Gold and Silver After 12 Months: Bull Case Intact, Path Unclear

Gold hit an all-time high of $5,594.82 per ounce in January 2026. By late September 2026, it was trading near $4,110, down more than 22% in nine months.

The same structural forces that CPM Group identified in September 2025 as underpinning the long-term case for precious metals are still in place today. If anything, the fiscal and yield data behind them has hardened.

The near-term backdrop has grown harsher along the way. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield has climbed from roughly 4.0-4.2% twelve months ago to above 5.1%, a level last seen in 2007, and that rising yield has been the dominant weight on gold. The September 2025 selloff that started this whole sequence was never precious-metals-specific: it swept across copper, aluminium, equities, and corporate bonds as rising long-dated yields forced valuations to reset everywhere at once.

Here is what twelve months of price action actually tells you about the durability of the precious metals bull case, and what positioning decisions follow from that reading.

What the September 2025 selloff actually was, and what it was not

The first thing to understand about the September 2025 decline is that gold had plenty of company on the way down. This was not a market singling out precious metals for punishment.

According to CPM Group, the weakness hit gold, silver, platinum, and palladium simultaneously, and it did not stop at the metals complex. Copper, aluminium, agricultural commodities, equities, and corporate bonds all sold off in the same window.

The assets caught in the September 2025 decline included:

• Gold, silver, platinum, and palladium
• Copper and aluminium
• Agricultural commodities
• Equities
• Corporate bonds

That breadth is the whole point. When everything falls together, the cause is rarely something specific to any one asset.

CPM Group traced the selloff to a single mechanism: rising long-dated Treasury yields. When the yield on 10-year U.S. debt climbs, valuation models across every asset class recalibrate, because the return investors demand from riskier holdings rises with the risk-free rate. Markets also began to worry that the rate increases signalled the start of a prolonged upward trend, which compounded the selling.

In September 2025, gold traded roughly between $3,476 and $3,833 per ounce, sitting near $3,800 toward month-end. The 10-year yield at the time sat around 4.0-4.2%.

What made this cycle different, in CPM Group’s reading, was the reason behind the rising rates. These were not the rates of a healthy, expanding economy normalising after a boom. They were driven by negative economic pressures and by a deteriorating trust in government policymaking.

The macro framework for gold and bond yields has shifted materially since the pre-2020 orthodoxy: the old inverse relationship assumed a stable fiscal backdrop, and the current environment, in which sovereign borrowing costs are rising because of deteriorating fiscal credibility rather than strong growth, invalidates that assumption.

CPM Group’s framework holds that the rate of change in yields, and the underlying reasons for that change, matter more analytically than the absolute level of rates. A move from 4% to 5% driven by fiscal anxiety carries a different message than the same move driven by strong growth.

For you, the practical takeaway is diagnostic. Reading the September 2025 decline as a structural reversal in precious metals would have been a costly misread. Investors who fled on that assumption exited ahead of gold’s climb to a record high just four months later. Correctly identifying a yield-driven valuation event, rather than a verdict on gold itself, is the precondition for acting on a selloff instead of running from it.

From selloff to all-time high: how twelve months of price action unfolded

The price path since September 2025 splits cleanly into two chapters, and reading them together is the only way to judge the thesis fairly.

Gold entered the period weak, near $3,800 at the end of September 2025. From there it did not just recover; it powered to a new record.

The January 2026 peak and what followed

By January 2026, gold had reached an all-time high of $5,594.82 per ounce, a move of well over $1,700 from the September lows. The bull case, at that moment, looked comprehensively validated.

Then the headwinds that started the whole story came back stronger. From the January peak, gold shed more than 22%. By late September 2026, spot gold traded at $4,157.39 per ounce as of 9:30 a.m. ET on 29 September, having touched a session low of $4,112.97 and printed a more-than-seven-month low of $4,110.55 the prior day, its weakest level since 5 August 2026.

