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The white metal has spent the past week clawing back ground in dramatic fashion. After a two-session surge of roughly 7 percent last week, silver tacked on another 0.18 percent on Thursday to trade near $62.14 per ounce, leaving it up 8.97 percent on the week. The rebound has trimmed some of the pain from a bruising three-month stretch, though the metal still sits 14.73 percent lower over that window. On a twelve-month basis, however, the picture is far brighter: silver has appreciated 64.32 percent.
That resilience is underpinned by a physical market that remains exceptionally tight. The World Silver Survey projects a supply deficit of 46.3 million ounces for 2026 — which would mark the sixth consecutive year that demand has outstripped supply. Cumulative shortfalls since 2021 have drained more than 760 million ounces from global inventories. Visible stockpiles at exchange warehouses tell the story vividly: they stood at roughly 525 million ounces at the end of 2025 but had dwindled to around 313 million ounces by spring 2026.
Industrial buyers continue to absorb metal at a steady clip, with electronics manufacturers and the photovoltaic sector holding demand firm. Retail investors have grown more enthusiastic too, with purchases of coins and bars estimated to have jumped 18 percent recently.
The week’s advance has not been without its countercurrents. Reports on August 6 that Iran and Oman had agreed on a temporary shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz — aimed at stabilizing energy flows in the Middle East — sent risk premiums in crude oil sliding. That, in turn, dampened inflation expectations and briefly dulled silver’s appeal as a crisis hedge.
Yet the macro backdrop has swung decisively in the metal’s favor on another front. Soft US labor market data have revived speculation that the Federal Reserve may soon ease policy. The ADP private payrolls report for July came in at just 44,000 new jobs, well short of the 65,000 to 70,000 economists had penciled in. The ISM services employment index also softened, and the yield on ten-year US Treasuries fell roughly 10 basis points in response. With the official July jobs report due Friday — economists expect 80,000 new positions after 57,000 the prior month — traders are positioning for a dovish tilt that would weigh on the dollar and, by extension, boost dollar-denominated commodities like silver.
The metal’s trajectory has been volatile this year. After setting an all-time high above $121 per ounce in January 2026, silver has corrected sharply. Current levels sit about 13 percent below the start of the year but roughly 10 percent above the July trough.
Forecasts from major financial institutions published on August 6 span a wide range, though none anticipate a slide back below current levels. J.P. Morgan sees silver averaging $81 in 2026. Citigroup is more bullish, flagging potential for $110 in the second half. ING takes a more conservative view at $74 for the fourth quarter, while Commerzbank pencils in around $67 by year-end.
On the charts, $60 has emerged as a key support level, with a broader support zone spanning $60.70 to $61.50. Resistance sits at $63.00; a sustained breakout above that level, market watchers say, would open the door to further gains, while a drop back below support would put the recent rally in question. Analysts also point to the gold-silver ratio, which stood near 68 in early August against a long-term average of roughly 60 — a signal that silver remains relatively inexpensive compared with gold.
The elevated price environment is now showing up in producer financials. Silver X Mining reported record second-quarter revenue of $17.3 million, up 29 percent quarter-over-quarter and 221 percent year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA came in at $6.9 million, and the company swung to a first-half net income of $7.7 million after a loss in the prior-year period. Sustainability costs per ounce fell 13 percent sequentially.
Fortuna Mining generated $85.7 million in free cash flow during the quarter, with adjusted EBITDA of $200.8 million — a 63 percent margin. The company also repurchased $82.1 million of its own shares.
On the exploration front, Silver Storm Mining reported promising drill results from the Rosarios zone at its La Parrilla project in Mexico, including one interval grading 215 grams of silver equivalent per tonne over 11.9 meters and another returning 200 grams per tonne over 15.4 meters. The company sees potential to expand its existing resource base.
For investors, Friday’s jobs report looms as the next inflection point. Should it confirm the weakness signaled by the ADP data, expectations of looser monetary policy are likely to build further — a scenario that has historically provided a tailwind for silver.
Silver moved back toward the 59 US-dollar mark on Tuesday as traders weighed a jump in Middle East risk against a still-restrictive US interest-rate backdrop. The metal traded at around 58.66 US dollars per ounce, up about 1.2 percent from the previous day, while on COMEX it climbed 1.42 US dollars to 59.28 US dollars per ounce.
The latest bid came after a sharp deterioration in the security situation around the Strait of Hormuz. The UKMTO said an unknown projectile hit a cargo ship off the coast of Oman in the strategic waterway, stoking risk premiums across commodity markets. US President Donald Trump had already warned on Monday that talks with Iran were the “last chance” to reach an agreement on reopening the key passage, and also threatened continued maritime blocking of Iranian ports if no deal is reached.
