Silver Price News: Silver Gets Hammered as Gold Retreats

Silver prices fell sharply for a second straight day on Friday, losing around 7% day-on-day and capping a bearish week for the metal as gold prices continued to fall from all-time highs seen mid-week.

Silver fell as low as $29.26 an ounce on Friday, down sharply from around $31.85 an ounce in late trades on Thursday.

Silver got caught up in a steep decline in gold prices at the end of the week, which fell from Thursday’s all-time high of $3,226 an ounce to as low as $3,018 an ounce on Friday. The fall for silver prices wiped out about a month of gains in a single day.

Liquidating assets

The retreat for precious metals prices came amid a sell-off that some analysts attributed to liquidation of hard assets as traders rushed to cover margin calls on other assets such as equities. Stock markets fell hard on Thursday and Friday in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s announcement on wide-ranging trade tariffs on imported goods. The measures are seen as highly disruptive for global trade in goods, many of which rely on complex international supply chains.

Market starts to question industrial demand outlook

While silver is a precious metal, it is also an industrial one, finding applications in a broad swathe of industrial sectors including photovoltaics, electrical circuits, computing and AI, medicine and healthcare, aerospace, defence and water purification systems, among many others. Any slowdown in global growth would naturally curb industrial demand for the grey metal. Ultimately the markets will be trying to assess how deep the economic fallout will be from the new US tariffs, and how long their impacts will persist.