Silver rebounds from 8-month low, gold price defends $4,000

Silver rebounded from an eight-month low on Monday and gold held a key support line, as reports of mediation efforts in the US-Iran war cooled oil prices and traders weighed whether the Federal Reserve will lift interest rates at its meeting later this month.

Comex silver futures rose 1.5% to $56.74 an ounce by late morning in New York, after touching $55.50 on Friday, the metal’s weakest since late November 2025. Silver ended last week down about 5%.

Gold eased 0.3% to $4,005 an ounce, clinging to the $4,000 line it narrowly defended last week after a dip to $3,986 on Thursday. Bullion fell below $4,000 repeatedly in June, its worst month since the 2008 financial crisis, and is down 25% from January’s record. An ounce of gold bought just under 71 ounces of silver on Monday, down from 72 before the weekend.

The world’s biggest bullion buyer is offering little help. Chinese wholesale gold demand sat near decade lows in June and local gold ETFs posted their worst month of outflows on record, the World Gold Council said last week, even as the central bank extended its buying streak to 20 months.

Both metals remain hostage to the inflation outlook. With American strikes aimed at keeping the Strait of Hormuz open entering a ninth straight night, the five-month-old US-Iran conflict has kept energy prices elevated, pushing average US gasoline prices above $4 a gallon for the first time since June.

Swap traders see just over a 10% chance of a hike at the Fed’s July meeting but have fully priced in at least one increase by year-end, and Cleveland Fed president Beth Hammack on Friday joined a growing chorus of officials voicing concern over inflation.

“Gold is showing a relatively muted reaction to the spike in oil prices, which to me reflects some investor apathy around geopolitics,” Justin Lin, an analyst at Global X ETFs, told Bloomberg, adding that investor focus is shifting to the Fed’s rate path.

‘An awful lot of debt’

Veteran metals analyst John Gross, publisher of The Copper Journal, notes gold and silver set their records in the same late-January week and are now testing support together: $4,000 for gold, and $55 for silver, with the next line at $50. For the bull market to survive, both will have to make new highs, he wrote in Friday’s report. Anything short of that is just a correction.

Gross also flags a warning sign in equities leverage data. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority figures show debit balances in US margin accounts hit $1.5 trillion in June, up 67% since the end of 2024, far outpacing the 23% to 36% gains in the major stock indexes over the same stretch. If markets begin to pull back, there is “an awful lot of debt that will have to be repaid” through margin calls, he wrote.

Physical demand is offering silver some support. India’s restrictions on silver imports have created shortages in the local market, with dealer premiums climbing to $6.50 an ounce this month, a six-month high, Reuters reported.

Precious metals equities idled, with Newmont up 0.3% and Barrick down 0.3% in morning New York trade, while silver miners lagged the metal’s bounce: Pan American Silver added 0.3%, Coeur Mining fell 1.9% and Hecla Mining lost 1.3%. Coeur trades at about half its 52-week peak and Hecla at less than half.

Silver is down 20% in 2026 and 53% below January’s all-time high of $121.64 an ounce, but still up almost 49% over the past 12 months. Gold, off 7% this year, remains about 20% higher than a year ago.

(With files from Bloomberg and Reuters)