I’m delighted to see silver break out to a 14-year high this week. It topped $39 on the futures market at one point yesterday.
That said, silver’s 4% rise yesterday was matched by oil’s gain at the same time—but both were dwarfed by copper’s 10% leap on Trump tariff news earlier in the week.
[Blockierte Grafik: https://hostedimages-cdn.aweber-static.com/MTI0ODg1NQ==/original/6040e71dfc444f58a40b1c7d1d6178ba.png][Key Financial Data, 2025-07-12]
Even so, silver was yesterday’s star in the resource sector. It rose more than gold, and oil is still near multi-year lows. Fair enough, but palladium had an even better day than silver—and platinum is kicking all the other “precious” metals’ butts this year.
I find it telling that gold hit a new all-time high just after “Liberation Day” in April, while expensive silvery metals took off in June.
[Blockierte Grafik: https://hostedimages-cdn.aweber-static.com/MTI0ODg1NQ==/original/76e2036ff7414ecaa8de4fb6168d0d31.png]["Precious" Metals, YTD, 2025-07-12]
The timing of these moves tells me that Mr. Market hasn’t just decided to buy all “precious” metals. If that were so, they would all have moved in April with gold—or gold would be moving with them now.
It also doesn’t make sense for all of these silvery metals to move together if the explanation is depletion of Russian stockpiles. Russia isn’t a top silver producer, and it produces more palladium than platinum—but it’s platinum that’s surging the most.
As for the story that Chinese people are switching to platinum jewelry, I just had lunch yesterday with a fellow who lives in China. He knows a big player in the jewelry business who says it’s not so.
He did say, however, that silver has disappeared from the shelves. It’s as though word has gone out from Beijing, and all the silver has been rounded up. This might relate to LME silver stocks plunging this week and silver’s rally yesterday.
As for why China might be hoovering up silver, I don’t know, but I noticed that it reported about a 4x increase in solar installations last month. I’d thought that was due to China deciding to use all the solar panels it wasn’t selling to the US. But if it’s something much bigger than that… well, they’re going to need all the silver they can get.
This sounds great for silver—but then why did palladium move even more?
Rational speculators should keep in mind that the industrial “precious” metals are moving differently from gold. Even central banks count gold as a financial asset (at least in their deeds, if not their words). Not so for silver, nor any of these other expensive silvery metals.
A key point remains that all industrial metals are vulnerable to near-term weakness if the global economy slows in response to Trump Shock—which is alive and well, as we saw this week.
I imagine some angry silver über bulls are thinking of unsubscribing now in disgust, thinking, “Can’t Darth EVER say ANYTHING nice about silver?!”
Well, I did start by saying I’m delighted by the move. I stack silver bullion and I own silver stocks. I’d certainly love to see it move higher. But Mr. Market doesn’t care what we want.
My frequent reminders that silver often moves in response to its industrial demand have never been a bear case. Just the opposite: come the day, I expect silver to outperform gold due to it having industrial demand gold doesn’t.
But I’m not here to evangelize about real money; I’m here to identify investable market trends to help you make money. If you prefer cheerleading to accuracy, then I’m not the Due Diligence Guy for you.
So, here’s what I see at this time:
There’s a significant breakout occurring in multiple pricy industrial metals—but no one has convinced me they know why.
This breakout may indeed be the beginning of something beautiful for silver. I’m not a technical analyst, but I look at silver charts and don’t see much resistance between here and $50.
I’m less excited about platinum and palladium. With Trump specifically putting tariffs on cars, I see them as highly vulnerable to correction.
I’m concerned that all of this is the result of a short-term market squeeze that won’t last.
I wouldn’t buy any of these silvery metals while they’re surging. The time-tested formula is to buy low and sell high, not to chase what’s soaring and hope to sell even higher.
The same applies to copper. The all-time-high copper prices that boosted many copper stocks this week are US COMEX prices. LME prices in the UK are lower than they were a year ago—and copper is a globally fungible commodity.
[Blockierte Grafik: https://hostedimages-cdn.aweber-static.com/MTI0ODg1NQ==/original/efcb860beff64deda04d7462f6aa70d9.png][COMEX and LME Copper, 2025-07-12]
I’m not making a bear case; I’m cautioning against betting the farm on the next big move being higher on any of the above.