Gold silver prices surge to record highs in 2025, strong outlook for 2026

Gold’s stratospheric rally, the best percentage gain since 1979, surprised even the most bullish metal experts, as Wall Street firms chased the run-up to the rally. The precious metal, which settled at $2,606 last December, rose more than 66% in 2025, hitting a series of new highs, and settled around the $4,325 level at the end of the year.

Looking ahead, companies, including Bank of America, see the yellow metal reaching $5,000 an ounce due to continued central bank buying, rising US fiscal policy deficits and a weak US dollar, concluding its worst year since 2017 with the Wall Street Journal Dollar Index falling more than 6%.

“I think they’re still underinvested in right now,” Michael Weidner, a strategist at Bank of America, said during a metals roundtable he hosted in mid-December. “And gold markets typically don’t finish because of the overboughtness that gold markets have reached, and because the underlying drivers that actually started the bull market have subsided, which frankly we’re not seeing. I think everything I explained before and what made us bullish I think is still very much in place now.”

While the price target is about 14% ahead of current levels, “the Fed’s hawkish bias poses a risk,” Weidner wrote.

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In addition to gold, silver had its record year with gains of over 142% while copper advanced over 41%, the largest single-year net and percentage gain since 2009.

MacroMavens President Stephanie Bomboy, who has been surprised by the pace of the rise in precious metals, sees more to come this year.

“I think I’m surprised at how quickly we’ve gotten to these numbers although I think there’s a lot more to come because the rationale behind me wanting to buy hard assets on paper has actually barely gotten started and that rationale was primarily my expectation that we would see a resumption of QE (quantitative easing) and we did. I know they’re not calling it QE, non-QE or QE-lite or anything else. They’re just dipping their toes in the water, and I think what’s going to happen when we turn the page to 2026 is that the balance sheet will become the primary source of monetary stimulus,” Bomboy told FOX Business’ Charles Payne. “Balance sheet expansion is outright monetary degradation and there is nothing better for precious metals than that,” she added.

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The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point in December, the third straight cut in 2025. Officials also signaled a resumption of purchases of Treasuries.

“As detailed in today’s statement from the New York Fed, Reserve Management purchases will reach $40 billion in the first month and may remain elevated for a few months to mitigate expected near-term pressures in money markets. After that, we expect the volume of Reserve Management purchases to decline, although the actual pace will depend on market conditions,” Chair Powell reviewed in his December press conference.