Summary: Gold Breaks Records as Global Tensions Boil Over
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Gold Hits Historic Weekly Close: Gold surged to its highest weekly close on record at $3,433/oz following Israel’s airstrikes on Iran and retaliatory missile strikes on Tel Aviv—underscoring its role as the premier safe-haven asset amid geopolitical crises.
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Safe-Haven Demand Surges Across Metals: Gold, silver, and platinum all saw increased investor interest driven by spiking oil prices, escalating geopolitical tensions, and rising global economic uncertainty.
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Platinum Breakout Signals Supply Strain: Platinum has dramatically outperformed, triggering concerns of a physical squeeze, with NYMEX warehouse stocks down nearly 45% in recent months despite increased margin requirements.
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Gold’s Role in Sovereign Reserves Climbs: According to the Financial Times, gold is now the second-largest collective reserve asset globally, surpassing the euro and signaling a return to its historical role in monetary systems.
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Goldman Sachs, China & The New Gold Standard: China's massive gold accumulation—on par with U.S. gold reserve builds during WWI and WWII—hints at a shifting monetary order, increasingly backed by physical bullion.
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Commercial Banks Score Massive Profits on Bullion Trades: Q1 2025 was the most profitable in five years for bullion trading desks at banks like JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley, echoing the 2020 COVID-era gold rush.
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Silver’s Fundamentals Gain Wall Street Attention: UBS and TD Securities both reiterated bullish outlooks on silver, forecasting a move toward $40/oz driven by ongoing supply deficits and improving industrial demand.
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COMEX Warehouse Trends Diverge: Gold inventories on COMEX are down roughly 15% from recent peaks, while silver holdings remain relatively stable—yet Indian unsecured silver ETFs saw 8 million oz inflows, a noteworthy shift.
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Central Bank Gold Mistakes Revisited: The update revisits the irony of European Central Banks having dumped 4,000 tons of gold at a fraction of today’s prices prior to the 2008 financial crisis—highlighting the perils of short-sighted monetary strategy.
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ECB Rate Shift Reinforces Gold’s Monetary Status: Recent commentary from the European Central Bank highlights gold’s re-emergence as a primary monetary reserve asset, underscoring diminishing confidence in fiat currencies amid long-term inflationary pressures.
Gold Price Hits Record High, Platinum Supply Squeeze, Central Banks Boost Gold Reserves, and Bullion Banks Profit
Gold prices soared near new all-time price highs this morning and finished with it highest weekly close ever following overnight attacks by Israel on Iran. Iran responded today with missile strikes hitting Tel-Aviv's city center.
As oil prices spike and investors rush toward safe-haven assets, rising geopolitical tensions, potential trade disruptions, and mounting economic uncertainty are all fueling renewed demand and longer term interest for gold, silver, and even platinum.
Four days ago under calm oil market conditions, outspoken short term gold bear, Bank of America's head of commodities and derivatives research Francisco Blanch described gold needing a shock to induce higher price levels short term. Perhaps this sad recent violence escalation in the middle east is that shock. Have a listen.
The fundamental truth of the matter is none of those three precious metals need acts of war or further violence to escalate in price as time proceeds.
Platinum has moved so hard of late it has literally blown through the formatting of this year to date performance chart
I've gave my industry chart friend Nick Laird of CholdChartRUs.com a heads up to reformat this chart, we'll get an update by tomorrow my bet.
We'll get further into platinum's recent price explosion later in this week's Bullion Market update.
But first the ECB and the Financial Times reminded the world this week that gold is now the 2nd largest reserve held by collective governments, having blown past the fiat euro well over a year ago yet only now is that news being publicly disseminated so broadly.
The fact that gold as a percentage of government reserves is sharply rising of late is not an anomaly. It is actually a returning to the historical norm where upwards of 40% are more of sovereign savings are Official Gold Reserves.
In the early 1980 gold bullion bull market mania the percentage rose towards 65%, if history were to again rhyme in time, that's 5 figure fiat US dollar per ounce gold pricing potential.
