(Feb 5): Silver fell sharply, erasing a two-day recovery, as the white metal struggled to find a price floor following a historic market rout. Gold also declined.
Spot silver tumbled as much as 16.6% on Thursday, having briefly recovered above US$90 ($114.70) an ounce in early Asian trading. Meanwhile, spot gold dropped as much as 3.5% in choppy trading.
“Sentiment seems to have turned soggy across most asset classes, including regional equities and metals,” said Christopher Wong, a strategist at Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp Ltd. “This underscores fragile sentiment” and has created “a feedback loop amid thin market liquidity”, he said.
Precious metals soared last month in a rally underpinned by speculative momentum, geopolitical upheaval and concerns about the US central bank’s independence. The surge came to a sudden halt at the end of last week, with silver seeing its biggest ever daily drop on Friday and gold plunging the most since 2013.
Markets are weighing the policy implications of Kevin Warsh’s nomination as Federal Reserve chair, with President Donald Trump saying Wednesday he would not have nominated him for the role had he expressed a desire to hike interest rates. Trump said in an NBC News interview there was “not much” doubt the Fed would lower rates again — a tailwind for precious metals, which don’t pay interest.
“Price action is likely to remain volatile until there is greater certainty on the monetary policy outlook,” Standard Chartered plc analysts including Sudakshina Unnikrishnan said in a note. Some of this near-term volatility is resulting from investors redeeming their holdings in exchange-traded products, they said, but “structural drivers remain intact and we continue to expect a rebuild to the upside”.
See also: Vance pitches price floors for key minerals to counter China
Silver plunged 12.7% to US$76.9495 an ounce as of 11.18am in Singapore. Spot gold was 2.1% lower at US$4,859.20 an ounce. Platinum and palladium fell. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index rose 0.1%.
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