publication
2026-02-03 10:23
After Friday's crash and Monday's tumult, Tuesday morning brought a massive rebound in precious metals markets. Silver was rising at a double-digit rate, and gold was only a step behind. This means maintaining very high volatility.
On Tuesday at 10:20 a.m., the most active series of New York gold futures contracts increased by nearly 6%, reaching USD 4,930.51 per troy ounce. According to Reuters, this is the strongest daily increase in gold prices since November 2008 – the height of the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-09.
However, we cannot forget that today's increase followed a sharp volte-face on Monday, when gold first fell by USD 486 per ounce (i.e. a drop of almost 10%!), and then rose by almost USD 260/oz., reducing the scale of the decline to 4.6%. The increase from Tuesday morning means a return to the level seen at the opening of this week. On Friday, gold suffered its sharpest daily decline in modern history, falling by more than 10%. and making a massive correction after several months of previous increases.
An even more dynamic movement was observed on the silver futures market, which increased by nearly 12% in the morning, reaching the price of USD 85.98/oz. A day earlier, the price of the white metal first dropped from USD 85 to USD 71.20/oz, and then rose to nearly USD 80. On Friday, the silver price dropped by a record 28%.
The precious metals markets have not been behaving rationally in recent days. The “safe haven” could rise in price by several percent a day, as if the financial world were to end tomorrow. The secular growth trend was multiplied by the inflow of speculative capital, which ultimately led to Friday's crash and Monday's chaos. The latter was also driven by the actions of the authorities of the New York Stock Exchange, which increased the amount of security deposits several times.
Apparently, the pretext for Friday's collapse in precious metals prices was the nomination of Kevin Warsh as chairman of the Federal Reserve. In the past, Mr. Warsh was considered a monetary hawk, so the market could consider him a relatively safe candidate for the new head of the Fed. This removed some of the fear from the market and may have been the trigger for closing long positions in gold and silver contracts.
Now the bullion markets have entered the “shuffling” phase with very high volatility. Some investors are still exiting long positions, realizing significant profits from recent months. And some are loading their wallets with precious metals again, seeing their value at clearly reduced (but still nominally very high) prices.
