April 1, 2025

Market Overview 26-03-2025 to 01-04-2025

Last week, the precious metals sector continued its period of optimistic growth. The recent price surges have been fuelled by rising global trade tensions as well as increased involvement of governments and ETF investors in buying precious metals assets.

The global gold price rose by approximately 3.75% between March 26 and April 1, reaching $3131 per ounce on April 1 and breaking the previous all-time high multiple times over the past week.

Demand for gold as an investment hedge is strongly supported by the continued aggressive US trade policy. Although US President Trump has already adopted global tariffs on steel, aluminium and cars imported into the US, he added to the chaos at the end of March by announcing that new global import taxes would be forthcoming, affecting all countries trading with the US. 

The increase in demand for gold has been accompanied by strong investment interest from governments and private stock market investors. China, the world’s second largest economy by GDP, formally extended its gold buying period in February this year. For the fourth consecutive month, the Chinese government, which has been replenishing its gold reserves, added ~160,000 ounces of the precious metal in February alone. Meanwhile, global gold-backed ETFs, which are attracting exceptional interest from stock market investors, recorded global capital inflows of $9.4 billion in February of this year alone.

The global silver price rose by ~1.1% between 26 March and 1 April, reaching $34.03/oz on 1 April.

The continuing growth of record high silver prices this year is supported by the weakening dollar and the totally unpredictable US trade policy. As investors fear new import tariffs from the United States, which will only increase the risk of wider trade conflicts, the aggressive fiscal trade policy of the world’s most powerful economy is also expected to increase inflation and weaken the economic development of markets.

In this context, silver, as a relatively cheap investment hedge with strong industrial demand, has attracted the attention of a large number of institutional and small investors.

The market price of palladium rose by ~2% between 26 March and 1 April, reaching $987/oz on 1 April.

The global platinum price increased by ~1.35% between 26 March and 1 April to reach $990/oz.

The global copper market price experienced a correction of ~1.5% between 26 March and 1 April, reaching 9738 $/t on 1 April.

Although copper recorded a contraction in the global market over the past week, the start of the spring has been particularly successful for this industrial metal. Amid fears that the U.S. government may impose global tariffs on copper imports, buyers in the United States imported around 500 000 tonnes of copper into this market in March (instead of the usual 70 000 tonnes). This contributed to a sharp spike in copper prices and the first crossing of the $10000/tonne price threshold in a long time.

However, this temporary, speculative surge in copper demand and price was also the cause of a natural price correction. Although countries such as China are experiencing bottlenecks in copper production and processing, this industrial giant alone has accumulated some 333000 tonnes of refined copper reserves. The large stockpiles imply that, if the speculation on copper trade tariffs does not materialise, there will be little reason for copper prices on the commodity market to break well above the $10000/t mark in the short term.