That mix of diplomacy and disruption has helped keep silver supported at a time when investors are again looking at the metal as a hedge against geopolitical shocks. Lower energy prices and easing worries about Hormuz have also fed into the broader precious-metals bid by cooling inflation expectations, even if the day’s move was driven by the fresh escalation.
A second source of support came from South Korea. The Bank of Korea said it would buy physical gold again after a 13-year pause, sourcing domestic production that had been earmarked for export so as not to strain the local market. The central bank plans to work with LS MnM, the Korea Exchange and the Korea Securities Depository. Its gold reserves stand at 104.4 tonnes, low by global standards, and the move is meant to build holdings over the long term as geopolitical risks rise. That backdrop tends to bolster sentiment across precious metals, including silver.
At the same time, the Federal Reserve is keeping a lid on enthusiasm. The central bank left its policy rate unchanged at 3.50 to 3.75 percent, but the vote split was notably hawkish: three members backed an immediate rate increase. A tighter-for-longer stance typically weighs on non-yielding assets, and the market is pricing a 68 percent probability of another rate move in the coming month. That helps explain why silver has been unable to break decisively above 62 US dollars.
The chart picture remains mixed. Silver is still about six percent below its 50-day average of 62.12 US dollars, according to Economies.com, and the RSI is 46.2, a neutral reading. Year to date, the metal is down more than 17 percent, and it remains more than 50 percent below January’s high of 121.78 US dollars. In another reading, January 2026 brought a peak of 121.62 US dollars, leaving the price roughly 52 percent beneath that record. Either way, the distance from the highs is still substantial.
On the physical demand side, the picture is less bleak than the price action suggests. Solar power has long been the main growth engine for silver, but the industry is accelerating its shift toward “desilvering” as producers switch from silver to copper plating to cut material costs. Estimates point to a 19 percent drop in solar demand in 2026, to about 151 million ounces.
That decline is being partly offset by new sources of industrial demand. The build-out of data centers for artificial intelligence is consuming more silver because of its conductivity, and electric vehicles remain a steady user of the metal as well, with each car requiring between 25 and 50 grams. The semiconductor industry is also cited as a support for the physical market.
Even so, the supply side continues to look tight. 2026 would mark the sixth straight year of a silver market deficit, leaving physical availability constrained regardless of fluctuations in the futures market. For now, traders appear stuck between a technical floor around 57 US dollars and the prospect of another move higher if the Hormuz situation worsens or if inflation and Fed expectations shift in silver’s favor.
XRP continues to drift in no man’s land, trading at $1.09 — a stone’s throw from the 52-week low of $1.01 plumbed in late June. The token has shed 10.7% over the past month, sits 42% in the red for 2026, and remains 70% below its all-time high of $3.65 from July last year. Yet against this backdrop of persistent weakness, a flurry of institutional activity, whale accumulation, and a make-or-break regulatory vote in Washington are pulling the asset in conflicting directions.
The CLARITY Act, which would overhaul US oversight of digital assets by splitting authority between the SEC and CFTC, faces its most critical test yet. President Trump signed off on the final text on 16 July, and a House subcommittee hearing titled “Building the Future of Finance: How the CLARITY Act Unlocks Innovation” convenes in New York on 17 July. The bill already cleared the House with a 294-134 vote in July 2025 and advanced from the Senate Banking Committee in May 2026 on a 15-9 tally. But the Senate floor remains the true bottleneck. Republicans control 52 seats and need seven Democratic votes to hit the 60-vote threshold. Senator Elizabeth Warren is demanding Trump disclose his crypto holdings by 23 July, arguing the legislation could entrench conflicts of interest — his 2025 financial disclosure showed roughly $1.4 billion in crypto-related income. Betting markets reflect the uncertainty: Polymarket puts the probability of passage this year at 41%, Kalshi at 36%, while the chance of a Senate vote at all is pegged at 79%. Senator Cynthia Lummis has signaled she may introduce a revised draft with a softened ethics clause, and Senator Thom Tillis expressed hope for a deal within days. Ripple’s chief legal officer Stuart Alderoty warned that rejecting the bill would leave the kind of regulatory gaps exploited during the FTX collapse. Should the Senate fail to act before the August 7 recess, a vote could slip to 2027.
On-chain data paints a picture of accumulating whales but evaporating retail enthusiasm. According to Santiment, large wallets scooped up roughly 70 million XRP in the past week alone, while Binance reserves dropped to 2.61 billion tokens — the lowest since February. AOL reports that total exchange-held XRP has tumbled from 3.76 billion to around 1.6 billion over nine months, a seven-year low driven by self-custody migration and ETF inflows. Whales have absorbed another 1.53 billion tokens in six months and now control 74% of the circulating supply. Yet the price refuses to budge higher. The reason appears to be demand exhaustion: weekly net inflows into XRP spot ETFs have collapsed from $131.9 million in May to $59 million in June and practically zero in July. CCN.com reported outflows of $7.18 million in the most recent week, following paltry inflows of just $107,000. New wallet creation also hit a wall — only 2,130 addresses were created on 11 July, the lowest single-day tally since November 2024.
