(Kitco News) – Metals markets lived through a tumultuous 2024, and while gold was the standout performer and silver made its long-awaited move later in the year, copper failed to break out last year and platinum group metals (PGM) investors were left out in the cold.
The Kitco News Top Metals 2025 Survey showed retail traders continue to believe in gold’s ability to outperform in an unstable world, while industry experts also see potential for silver prices to play catch-up in the second half of the year.
Kitco News gathered the votes of 208 retail investors this week for the Kitco News Top Metals 2025 Survey, and the results showed that over half of Main Street expects gold will outgain all other metals once again in 2025.
106 retail traders, fully 51%, expect the yellow metal to lead all others this year. Another 36%, or 74 Main Street investors, predicted silver would be the top gainer in 2025, while 8%, or 17 participants, expect copper to post the strongest performance. The remaining 11 retail traders, representing 5% of the total, think platinum and palladium prices will outperform other metals in 2025.
The views from Wall Street were also positive toward gold on balance, but a significant number of big banks and industry experts predicted that silver could outgain the yellow metal when all is said and done.
Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank, said he still believes silver has the potential to outperform gold in 2025.
“This year’s silver rally hasn’t shown any fundamental differences compared to past surges,” he said. “Silver continues to mirror gold’s movements, but with more intensity. Often referred to as gold ‘on steroids,’ silver tends to rise and fall more dramatically than its steadier counterpart.”
Hansen pointed out that silver only reached a 12-year high in 2024, while gold set multiple all-time highs. “This dual role — balancing both investment and industrial demand — could enable silver to outperform gold in the coming year. At Saxo, we predict a potential decline in the gold-to-silver ratio, which currently hovers around 87, possibly moving toward 75, a level seen earlier in 2024.”
“If this occurs, and with gold reaching our forecast of $3,000 per ounce (a 13% increase), silver might reach $40 per ounce (a rise of over 25%),” Hansen concluded.
TD Securities’ Senior Commodity Strategist Daniel Ghali said at the end of November that gold buyers were looking exhausted, signaling that a near-term price top for the yellow metal is likely in. “The set-up for flows in Silver is notably superior,” he said.
Then, in a Jan. 7 interview, Ghali said that investors need to take notice of an unprecedented situation that’s unfolding in the silver market.
“It's hard to see it in flat prices, but over the last month, there's been a huge disruption in precious metals markets where the threat of universal tariffs on metals is leading traders around the world to bring metal in from London and other global venues into the U.S., only to hedge against the risk that tariffs will be implemented on precious metals,” he said. “Historically, they haven't – precious metals have been considered money in effect – but if they were to be subject to tariffs, then traders holding short positions against metal that they actually hold somewhere else in the world would be subject to substantial losses.”
“In order to hedge against that risk, they're bringing metal into the U.S.”
Ghali clarified that he’s not talking about contracts or other financial instruments, but actual, physical metal that is being brought en masse into the United States, and the implications are profound.
“This could inadvertently lead to a stock-out in the world's largest metal vaulting system for silver in London,” he said. “This is the biggest story in commodity markets right now. Silver markets seem to be just completely sleepwalking into a potential stock-out.”
“And mind you, we are now in a fourth consecutive year of very substantial deficits in silver,” he added. “This trend of depleting inventories was already set up, and this is simply something that's accelerating that process.”
Ghali agreed that this scenario could only be very price-positive for silver.
“I think there is the potential for explosive price action in silver if we do meet that critical threshold,” he said. “We've seen glimpses of this in other commodities over the last few years. Copper last year had a very substantial rally on a similar theme, and in previous years, palladium was a really good example of a market with a similar setup. Silver markets today just appear to be completely sleepwalking into this setup.”
Asked where TD sees silver prices going in response to this scenario, Ghali was very bullish. “We think that silver is going to end the year closer to $40 an ounce, so a substantial gain from today's prices,” he said.
Ghali is also optimistic about the gold rally resuming in 2025, though he expects this will only happen in the second half.
“Towards the latter half of the year, we think the Fed is going to resume its cutting cycle more aggressively than is currently priced into markets, and so there could be some opportunities to buy gold throughout the year.”
TD Securities' latest 2025 forecasts have silver, platinum, palladium, and copper all outperforming gold this year.
Analysts at Heraeus Precious Metals also see most of the gray metal’s recent strengths will carry over into the new year, and the price of silver is projected to outperform gold in 2025, while PGM prices will remain constrained.
The analysts pointed out that the elevated gold:silver ratio suggests that silver is still historically undervalued relative to gold despite this year’s sector-leading rally.
“Silver tends to outperform gold in the later stages of bull markets, and a reversion to the 27-year mean ratio of 67 as a result of a rally in silver implies a price of $40/oz,” they said.
“Among the PGMs, the fundamentals appear to favour platinum which is predicted to have a larger deficit in 2025 than in 2024,” they added. “However, a deficit market in 2024 has not helped the price break out of its trading range and with plentiful stocks that may be the case again.”
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