Gold and Silver Sink to 7-Month Lows Even as Bond Yields Tumble

GOLD and SILVER prices sank to fresh 7-month lows Wednesday, tumbling as much as 4.5% and 10.1% for the week so far even while traders trimmed their bets on the US Fed hiking interest rates next month and bond yields eased sharply.

Silver fell as low as $58.13 per troy ounce, down 52.0% from end-January's record silver peak above $120, before regaining $1.

Gold fell through $4000 for the first time since mid-November, losing as much as 29.1% from its New Year spike near $5600 before rallying almost $50 from $3965.

"Gold's correction has become increasingly difficult to ignore," says Dutch bank ING, joining the roster of banks now cutting their 2026 price forecasts as gold trades almost 1/3rd below end-January's record peak.

"Higher yields, a stronger Dollar and weaker ETF demand are likely to weigh on gold for longer than we previously anticipated," ING explains, reducing its average-price outlook for the final 3 months of this year from $5000 to $4600.

"The technical positions are not good for either metal," says analyst Rhona O'Connell at brokerage StoneX, reviewing the chart of gold and silver prices.

While global equity bourses were mixed on Wednesday, the US-listed megacaps rallied from the past month's near-10% drop, pulling the wider New York stock market higher.

That saw the S&P500 index of US corporations overtake gold's 12-month gain, showing a rise of 21.7% from this time last year as gold's gain slipped to 20.7%.

So-called crypto currency Bitcoin also fell hard yet again, taking its year-on-year losses to more than 42.0% against the rising US Dollar.

Betting on the Federal Reserve raising its key interest rate in 2026 eased a little from Tuesday's levels, but continued to put the market-priced odds of the US central bank raising the cost of borrowing at around 1-in-3 for July, 2-in-3 for September, 3-in-4 for October, and better than 4-in-5 for December.

Prior to the US and Israel attacking Iran on the last day of February, the market had expected the Fed to start cutting rates either at last week's June meeting or next month.

Borrowing costs in the bond market meanwhile sank today, defying the more typical pattern of moving inversely to gold and silver prices, with 10-year US Treasury yields hitting the lowest in nearly 7 weeks at 4.40% per annum.

Crude oil today fell to its cheapest since the first trading day of the Iran war, down 4.9% on the ICE derivatives exchange's August Brent contracts, despite Tehran's chief negotiator calling the 
memorandum of understanding towards a peace plan "a declaration of America’s defeat".

Base metal copper also sank again, losing 5.9% for the week so far on Nymex futures contracts.

Economic data tracked by the Atlanta Fed's GDPNow tool today put the April-to-June pace of US growth at 3.0% per year, the highest (if achieved) since Q4 2024.