The top five precious metals stories of 2025

What were the biggest precious metals stories of 2025?

There were plenty to choose from.

The biggest story is the impressive yearly gain for all the precious metals.

• Gold up over 64 percent
• Silver up just under 148 percent
• Platinum gained 125.9 percent
• Palladium up just over 80 percent

So, which stories that Money Metals covered this year, as precious metals surged, rank as the top stories? I polled some of my colleagues and came up with this top five. They are in no particular order.

1. Seismic shift: Morgan Stanley recommends 60/20/20 portfolio with 20 percent allocated to gold. -- Historically, the conventional wisdom on Wall Street was a 60/40 portfolio, with 60 percent of the holdings in equities and 40 percent in fixed-income investments, primarily bonds. The theory is that these asset classes balance each other, with stocks strengthening in a strong economy and bonds creating a hedge during downturns. Given the changing market dynamics, Morgan Stanley CIO Wilson said investors should consider a 60/20/20 strategy, swapping half of the bond portfolio for gold to serve as a “more resilient” inflation hedge. Given that most U.S. investors have very little exposure to gold and silver, this will be a monumental shift in investing if it catches on.
2. A hawkish cut? What was so hawkish about it? -- At first glance, this is just another story about a Fed meeting. However, during this meeting, the central bank announced it was relaunching quantitative easing! Even though it barely got a mention in the mainstream financial press, it is extremely significant, given that we are still in an inflationary environment. In effect, the Fed has returned to money printing even as inflation remains stubbornly persistent. 
3. Gold overtakes Euro as second-largest global reserve asset -- Due to a combination of central bank gold buying and the surging price of gold, the yellow metal overtook the euro as the world’s number two reserve asset. But it’s not so much that gold is replacing the euro. It is supplanting the dollar. This is evidence of a broader de-dollarization trend that picked up speed in 2025.
4. How much Gold is moving from London to New York? -- This article explains how tariff worries last spring incentivized a massive movement of gold and silver from vaults in London to New York. The significance wasn’t just metal moving from place to place. It exposed a dirty little secret in the precious metals markets: there is a lot more paper silver and gold than actual silver and gold. The tariff-incentivized movement of metal in the spring also set the stage for the October squeeze that drove silver to over $50 for the first time.
5. China reaffirms tight grip on Gold market, ushering in a new monetary era -- This was the culmination of fantastic reporting by analyst Jan Nieuwenhuijs, who exposed how the People’s Bank of China is buying far more gold than it reports. Toward the end of the year, mainstream financial media finally began reporting on the story. Jan summed it up on a post on X. “Me, Dec ‘24: ‘The Chinese central bank is currently buying at least ten times more gold than what you read in the newspaper.' Newspaper (FT), Nov ‘25: 'China’s unreported gold purchases could be more than 10 times its official figures.’

There were plenty of other momentous events this year, including the U.S. adding silver to its list of critical minerals, the national debt eclipsing $38 trillion even as the U.S. ran the fourth-biggest deficit in history despite record tariff revenue, silver breaking out from a 50-year ‘cup and handle’ pattern, and more. I'm sure there is something I'm forgetting!

We thank you for following our work here at Money Metals. Our goal is to be a go-to source for precious metals news, and we look forward to covering the momentous stories of 2026!