This matters for how you frame the correction. The late-September slide was an acceleration of a drawdown already in motion, not a sudden collapse out of nowhere. Reuters attributed the single-session decline of more than 4% on 28 September to surging oil prices feeding fresh rate-hike expectations, which fed directly into yield pressure on gold.

The yield backdrop had shifted decisively. Reuters coverage in September 2026 described the 5% threshold on the 10-year as having moved from a turbulence trigger to a structural waypoint, a sign the market had recalibrated to a higher-for-longer world rather than treating it as a passing phase.

Here is the one-year comparison in clean terms.

The 10-year yield rose from roughly 4.0-4.2% in September 2025 to 5.158% on 25 September 2026, with an intraday high of 5.2297%, the highest reading since 2007.

Now the interpretive point, and it is the one most likely to be missed. Despite the eye-catching 22% drawdown from the peak, gold is still trading materially higher than it was a year ago, an advance of roughly 9-10% from around $3,800 to about $4,157. If you anchor only on the January high, the story reads like a broken rally. If you anchor only on the recent low, it reads like a crash. The year-on-year comparison is the frame that actually tells you whether the long-term thesis has been validated or broken, and on that measure, it held.

The structural case for precious metals, one year on

The bull case is not a single prediction. It is a set of structural forces, and the useful exercise twelve months on is checking which ones have intensified, which have held steady, and which remain unresolved.

CPM Group built its September 2025 thesis on three drivers. Here they are, each paired with what the 2026 data now shows:

• Sovereign debt and fiscal deterioration. Governments are borrowing out of financial necessity rather than to fund growth. Reuters reported on 15 September 2026 that government borrowing costs had reached their highest level since the 2008 financial crisis, with the 10-year yield above 5%.
• Geopolitical tension. U.S.-Iran dynamics and broader Middle East risk fed market anxiety in 2025. Reuters gold coverage confirmed that traders were still monitoring Middle East conflict developments alongside Fed policy into late 2026.
• Political uncertainty. Bipartisan concern about electoral outcomes and certification drove investor caution. The November 2026 congressional elections sit roughly five weeks out from the late-September vantage point.

Sovereign debt dynamics in the United States have no clean modern parallel: the combination of deficit spending at peacetime highs and a debt-to-GDP trajectory that leaves no obvious consolidation path means the fiscal channel CPM Group identified as a gold driver is not a cyclical condition but a structural one with a long runway.

What the 2026 data shows about each driver

Start with the fiscal channel, because it is where the evidence has moved most. A 10-year yield holding above 5% is the market pricing deteriorating fiscal credibility directly into the cost of sovereign borrowing. On 23 September 2026, Reuters described the 5% threshold as increasingly seen as a structural waypoint rather than a ceiling, which is exactly what you would expect if the fiscal deterioration CPM Group flagged were becoming entrenched rather than transient.

Energy adds to the pressure. CPM Group identified rising petroleum prices as a burden on consumers, corporations, and governments alike, and the late-September oil surge that dragged gold down more than 4% in a session confirmed that dynamic is still live.

The connective tissue between near-term pain and long-term demand sits in one idea.

CPM Group’s core argument is that the deterioration of trust in government policymakers is the fundamental driver behind rising long-term interest rates. That same erosion of trust pressures gold in the short term, through the yield-driven opportunity cost of holding a non-yielding asset, while validating the long-term case for holding hard assets.

Not every metal has responded in step. Silver remains under technical pressure, with key support levels near $62.54 and $56.54 under scrutiny, a reminder that the structural case has not yet translated into near-term price stabilisation for the white metal.

For you, weighing whether to add exposure during this correction, the reading is this. The forces CPM Group named a year ago have not resolved. The fiscal and yield data suggests they have intensified, which means the foundational logic of the bull case is arguably stronger today than it was when the thesis was first laid out.

Near-term headwinds vs. the longer-term signal: reading silver and gold separately

The most analytically interesting signal right now is not gold or silver on its own. It is the gap between them.