The technical picture offers mixed signals. XRP is trading 4.7% below its 50-day moving average of $1.14 and a daunting 24.4% under the 200-day MA of $1.44, underscoring the medium-term downtrend. But chartists have spotted a potential inverse head-and-shoulders pattern with a neckline at $1.12; a breakout above that level would imply a target near $1.30. On 16 July, COINTURK flagged a TD Sequential buy signal at $1.109, suggesting selling pressure may be exhausting. The weekly relative strength index dipped to around 29.6 in June — only the second time it has fallen below 30, following a similar reading in June 2022 when XRP traded at $0.29 and subsequently rallied roughly 1,100% to its July 2025 peak. Whether history repeats remains speculative; the average holder is sitting on a 45% loss over 30 days and a 47% loss over the past year.
Away from the price action, Ripple’s institutional footprint continues to expand. The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, which oversees $114 trillion in assets, launched initial equity tokenization transactions on XRP-compatible infrastructure, with Citadel Securities executing the first trades. Citadel had already invested $500 million in Ripple in October 2025. Ripple’s own stablecoin, RLUSD, now boasts a market cap above $1.5 billion, and the company has joined the UK Treasury’s wholesale digital markets initiative — a project that could generate £33 billion in annual GDP by 2035. CEO Brad Garlinghouse revealed that Ripple came within hours of shutting down after the SEC filed its lawsuit in December 2020, burning roughly $150 million in legal fees. Meanwhile, the XRP Ledger has surpassed 8 million activated accounts, and tokenized real-world assets on the network exceed $4 billion. Garlinghouse also stirred debate this week by declaring that many US dollar stablecoins are “useless” and only transparent, regulated variants will survive — a remark that dovetails with Ripple’s heavy push behind RLUSD.
For now, the tug-of-war between building infrastructure and sliding prices leaves traders watching one date above all others: the Senate’s summer recess on 7 August. If the CLARITY Act clears that hurdle, a wave of regulatory clarity could unlock institutional capital that has remained on the sidelines. If it stalls, the technical and on-chain foundations may take much longer to translate into a price recovery.
Silver prices tumbled on Wednesday, caught between a hawkish Federal Reserve posture and fresh military escalation in the Middle East, even as a structural supply deficit that has now reached 762 million ounces continues to underpin long-term bullish forecasts.
The white metal fell to $57.87 per ounce on July 15, a drop of 1.35 percent from the prior session, according to one widely cited quote. Other sources put the decline at 1.4 percent to $57.84, or as low as $57.55. Gold, by contrast, held nearly flat at $4,056, pushing the gold-silver ratio to 70-to-1 – a level that underscores just how badly the industrial metal has lagged its yellow counterpart this year.
The latest leg lower followed the United States launching another wave of airstrikes against Iran and reactivating its naval blockade of Iranian ports near the Strait of Hormuz. The move, which President Trump had signalled the previous day, sent oil prices surging and revived inflation anxieties among investors. For a zero-yielding asset like silver, the combination of rising energy costs and the prospect of tighter monetary policy is doubly punishing.
The inflation picture, however, remains contradictory. US consumer prices fell 0.4 percent month-on-month in June – the first such decline since 2020 – while the annual rate slowed to 3.5 percent from 4.2 percent in May, undershooting expectations of 3.8 percent. Producer prices also dropped 0.3 percent month-on-month, the steepest slide in 14 months. Cheaper oil had been a tailwind, but the Hormuz blockade threatens to reverse that trend.
Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh, testifying before Congress, reiterated the central bank’s commitment to price stability but stopped short of signalling a more restrictive stance. Markets nonetheless priced in roughly a 50 percent probability of a rate hike at the September meeting, driven primarily by the geopolitical shock to energy markets. Fed Governor Lisa Cook separately warned of inflation risks stemming from tariffs, the Middle East conflict, and heavy AI-driven investment. The Fed’s Beige Book described economic activity as growing at a slight to moderate pace in eleven of twelve districts, while noting rising input costs tied to the conflict and trade policy – conditions that keep rate-cut hopes at bay.
While short-term macro headwinds dominate price action, the structural picture tells a different story. The Silver Institute projects a sixth consecutive annual supply deficit in 2026, this year of 46.3 million ounces. Since 2021, cumulative shortfalls have reached a staggering 762 million ounces. Mine production is forecast to fall by a further 2.5 million ounces, even as industrial demand – now 58 percent of total consumption – continues to climb.
