Editor’s Note
This article examines the recent extreme volatility in gold and silver markets, highlighting record highs, sharp corrections, and dramatic single-day recoveries. The analysis provides context for investors navigating these unpredictable price swings.
If you own gold and silver, you’ve probably felt dizzy watching prices lately. Both metals hit record highs for weeks in January, then crashed hard at the end of the month. In early February, they bounced back with some of the biggest single-day jumps since the 2008 financial crisis. Gold climbed to nearly US$5,600 an ounce in late January 2026, then dropped fast. It briefly fell below the US$5,000 mark in mid-February before climbing back up — for Canadians, that recent drop meant gold was trading around C$6,363.
Silver’s swings were even wilder. After soaring to record levels, it crashed 27% in a single day in late January — one of its worst days ever. It kept falling for a few more days before shooting back up to trade between US$73 to US$90 an ounce (roughly C$100 to C$120) through mid-February.
Here’s the basic idea: precious metals act like a safety net when markets fluctuate. When times get rough — or just plain weird (is the U.S. really going to invade Greenland?) — investors move their money into gold and silver for their stability.
Here are only four (of many!) distinct causes of this recent rollercoaster ride in precious metal prices.
The first reason gold and silver shot up in January was global instability. On January 3, the United States invaded Venezuela and arrested the country’s president, causing an international uproar. A few days later, President Trump and his team started talking again about invading Greenland, an independent territory under Denmark’s rule. Eight European countries sent troops to Greenland to support Denmark. Trump responded by threatening to hit those countries with tariffs, jeopardizing a previous trade deal made in mid-2025.
Financial markets detest uncertainty and chaos (wars do nothing for global trade), so these events pushed investors to buy gold and silver as a safe place to park their money. Tariff threats also tend to weaken the U.S. dollar. Since the dollar is used for most international trade and commodity pricing, a weaker dollar makes gold more attractive, which drives up its price. For Canadian investors, this created a double boost: gold prices rising in USD plus the currency exchange rate between CAD and USD. In early February, tensions between the U.S. and Iran gave investors another reason to stick with precious metals.
The second reason, which actually helped pushed prices down, was President Trump’s announcement of a new Federal Reserve chair after publicly clashing with current leader Jerome Powell, whose term ends at the end of May. On January 30, he nominated Kevin Warsh, a former Federal Reserve governor who served as an economic advisor to President George W. Bush.