All-Time Highs: Silver Over $79 and Gold Over $4,500 as China Pays Massive Premiums Over Western Spot Prices On Metals.
- What was supposed to be a quiet, holiday-shortened Christmas week turned into a barn-burner for precious metals, with silver and gold both finishing at historic weekly closes
- Silver absolutely ripped higher, closing the week above $79 per oz, while gold notched a fresh all-time nominal weekly close near $4,531 per oz, reminding folks that these bull markets are very much alive.
- The gold-silver ratio collapsed to around 57:1, a level we haven’t seen in years, signaling silver is finally starting to run faster than its big yellow cousin.
- Much of the action is coming from the East, where Chinese Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) and the Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE) markets are paying massive premiums for silver, platinum, and palladium compared to Western spot prices.
- To put that in perspective, silver has traded above $82 per oz on the SGE, platinum north of $3,100 per oz, and palladium around $2,300 per oz, all well above Western quotes.
- These premiums aren’t about taxes or paperwork — they point to real physical tightness, especially for 1,000-oz silver bars that are getting pulled from Western vaults toward Eastern demand.
- London silver lease rates staying elevated and COMEX registered silver inventories dropping by roughly one-third since September are more signs that physical supply is under strain.
- Add in concerns about future Chinese silver export restrictions and China’s control over a large share of global silver refining, and you’ve got a recipe for continued price pressure.
- Platinum deserves a neighborly nod too — it quietly blew past its old 2008 high, while the gold-platinum ratio has nearly been cut in half in just months.
- Finally, Google Trends shows interest in how to buy gold and silver at all-time highs — and from where I’m standing over the backyard fence, this bull ride still looks like it’s just leaving the gate.
Silver closed at a new all-time high above $79 as gold broke past $4,500, with much of the action coming from the East where China’s SGE and SHFE are paying massive premium gaps for silver, platinum, and palladium versus Western spot prices.
On what should have been a slow Christmas holiday shortened trading week, became anything but.
Basically all week we witnessed the combination of China's SGE & SHFE precious metals markets ramp in local premiums paid for silver, palladium, and platinum respectively.
The bottom half of this SGE silver price chart shows the local premium or discount versus the ongoing quoted NY silver price. The data there is only through Christmas Eve, or through last Wednesday two days ago.
It since ramped even higher.
One of the more diligent Eastern world Twitter X posters, Bai Xiaojun who uses the handle @oriental_ghost has for years now been posting Chinese SGE & SHFE daily closing price reports.
There is no local Chinese VAT intertwined with these large premiums being paid on the far right hand side.
Over $82 oz for silver on the SGE, over $81 on the SHFE. Premiums being paid for platinum and palladium are even crazier in percentage terms above Western price quotes. Nearly $2300 oz for palladium being paid while Western spot price quotes say $1925 oz as of writing this.
Over $3,130 oz for platinum while the latest price quote in the Western world is at $2,446. This week the platinum price blew past its old early 2008 nominal price high near $2300.
The Gold Platinum ratio has been falling extremely fast of late. During Trump tariff chaos in April of this year the Gold Platinum ratio peaked above 3.5 oz of platinum to afford 1 oz of gold, that figure has almost been cut in half since as about 1.85 oz of platinum now affords one oz of gold.
Turning to another ratio that has been falling like a rock of late, the collapsing gold silver ratio had an epic week, seemingly being mainly driven by localized rolling shortages of 1,000 oz silver bars from the Western to the Eastern world.
Lease rates for silver in London remain elevated, signaling low to no available float and 1,000 oz silver bar tightness there.
The deliverable COMEX Registered silver 1,000 bar pile has basically seen 1/3rd of itself yanked since the early Sep 2025 peak, see the the dark green line below.
China's SGE & SHFE silver bar inventories remain low with industrial silver users surely scrambling to stockpile silver before it runs away from them in price and availability.
And then the growing concern about the potential for Chinese silver export restrictions 2026, 2027 to potentially chokepoint fresh silver inventories for itself before exporting to other nations. Estimates are given China's world dominating silver refining capacity that the Chinese control up to 2/3rds of the world's fresh silver bar mined and refined outputs.
This gives China huge price discovery leverage wielding that dominate a silver refining and exportation position.
Indians looking to acquire more silver in 2026 are likely going to have to keep paying local premiums to get what they can. Meanwhile big bank guesses for silver prices in 2026 are already laughably behind the curve that screenshot from this week on CNBC TV-18 in India.
We are starting to get to the point in silver where yes the nominal fiat number go up is indeed fun, and nothing to take for granted or be grateful for.
I have difficulty guessing how high this current run might climb before some price consolidations and market digestions.
One thing is for sure judging by Google Trends data.
United States internet user interest over the ongoing gold price, and silver price has never been higher. That makes sense right? People love seeing number go up, and getting that dopamine hit. It's addictive.www.google.c
But most important for wealth preservation long haul, the public's interest in how to buy gold and how to buy silver has never been higher either.
We're just bull riding fresh out the price breakout gates for silver and platinum.
On the other side of this break, we'll get into some longer term value charts which are ultimately more important than triple digit silver seemingly having now become the consensus base case for 2026.
The spot silver price ripped higher for the week with an extremely bullish close of over $79 oz bid.
The spot gold price ended the week at $4,531 oz bid new nominal price high weekly close for gold as well.
The spot gold silver ratio ends this week at down at 57 oz of spot silver to afford one troy ounce of spot gold.
Breaking into the spot GSR 50s in this run was what I was hoping to see, and looking at the chart, we could go lower 50s.
All the concerned top callers who are newly pretending to be experts in the silver market should remember that the aggregated price outside of NY COMEX hours has ballooned to nearly $400 oz ongoing. So in fiat US dollar terms we got a long road to come.
In the log format of this chart, you can see it's the red spot price line and black NY intra-trading hours price aggregates that have been forced to ramp of late. The blue eastern world line is laying flat near $400 oz.
I remain convinced the red and blue lines will again reconvene later in the mania phase for precious metals, we're just getting climbing.
The Gold vs S&P 500 ratio, basically how much of the US stock market an ounce of gold can buy, well there is a potential technical break that might be coming next year. Ultimately we likely go back to 1 to 1 parity, and then higher towards the 2011 highs, and likely beyond in the final gold mania to come.
Industry colleague and shrewd precious metals chart analyst, Jordan Roy-Byrne points out the Silver is breaking out vs the 60/40 stock and bond portfolio signaling a trend shift were investment capital is flowing into silver and harder assets over underperforming bonds and AI priced for perfection bubble stocks.
The S&P 500 / Silver ratio is also falling like a rock, now at 87 oz of silver to nominally buy one share of the S&P 500
In the pip squeak 2011 silver bull that ratio got down to about 25, and that key ratio masking out all the nominal devalued fiat currency noise, well it fell to the low single digits in early 1980 silver bullion bull blow off top.
The potential for silver to outperform the US stock market by a factor for four to forty fold still exists.
Capital flows and rotations are coming for precious metals, front running them is best, as opposed to being late and overpaying in real value terms.
Merry Christmas, especially to you crazy uncles out there. As time continues onward, they'll finally figure out you're the best crazy like a fox.
Next time we meet, 2026. Gonna be hard to beat this year.
That will be all for this Week's SD Bullion Market Update.
