Podcast: Play in new window
Gold and silver just delivered their strongest week in months, with gold rallying to $4,410 and silver climbing above $65. Zoom out and the picture is even better: gold is up roughly 12% in just three weeks off its recent lows, and silver has jumped about 18%. After a long summer of grinding sideways, the metals are stair-stepping higher again — and the setup for what comes next is worth paying attention to.
Let’s take a look at where prices stand as of Wednesday, August 12:
The price of gold is up 3.7%, sitting at $4,410.
The price of silver is up 5.4%, sitting at $65.25.
Platinum is flat at $1,750.
Palladium is flat at $1,360. Both white metals had their big move the prior week and are catching their breath.
Looking over at the paper markets…
The S&P 500 is up about 0.5% at 7,750, right in the range it’s been dancing around for weeks.
The US Dollar Index is up about 0.25%, back at the 100 level.
The Rebound Takes Hold — But Respect the Ceiling
Three weeks ago gold was sitting near its lows around $3,900–$4,000. Today it’s back to $4,410 — a 12% move in under a month, and one that hearkens back to the explosive action of early 2026. Silver’s $10 climb over the same stretch is an 18% move.
A month ago, we flagged $4,400 as the level to watch, and gold has now stepped right up to it. That’s the good news. The caution is that $4,400 is also a genuine resistance zone — a price where bulls and bears have fought before, which tends to make it a temporary ceiling. From here the market could push through, or it could chop sideways for a while as it works through that overhead supply.
Here’s the discipline we’d encourage: this is still a short-term, cyclical recovery until proven otherwise. We won’t start talking about a resumed leg of the bull market until gold clears and holds around $5,000. It’s entirely possible for gold to run to $4,700 or even $4,800 on this bounce and still be inside a short-term corrective phase. Knowing that in advance keeps you from chasing strength and lets you buy weakness instead.
Positioning Is Overwhelmingly Bullish
Underneath the price action, the professional money is leaning hard in one direction. Commitment of Traders data shows managed money and other reportables roughly 10-to-1 long gold. Even the producers and manufacturers — who almost always carry short hedges against their inventory — aren’t even 2-to-1 short right now. Across nearly every category, the positioning points to upward pressure.
Wall Street sentiment echoes it. A number of major firms are calling for $4,700 to $5,000 gold by year-end, and Citigroup is publicly targeting $75 silver over the same window. When the big-money crowd and the futures positioning line up on the same side, it doesn’t guarantee a straight line higher — but it tells you the momentum is real, not a retail head-fake.
One thing to keep an eye on: despite silver’s outperformance, the gold-to-silver ratio has barely budged, slipping only from about 72 to 67 this week. For ratio traders, it means the outsized silver-to-gold swap window hasn’t reopened yet — patience for now.
Don’t Fear the Pullback
If you follow the four-cycle wave pattern (Elliott Wave theory, or simply “two steps forward, one step back”), the recent lows arguably marked the end of the D wave — the largest decline in the sequence. That would place us at the very start of the A wave: a real but relatively shallow advance.
What matters for your strategy is what comes after. Expect the A wave to be followed by a B-wave retracement — a normal pullback that can be unpredictable in timing and depth. Then the C wave is where the market historically blows through prior highs into the bigger numbers analysts are calling for in 2027 and 2028 — the $7,000, $8,000, even $10,000 gold conversations.
The takeaway: if this rally tops out somewhere around $4,700–$4,800, or even revisits $5,000 and falls back, don’t get discouraged. That’s textbook behavior for this stage of the cycle, not a sign the trend is broken. The real move is still ahead of us, which is exactly why accumulating on the dips beats waiting for a “perfect” bottom that rarely announces itself.
The Monetary Backdrop Still Points Up
None of this happens in a vacuum. The fundamentals underneath the metals keep reinforcing the same long-term story:
- Money supply is at record highs. Global money supply just hit $103.2 trillion, and it keeps climbing. Lay that growth over the gold chart or the S&P 500 and it’s largely responsible for both — and central banks show no sign of stopping.
- Debt and interest costs are exploding. U.S. debt sits around $40 trillion, and we’re now spending more than $1 trillion a year just to service the interest. This week’s modest inflation reading lowers the odds of a rate hike, which only adds fuel.
- Yield-curve control is quietly back. The 30-year yield is at its highest since 2007. To keep a lid on rates, the Fed has ramped up its short-term Treasury buying from roughly $195 billion up to $500 billion just since December 2025. Without that intervention, yields would be meaningfully higher.
- Sovereign stress is spreading. The U.S. recently stepped in with $5–10 billion to prop up the yen after Japan dumped roughly $100 billion in Treasurys in a matter of months — a reminder of how fragile the bond market plumbing has become.
- China is turning gold back into money. Beijing continues pulling gold out of London and into Hong Kong depositories, building trading infrastructure to tokenize it as high-quality, liquid collateral. They aren’t calling it money — but functionally, that’s what it’s becoming.
Meanwhile, margin debt on Wall Street sits near $1.5 trillion, helping push equity valuations to the second-most-expensive level in history — past the 1929 peak and only just behind the dot-com bubble. That’s the backdrop that makes physical, unleveraged, non-hackable metal look less like a speculation and more like insurance.
Here to Help
The team at McAlvany Precious Metals has a collective 75 years of experience investing in the precious metals market. We’re happy to talk through your goals on a no-obligation, complimentary consultation. Reach out to us at 800-525-9556.
