I have been enthusiastic about precious metals for years. There are a couple of reasons why I was able to defy my own instincts to just short everything in sight and make a special exception for precious metals:
- I wanted to do whatever I could to get away from being labeled nothing but a permabear, so I wanted an entire sector for which I could be a cheerleader;
- I perceived the success of precious metals as a hearty poke in the eye to central bankers around the world, so philosophically it was a very agreeable position.
I just randomly jumped back a couple of years to offer up a tidbit of evidence that I loved precious before loving precious was cool, and I found one not very subtly titled Go Go Gold in which I state how bullish GDX and GDXJ look. They’re up about 250% since then. Not bad!
I offer that as a preface to some musings about precious metals. I started buying physical bullion in size when silver was only $7 and, later, when gold was about $1200. I have managed to hold on to most of this since selling it is inconvenient. In sharp contrast to this, in my trading, I’ve probably captured, oh, about half a percent or so of the overall potential of my precious metals bullishness thanks to my paper hands. I hate to whine about this personal circumstance, but my self-flagellation regarding my inability to simply hang on tight to my positions has been fairly epic lately.
Anyway, let’s talk about some metals of note.
Gold
The core pattern is this massive cup with handle base, which took years to form. Once it completed at the $2,000 level, it absolutely blasted higher, rising well over 100% in a matter of months.
Looking closer, this time at the ETF for gold, you can see how it has been progressing in a series of right triangle continuation patterns. It looks very close to completing yet another one, which could well send gold over $5,000 for the first time early in the new year.
The radio chart comparing gold with the US dollar index shows how the metal has absolutely beaten the pants off of the fiat dollar.
For those who consider stocks to be the ultimate inflation hedge, it looks like gold is beginning to rally against even a surging stock market, with the gold/equity ratio producing a very clean base which has broken to the upside.
Gold has already come very far, very fast, but I think it’s outsized strength this year is indicative of something truly epic happening beneath the surface. Folks holding cash simply don’t realize how swiftly its value is crumbling.
Silver
As good as gold’s year has been, silver’s has been better. Like gold, silver has rocketed to prices never seen before.
Looking closer at the ETF, the metal hammered out a very well-formed rounded bottom and, although it had some stalling and lurching for a few months in its completion, once the pattern was finally done, this thing was off to the races.
By normalizing silver by pricing it against equities, we can see how this might be just the beginning of a long and much more substantial run (which would require higher silver prices, lower equity prices, or both).
And, versus the backed-by-nothing-but-air U.S. dollar, the blast higher has been particularly impressive.
Palladium & Platinum
I’m lumping these two metals together, because their volume is a tiny fraction of the others, plus they tend to move in tandem. Palladium caught my eye early in 2025, and it went on to complete its own base and has recently really come into its own.
Platinum’s ascent has been even more extraordinary. Whereas palladium has a long way to go before it is in the neighborhood of its lifetime highs, platinum got there rapidly and effortlessly.
The ETF for palladium signaled the tremendous power of this move by the very visible increase in the volume being traded.
The same can be said for platinum, whose volume also went up substantially in recent months.
As with gold and silver, palladium has hammered out a truly pristine bullish base when compared to the S&P 500, and over the past couple of months it has pushed beautifully off of this foundation.
As good as 2025 was to precious metals, I think 2026 is going to be good as well. I keep telling myself that these things have to backtrack at some point to provide better entry prices, but frankly it just hasn’t been happening lately. I’m not sure what would finally compel these things to soften up so they weren’t so brutally expensive, but I do think the sky-high sentiment surrounding precious metals, particularly with respect to silver, has created a “priced for perfection” scenario.
I’ll be cheering on this entire sector continuously, but there’s no way I’m going to be chasing these items at prices, and with momentum, like this.