When we look at this chart what is the gross historic anomaly is the proliferation of fiat currencies and the bonds that bind them claiming to be safe haven assets, all while likely staring down decades of secular bear market to come on paper promise piles.
Billionaire investor Jeff Gundlach spoke to some of these very same points this week.
Before the 2008 GFC woke the world up to the fragility of this current financial system, mostly European Central Banks and other pretend financial know it alls decided to sell off some 4,000 ton of gold anywhere from over 1/2 to 1/7th the current spot price gold closed this week.
Any studied gold market analyst knows, since the 2008 Financial Crisis both Russia and China have been out mining gold vs most of the rest of the world.
Goldman Sachs has an ongoing London gold over the counter chart that throws darts at how many tons per month China is pulling from that venue.
Here's the bigger chart that matters longer term.
China has literally been buying and importing gold tonnage in size not seen since the great USA gold reserve importations spanning WW1 and WW2 combined.
It was this great green colored pile representing our then over 20,000 tons of gold.
The old Bretton Woods agreement and the US Treasury promise piles that have daisy chained ever since are going to be getting accounted by gold as time proceeds, the emerging world is already showing by its actions that is the world we are likely to be living in again in time.
The spot silver and gold markets traded mixed on the week with silver moving lightly up sideways, whereas the middle eastern missile launching caught a safe haven bid for gold.
The spot silver price closed at 36.30 oz bid and the spot gold price had its highest weekly close ever at $3,433 oz bid.
The spot gold silver ratio rose on gold's strength this week to close mid-94.
Commercial bank bullion trading desks had their best profitability performance over the last five years in the first quarter 2025.
Remember the precious metals Trump tariff scare and the massive London outflows of bullion to the COMEX NYMEX warehouses at premium?
Bank desks like JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and other reported over half a billion in profits from the activity in the first quarter. The only more profitable somewhat recent quarter verse that data was the 2020 Covid bullion rush out of London into the COMEX which produced over $1 billion in profits for JP Morgan alone in 2020.
From its recent collective peak near 45 million oz, about 7 million oz or 15% of underlying gold has outflowed collective COMEX gold warehouses.
Silver COMEX warehouse have barely begun to draw down although unsecured silver ETFs are catching a bid especially in India adding over 8 million oz amongst their collective 15 unsecured silver ETFs and ETPs.
Drawdowns from Platinum NYMEX warehouse are flashing a warning signal have cut down by nearly -45% in the last few months alone.
And even with today's large price selloff and recent margin requirement raisings in NYMEX platinum futures trading, the underlying issue appears to be a scrambling physical shortage judging from recent data out of London.
David Jensen highlighted this week.
READ his piece.
Finally as we started this week, there are more bank and commodity research desk calls for silver potentially running towards $40 oz spot in the not to far future.
We can add Swiss bank giant UBS as another bank calling for $40 oz silver.
And this week TD Securities Daniel Ghali made the case for silver to climb based on silver's bullish fundamentals he has been pounding the table over for some time now.
Another silver bull in the face of continual supply deficits has spoken. Apparently platinum is showing silver the way forward.
That will be all for this week's SD Bullion Market Update.
And as always, take great care of yourselves and those you love.
References:
Gold Needs Shock for Price to Break Away: BofA’s Blanch
https://youtu.be/aNdZRznzHbg?si=kIFCHNTaVe-uHZk8
TD: Why silver may continue to outshine gold
https://youtu.be/pq8HPr5gTP4?si=MGoT9R9UYzSu3r8m
Bank gold traders reaped $500 million as tariff panic set in
https://archive.is/Aof9o
Jeffrey Gundlach on US Treasuries, Gold, Fed, AI, Private Credit, Trump
https://youtu.be/98-vanEWj8E?si=CVsnwXfnC04T4YX-&t=426
London Platinum Market Indicates The Beginning Of A Squeeze
https://jensendavid.substack.com/p/london-platinum-market-indicates
