Gold’s February contract topped $5,100 an ounce for the first time ever, rising as high as $5,108.
It’s been a long journey for gold and silver to reach their highest levels on record, but the steep climb for both over the past 12 months has been a notable one — marked by significant, market-moving events, with many of those tied to actions by President Donald Trump.
That’s a big reason why gold climbed to its never-before-seen $5,029-an-ounce price on Sunday, after silver reached a milestone of its own at $100 on Friday.
“Headlines matter in the short term” — Greenland today, Iran or Venezuela tomorrow, Federal Reserve independence the day after,” said Stephen Innes, managing partner at SPI Asset Management. “Those stories come and go and they absolutely create short-term swings as traders fade or chase the tape.”
‘Headlines matter in the short term….Those stories come and go and they absolutely create short-term swings as traders fade or chase the tape.’
— Stephen Innes, SPI Asset Management
On Friday, it settled at a record high of $4,979.70 an ounce, up about 1.4% for the session. It was up 8.4% for the week, logging the best weekly performance since March 27, 2020, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Silver for March delivery traded at $104.54 an ounce on Sunday. On Friday, it climbed nearly 5.2% to settle at $101.33 an ounce, the highest finish on record. That day also marked the metal’s first leap above the psychologically important $100 mark. Silver was up 14.5% for the week — the best weekly performance for a most-active contract since Nov. 28, 2025.
In the past week alone, both precious metals saw impressive gains, and gold’s weekly performance was the strongest “since the depths of the COVID crisis in 2020,” said Adrian Ash, director of research at BullionVault.
Gold and silver bugs had predicted that “a fiat currency breakdown would spur a surge in global demand for the ‘hard money’ metals,” he said.
Market-moving events
Following Trump’s inauguration day on Jan. 20, 2025, gold managed to move up a bit more than silver, but it was April 2’s “Liberation Day” tariffs last year that sparked a notable move for gold. U.S. benchmark stock indexes declined, and gold settled that day at a fresh record high then fell back down again.
At that time, the gold-to-silver ratio, which represents the number of ounces of silver needed to buy one ounce of gold, spiked higher to around 106, said Stefan Gleason, president and chief executive at Money Metals Exchange.
A higher ratio suggests that silver is historically undervalued relative to gold. Prices for silver saw a mostly steady rise in the months that followed “Liberation Day,” in what some would say was a game of catch-up to gold’s price gains.
In early June 2025, both metals got a boost, with gold climbing back to its “Liberation Day” price highs after Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act spooked foreign investors with its “Revenge Tax” clause, said BullionVault’s Ash.
By late August of last year, Trump had threatened to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, raising concerns about the political independence of the U.S. central bank. That led some to seek out the safety of precious metals.
Less than two months later, in October, silver prices topped $50 an ounce amid “worsening signs of supply dislocation worldwide,” said Ash. “That was significant because that was the “big top” from both 1980 and 2011, he said.
Silver also got boost when the U.S. Interior Department added it to the nation’s critical minerals list in November. At the time, Gleason touted the metal’s monetary and industrial uses.
Geopolitical events in the first month of 2026 — the U.S. arrest of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro and Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on countries opposed to a U.S. takeover of Greenland — have contributed to the safe-haven appeal of both gold and silver.
Where to next?
The key question now is: Where do these metals go from here?
Ahead of gold’s climb above $5,000, SPI Asset Management’s Innes told MarketWatch that he believes the true story behind the yellow metal is “fiscal,” which refers to how a government’s manages its money.
“Investors are paying for stability over leverage in a world where deficits keep growing, policy credibility keeps getting tested and sovereign balance sheets are doing more talking than central bankers,” he said. “That backdrop hasn’t changed just because one geopolitical risk has temporarily defused.”
Right now, “crowding” in the gold trade is real and it could be seen as overvalued. But as long as it continues to behave the way it has — “consolidated rather than collapsing — the broader trend remains intact,” Innes said.
In terms of silver, Andrew Thrasher, senior portfolio manager at Financial Enhancement Group, said its price appreciation has been “truly incredible.”
Its price is now over 100% above its 200-day moving average, which means the “proverbial rubber band is extremely stretched,” he said. And “it appears investors and traders alike are reducing exposure.”
Silver could still continue higher, said Threasher. He warned, however, that “the price trend has become extremely unstable and euphoric.”
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