over 3.8%. It also soared later Friday afternoon. These are the kind of daily price moves investors should now expect from precious metals, as they finally wake up from what could be described as a decade-long slumber. It’s interesting to note the relative lack of coverage the gold rally has had when compared to the US stock market. Perhaps that is understandable, given that the story for the stock market is around tech and feverish speculation of how generative AI will develop and affect humanity in the future. In contrast, gold is just a rock you dig up from the ground. Yet it’s this contrast of what is currently unknowable in terms of our technological advances, against what we know about gold through thousands of years of history, that is so compelling. Investors are busy weighing up the value of both.
But it's silver where we could really see fireworks. If we are seeing something similar to the precious metals rallies from 2008/2011, then silver has some catching up to do relative to gold. Gold is currently making new highs, and well above its old record from September 2011. Silver is still some distance below its own record hit in April 2011, just shy of $50.