Gold, silver, copper extend selloff, mining stocks hit

 Gold and silver tumbled again Monday as the selloff in precious metals deepened and started to spill over into equity markets.

After a record-breaking rally both gold and silver have been clobbered in the last couple of trading days as the parabolic rally collapsed on itself.

Silver is about –8% this morning and down ~36% from its peak at around $78, having hit a low just above $71 overnight.

Gold is –5% and ~17% from its all-time high hit last week at around $4,620 this morning, having touched a low at $4,398 before attracting some bid.

Bitcoin is also trading lower around the $76k mark with likely some forced selling due in particular to the silver blowup. Copper is down around 4% this morning with prices ~15% below last week's highs.

Things just go too frothy – this was like crypto markets at their worst; a massively crowded and leveraged long bet, and volatility that fed on itself as market makers couldn’t quote prices, leaving liquidity an issue.

The level of volatility remains elevated, though we are seeing some bid come back into the market as of this morning, as a sign that we could be past the worst of the danger - I'd be surprised if we see the kind of move that happened on Friday again.

Fundamentals haven’t really changed since last week, but the speed and scale of the selloff was a warning shot to one-way bets. 

The selloff was sparked by Kevin Warsh’s nomination as Fed chair, which stiffened the US dollar, but the depth of the wipeout was a result of unwinding of ETF and options positions.

Warsh’s appointment has eased some worries about the Fed being dragooned into too many rate cuts, but the fallout was a meme-stock-like unwinding of speculative positioning and a rush to the exits. 

Jewelers can breathe a sigh of relief- Pandora jumped 8%; but otherwise the wipeout in metals is weighing a bit and clearly hit mining stocks in London with Fresnillo and Endeavour down 6-7%, while Antofagasta slipped 5% as copper prices also sank.

The decline has helped push the FTSE 100 into the red on Monday morning, with the blue chips down around 0.4% early doors.

Further dragging on the FTSE 100, Shell and BP slipped over 2% each as oil prices fell from multi-month highs on signs of de-escalation in Iran-US tensions. Brent and WTI both shed about 5% on Monday to test their 200-day moving averages, with OPEC and allies leaving production unchanged. 

Two big earnings releases on the radar with Disney and high beta AI play Palantir reporting. 

The focus for Disney is on an uplift in parks attendance, the success of recent films such as Zootopia 2 – the highest grossing Hollywood film in China ever - and the latest Avatar movie, which topped $1bn at the box office in just 18 days.

Investors will also want to hear about the successor to CEO Bog Iger - an announcement could be material to the share price reaction. Markets expect earnings per share of $1.57 on revenue of $25.74 billion. 

Palantir meanwhile reports after a ~25% pullback in the shares in the last three months since its Q3 ‘25 earnings.

Thought it exceeded expectations with its last quarter some of the heat has come out of the AI trade as bubble fears started to surface, and we’ve seen Palantir act as a high-beta proxy for sentiment after its valuation got a little wild last year.

Despite the Q3 beat the stock closed down 8% in the next session.

For Q4, the focus is on the flow of new deals, US government contracts, margins and whether it beats its rule of 40 score (revenue growth + adjusted operating margin). Expected EPS is $0.23, up from $0.14 the year before, with revenues seen rising 62% to $1.34 billion. 

Neil Wilson is a Saxo UK Investor Strategist. 

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