Gold, despite its correction, is still comfortably above its year-ago level, and its multi-year uptrend, which CPM Group traces back to around 2019, remains intact on any long view. Silver tells a rougher story. Reuters described silver’s 2026 situation as one of “frustration,” with those support levels near $62.54 and $56.54 under active pressure.

Silver’s divergence from gold in the current cycle is sharper than the headline numbers suggest: while gold has protected a year-on-year gain, silver’s industrial demand exposure and thinner liquidity have left it more vulnerable to the same yield pressure, producing a gold-silver spread that technical analysts are watching as a cycle-phase indicator.

Reuters’ “Mapping the Market” note on 2 September 2026 characterised silver as facing “more frustration” with its lows “beckoning,” a sentiment that sits in sharp contrast to gold holding its year-on-year gain.

That divergence is the tell. It means the structural bull case has not yet generated the broad price support that would confirm a genuine, sector-wide recovery.

The near-term headwinds pressing on both metals, ranked by current market weight, are:

1. Rising real yields. With the 10-year at 5.158% and touching 5.2297%, the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding bullion is at its highest in years.
2. Dollar strength. A stronger dollar amplifies the yield drag, making gold more expensive for non-dollar buyers.
3. Higher-for-longer re-pricing. The market has reclassified elevated rates from a temporary condition to a structural one, removing the near-term hope of relief.

Set against those headwinds is CPM Group’s September 2025 tactical framework: stand aside in the near term, wait for potentially lower entry points, and hold longer-term long positions. The firm anticipated a two-to-four month recovery leading into and after the November 2026 elections.

Twelve months on, that framework still reads as coherent. Gold’s roughly 9-10% year-on-year gain, from about $3,800 to about $4,157, vindicates the long-term long stance, while the live yield constraint at 5.1-5.2% vindicates the caution about near-term entry.

For you, the gold-silver split is a practical tool. If silver is still testing multi-month support while gold has protected its year-on-year gains, the two metals sit in different phases of the same cycle. Positioning that treats precious metals as one undifferentiated trade misses that, and anyone stepping in ahead of a confirmed recovery needs to decide first how much near-term downside they are willing to absorb.

What the correction changes, and what it does not

Twelve months of evidence supports a clear-eyed verdict, without false comfort or manufactured alarm.

The directional argument CPM Group made in September 2025 held. Gold’s advance from roughly $3,800 to about $4,157 over the year validates it. At the same time, the drawdown of more than 22% from the $5,594.82 January peak is real, material, and still in progress. Both statements are true, and holding them together is the honest reading.

What the fiscal and yield data of the past year has done is reinforce the long-term structural case. What it has not done is clear the near-term path, because the same yield pressure that triggered the September 2025 selloff is not only still present, it has intensified.

Three variables will decide whether the longer-term case accelerates or stalls:

1. The 10-year Treasury yield relative to the 5.1-5.2% range. A retreat below 5% would ease the opportunity-cost drag and open room for gold to recover; a sustained push higher extends the headwind.
2. The November 2026 congressional election outcome and aftermath. A clean, uncontested result would remove a layer of investor caution; a disputed or destabilising outcome would deepen the demand for hard assets.
3. Silver’s $62.54 support level. Holding it would signal broader precious metals stabilisation; breaking it would confirm the sector has further to fall before it steadies.

For an investor eyeing today’s levels as a re-entry point after missing the September-to-January move, the honest caveat is that CPM Group’s original advice, wait for lower entry points, may still apply. The current correction is not automatically a buying signal until those three variables turn.

For investors weighing re-entry after the correction, our dedicated guide to precious metals portfolio positioning examines how asset class correlations shift during high-yield regimes and what allocation sizing has historically protected portfolios when the fiscal and rate dynamics described here persist for multiple years.

This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. Investors should conduct their own research and consult with financial professionals before making investment decisions.

Past performance does not guarantee future results. Financial projections are subject to market conditions and various risk factors.