Silver Up 1.1%, Gold Falls for Week as US Stocks Hit 5th Record High
Friday, 7/25/2025 16:02
SILVER and GOLD prices slipped on Friday, cutting and erasing this week's earlier gains respectively, as the US stock market set new all-time highs for the 5th session running amid bullish comments from President Trump.
With Asian and European stock markets falling for the day, news-wire headlines reported Trump saying that "We are nearing a trade deal with China" and also that he "got the impression yesterday from [Fed chairman] Powell that he might be ready to lower rates."
Surging
inflows to silver and gold-backed ETF trust funds stalled on Thursday, with the SLV silver product unchanged in size while gold's GLD expanded but the IAU shrank.
Today the price of gold in London erased the last of this week's previous 2.5% spike, dropping back towards $3340 per Troy ounce to show a $15 loss from last Friday.
Silver prices meanwhile fell 2.1% from Wednesday's new 14-year high, but rose for the 4th week running at Friday's 12 noon London auction.
Adding 1.1% from 7 days ago in Dollar terms, that meant silver set its highest week-end price since mid-September 2011 at around $38.70 per Troy ounce.
"Central banks and side-lined investors really need to show up" in gold, says precious metals strategist Nicky Shiels at Swiss bullion refining and finance group MKS Pamp.
"Otherwise," Shiels warned in a note mid-week, "this 'trade premium' can deflate further" from the gold price's current $300 per ounce gain relative to Trump's so-called 'Liberation Day' tariffs announcement of start-April.
"Silver has [meanwhile] taken the baton from platinum, with lease-rate and physical tightness remaining stubbornly well bid."
But the cost to borrow silver bullion in London fell back on Friday to 3.75% per annum on 1-month lease rates, down 1 whole point from its highest in 7 sessions.
Platinum's 1-month lease rate in contrast rebounded to 20.5% per annum after hitting 2-week lows.
With the MSCI World Index of rich-world stock markets flat on Friday from yesterday's fresh all-time high, new economic data put Tokyo inflation, German business confidence, and UK retail sales all weaker than expected.
But Eurozone commercial bank lending, like US durable goods orders, beat analyst forecasts a day after the 20-nation European Central Bank held its key interest rates unchanged.
"Physical gold demand in key Asian hubs was subdued this week," notes Chinese and London bullion bank ICBC Standard, reporting that dealers in No.2 gold consumer nation India are offering discounts of $15 per ounce relative to official import prices, up by one-half from last week's discount.
China's wholesale gold price meantime averaged a discount to London quotes for the first time since late-March, trading around $1.30 per Troy ounce beneath the global benchmark market.
Contrasting with last week's $7.50 premium and an average premium around the historic average of $8 per ounce so far in 2025, that marked the deepest Shanghai discount to London quotes since early February, immediately after China's wholesale market re-opened from a shocking bad Lunar New Year holiday for jewelry demand which saw
retail bar and coin purchases beat adornment buying across the first half of the year in total.
Next week brings the US Fed's July meeting, universally expected to keep overnight Dollar interest rates unchanged at more than twice the level now set by Europe's ECB.
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