Solar manufacturers, the largest industrial consumers, have trimmed their silver usage by 19 percent to 151 million ounces this year by substituting copper. Yet the deficit has not narrowed; it continues to widen. Complicating matters further, roughly 70 percent of global silver supply emerges only as a by-product of base-metal mining, leaving producers little ability to ramp up output in response to higher prices.
Inventories on the COMEX have contracted by 75 percent from their 2020 peak, standing at just 79.9 million ounces – a telling sign of physical tightness in a market that has seen paper volumes dwarf available metal.
Despite the near-term rout – silver lost $16.57 per ounce, or 22.04 percent, in the second quarter, its worst quarterly performance since Q1 2020 – major banks remain resolutely bullish. JPMorgan forecasts an average price of $81 per ounce in its base case, with Bank of America eyeing $100 to $133 under a bull scenario. The LBMA consensus sits at $79.57. JPMorgan further sees prices above $80 by year-end and reaching $100 by 2030.
Paul Wong of Sprott notes that while the options market has normalised, physical inventory remains strained, and he expects supply deficits to persist for another seven to eight years, driven by demand from solar, electric vehicles, artificial intelligence, and the military sector.
Technically, support is pegged in the $57 region within a bearish rectangle pattern, with a deeper floor near $55.50 to $56.00. Resistance lies between $59.42 and $59.57. For the weeks ahead, the Strait of Hormuz will remain the critical wildcard – every fresh escalation risks lifting oil prices further, hardening the Fed’s stance, and keeping silver pinned down, even as the market’s fundamental story only grows more compelling.
Gold Clears $4,300 as Lower Yields, Gulf Relief and Fed Debate Line Up
Gold pushed through the $4,300 mark this week and held there, with the metal last trading at 4,308 US dollars an ounce on Wednesday evening and 4,309.90 US dollars later in the session. That is the highest level since 17 June and leaves bullion about 23 percent below the record 5,586 dollars set in January.
The immediate catalyst was a weak US labor reading. The ADP report for July showed the private sector added only 44,000 jobs, far short of economists’ forecasts of 70,000 to 75,000. The data sent ten-year US Treasury yields lower and reinforced the appeal of an asset that pays no interest. As real yields fall, the opportunity cost of holding gold declines, and demand tends to pick up.
Markets quickly adjusted their rate outlook. Traders now expect only one interest-rate increase by year-end, compared with two a week ago. For the September meeting, they are pricing in a 57 percent probability of a hike, down from 67 percent the day before.
The labor-market shock also helped lift expectations that the Federal Reserve may have to ease sooner than planned. Yet not every policymaker is comfortable with that shift. Fed Governor Lisa Cook said on Wednesday that she would still be prepared to raise rates if inflation does not come down, warning that the central bank may not have the luxury of waiting. Jeff Schmid, president of the Kansas City Fed, also said the 2 percent inflation target has not yet been reached and that further tightening remains possible.
Gold’s move has not been driven by US data alone. Relief over the Middle East has added another layer of support. Iran and Oman agreed on a shipping corridor through the Strait of Hormuz, raising hopes of smoother energy flows from the region. Oil prices are down about 10 percent this week, and President Trump’s comments on Wednesday about “very good talks” between the US and Iran helped shape that move. Lower energy prices ease inflation fears, which in turn makes bullion look more attractive as a hedge.
The broader backdrop has been constructive for some time. Central banks increased their gold holdings by around 289 tons in the second quarter of 2026, according to World Gold Council data and European Central Bank analysis. Those figures suggest gold is increasingly displacing US government bonds as the main reserve asset in official vaults. At the same time, the Fed is showing signs of internal friction: at the late-July policy meeting, the committee under Kevin Warsh voted 9 to 3 to keep the benchmark rate unchanged at 3.50 to 3.75 percent, with three members calling for an increase. That was the strongest internal opposition in a decade.
Technically, the breakout matters too. Gold had spent weeks consolidating below $4,300, and over the summer it traded in a narrow range between $4,000 and $4,200. Breaking that band has ended the stand-off between buyers and sellers. The RSI at 62.3 indicates there is still room for the trend to extend without the market looking overbought. On a weekly basis, gold is up a little over 5 percent, or 3.53 percent over the past week in the latest reading, and it trades about 3 percent above its 50-day average. The next major reference point sits at the 200-day average of 4,534 dollars, roughly 5 percent above current levels.
For now, the key test is whether the latest price action can hold. A drop back below 4,100 dollars would weaken the current bullish setup. If the next US payrolls report confirms the softer labor trend, or if the Hormuz agreement unravels, traders are likely to get their next clue on where gold heads next.