Gold and silver prices plunged on Friday after President Trump announced Kevin Warsh as his choice to lead the Federal Reserve, ending months of strong gains fueled largely by concerns over the central bank’s independence.
Big picture: The sharp selloff followed a year in which precious metals surged dramatically, trading more like speculative assets or high-flying tech stocks than traditional safe havens. Many market analysts said Friday’s drop was overdue, with the Fed appointment acting as the trigger rather than the root cause.
Current situation: Gold futures fell about 9% Friday afternoon, sliding to roughly $4,901 per ounce. According to Bloomberg, it marked gold’s largest single-day decline since the early 1980s.
Silver suffered an even steeper fall, plunging 27% to $83.35 per ounce. MarketWatch reported it was silver’s worst one-day drop since 1980.
What analysts are saying: A common view among analysts was that prices had risen too quickly and too far.
“The usual saying that prices take the stairs up and the elevator down doesn’t quite fit here,” wrote Michael Brown, a strategist at Pepperstone. “This was more like an elevator ride both up and down.”
Michael Antonelli, a market strategist at Baird, compared silver’s surge to speculative mania, writing on X earlier this week that “Silver is basically the GameStop of 2026.”
Behind the scenes: Brown noted that heavy leverage and extreme volatility made the market especially vulnerable to a sharp reversal.
“When everyone rushes to sell at once, prices drop rapidly, triggering even more forced selling,” he said, adding that the move highlights how momentum can reverse just as quickly as it builds.
Background: Investors had worried Trump might appoint a close ally to run the Fed in order to push interest rates lower. Those fears helped drive money into traditional safe-haven assets such as gold and silver.
Warsh, a former Federal Reserve official viewed as a credible policymaker by Republicans and business leaders, appears to have eased some of those concerns, according to Axios Macro co-author Courtenay Brown.
Reality check: Despite Friday’s steep losses, gold prices remain more than 14% higher than at the start of the year.
Silver is still up about 22% year to date.
Even after the sharp selloff, both metals continue to outperform the S&P 500, Nvidia, and copper—often considered a key metal in the AI-driven economy—so far this year.