Editor’s Note
This article highlights silver’s exceptional performance in 2025, with a gain of over 145% marking its second-best annual surge in nearly five decades, based on data from ActivTrades.
From January to December 2025, the price of silver surged by more than 145 percent, marking the second-largest gain in 46 years, according to ActivTrades trading platform.
Platinum rose 128.5 percent last year, its biggest gain since 1979 when it increased by 65.47 percent. Gold increased by 64 percent in 2025, its second-largest rise in 46 years. The price of palladium increased by more than 76 percent last year.
Precious metals are rising in price and continue to reach historic highs amid expectations that the Federal Reserve (Fed) will continue to cut interest rates, global risk aversion, fears of scarcity, and hedging against dollar weakness.
Growing geopolitical tensions in Venezuela, the Middle East, and Africa, as well as the widespread weakness of the dollar against other currencies and the typical low year-end liquidity, drove the price of gold, silver, and platinum to unprecedented levels in the commodities market.
Sustained purchases of commodities by central banks for coin minting, as well as record flows into gold-backed ETFs, added luster to precious metals.
Investors found a safe haven in silver, gold, and platinum against fiscal and trade risks in the United States. They consolidated gold’s status as a strategic active metal in a high-volatility environment. Not even cryptocurrencies were used by investors to hedge against any risk aversion in the stock market.
According to the economist, silver has outperformed gold throughout 2025 because it has higher demand in the world’s industrial and manufacturing sector.
On December 29, 2025, “silver prices recorded a drop of 8.3 percent, after having reached intraday highs of $80 per ounce in the session,” indicates a report from Grupo Financiero Banamex.
The silver adjustment is attributed to profit-taking after having rebounded 35 percent during December.
Gold retreated 5 percent in the third-to-last session of 2025, after having surpassed $4,550 per ounce, it adds. With the arrival of 2026, precious metals started with gains and are on track to set new record prices.