August 2026 precious metals roundup
Written by Luke Heritage
3rd September, 2026
For August, gold opened around $4074 an ounce and closed at approximately $4451 an ounce at the end of the month, gaining around 9.3%, the strongest month since the spring. Silver did considerably better, up roughly 15.2%, opening at $58.26 and finally closing at $67.11, the first month since May that silver has meaningfully outpaced gold, compressing the ratio to 66.3. This has been a genuine reversal after two straight months of gold moving more than silver. During the month, gold hit a year high at $4679.50 before both metals pulled back slightly after a hawkish speech from Fed Chair Kevin Warsh.
What was moving gold?
Three main factors caused the most movement in gold. Firstly, US inflation data came out early in the month, giving a slightly lower-than-expected figure, dialling back any market predictions for any near-term Federal Reserve rate hike.
Lower expected real rates are about as reliably bullish for gold as any single macro variable gets, and the metal responded accordingly, rallying from just above \$4,000 to above \$4,600 by the third week of August — a roughly 14% move in three weeks. Second, the World Gold Council's Q2 2026 data (central banks buying a record 288.9 tonnes) continued to reverberate through the market during August as the "official sector" narrative solidified; central-bank and broader physical demand were estimated to account for roughly 55% of the entire rally. Third, the Iran conflict — which the Bank of England's own minutes have been tracking since it began on 28 February — passed the six-month mark in late August, and geopolitical risk premium stayed elevated throughout. That cut both ways at the very end of the month: gold spiked on reports the US had struck Iranian rocket launchers near the Strait of Hormuz around 28–29 August, but then Fed Chair Kevin Warsh's hawkish Jackson Hole keynote on 28 August — his first as chair, warning that "we have work to do" on inflation and sharpening expectations of a possible hike — triggered a sharp reversal. Gold fell from \$4,594.99 on 29 August to roughly \$4,451 by 31 August, a pullback of over 3% in the space of two trading days, as rate-hike fears briefly outweighed the safe-haven bid. Demand and supply, in more detail: demand-side data for August, though partial, points the same direction as the price action. Weekly-level fund data showed SPDR Gold Shares (GLD), the largest single gold ETF, pulling in $1.19 billion in a single day around 25 August and $3.38 billion over the week ending 21 August alone, while aggregate global gold ETF inflows were estimated at around $5.5 billion for the month -- a third consecutive month of net buying after June's heavy outflows and July's tentative rebound, consistent with a market where investment demand was chasing the price higher rather than resisting it, in contrast to June's pattern. Two honest caveats: the World Gold Council's own official monthly ETF report for August wasn't yet published at the time of writing (it typically lands in the first week of the following month), so the $5.5bn aggregate figure above is a secondary-sourced estimate rather than a WGC-confirmed number, worth re-checking once their report is out; and Q3 central-bank buying figures won't be published until the WGC's next quarterly Gold Demand Trends report in November, so there's no new official-sector data point for August specifically -- nothing in the price action suggests the record pace of Q2 buying (289 tonnes) reversed, but that's an inference, not a confirmed fact yet. Mine supply and recycling data are also only published quarterly, so the Q2 read (production +2% y/y, recycling -6% y/y) remains the most recent official figure.
What was moving silver?
Silver's August was the standout story of the quarter so far. Having fallen as low as \$55.50/oz in midJuly, it rallied hard through August, touching roughly \$68–69.7/oz around 25 August before easing into month-end alongside gold. The scale of the outperformance versus gold — roughly 15% versus gold's 9% — is the headline, and it reflects silver doing what the underlying fundamentals have been pointing to for months: this is now silver's sixth consecutive annual supply deficit, and demand is broadening well beyond the traditional solar and EV story. Coverage through August specifically flagged AI and data-centre buildout as an emerging new leg of industrial silver demand, sitting alongside photovoltaics, EVs and semiconductors — industrial use overall accounted for roughly 59% of total silver demand in 2025 and that share looks to be climbing, not shrinking. With supply still overwhelmingly a byproduct of base-metal mining (meaning it can't simply scale up in response to price), a genuine demand upgrade running into a structural deficit is exactly the kind of setup that produces outsized moves like August's. Silver did give some of the gain back into the bank holiday weekend — falling roughly 4.2% on 30 August alongside gold's slide — but even after that pullback it was comfortably the better-performing metal on the month. Demand and supply, in more detail: silver's central-bank role in August remained exactly what it has been all year: negligible, with the metal's demand story running almost entirely through investment and industrial channels rather than the official sector that dominates gold's. On investment demand, several outlets reported silver ETF flows turning sharply positive in August after a multi-year pattern of net selling, with the iShares Silver Trust (SLV) -- the largest silver ETF -- recording meaningful weekly inflows during the month, consistent with the price strength described above; treat the precise weekly dollar figures as directional rather than exact, since silver ETF flow reporting is considerably less standardised than the World Gold Council's monthly gold series. On firmer ground: industrial and structural demand coverage through August continued to point to a broadening base -- AI and datacentre buildout joining solar, EVs and semiconductors as a driver of industrial silver consumption, which the Silver Institute puts at roughly 59-61% of total annual silver demand -- running into a supply backdrop still pointing to a sixth consecutive annual deficit of 46.3 million ounces for 2026 as a whole. That combination of broadening demand and a supply base that isn't expanding to meet it is the clearest structural explanation for why silver outperformed gold as decisively as it did in August.
What is there to look out for next month?
September brings a genuinely stacked calendar. The Bank of England's next rate decision lands on 17 September — markets are pricing only a small probability of a move, but it's the first live MPC meeting since the hawkish 29 July vote, so watch the split closely. On the US side, Fed Chair Warsh's Jackson Hole tone raises the odds that the Fed's own September meeting could deliver a hawkish surprise, which would be the single biggest risk to gold's rally continuing uninterrupted — a genuine US rate hike would be the first real test of how much of August's move was "real" versus rate-expectations-driven. The Iran conflict remains unresolved as it enters its seventh month; any further escalation (or, conversely, any credible de-escalation) would move both metals quickly. And keep an eye out for the World Gold Council's next data drops on Q3 central-bank buying activity, expected with the usual lag — if official-sector demand held up through a quarter where prices were rising rather than falling, that would be a meaningfully bullish signal for the structural thesis.
My outlook
As you'll recall from the last two editions, my hypothesis has been that gold and silver are both undervalued at current levels, and silver especially so, on the basis of a stretched gold/silver ratio, silver's ongoing structural supply deficit, and central bank gold demand running at roughly double its pre-2022 pace. Is that hypothesis still in line with what August delivered? This is the first month where I'd say the answer is a genuinely strong yes, and for a reason that goes beyond just "prices went up": the ratio itself finally started correcting, falling from just under 70 to around 66 over the month. That's precisely the mechanism the thesis was betting on — silver catching up to gold rather than gold simply pulling further away. The supply-deficit argument for silver got stronger too, not weaker, with August's coverage highlighting a genuinely new demand driver (AI and data-centre buildout) on top of the existing solar/EV/semiconductor base, none of which does anything to help the supply side of a market that's overwhelmingly byproduct-sourced. And the central-bank pillar of the gold thesis remains fully intact — nothing in August's data suggested official-sector buying has slowed. If I'm being honest about what's changed in my own thinking after three editions of writing this section: the ratio's move from 69.5 in July to around 66 in August is exactly the kind of single-month swing that could just as easily meanrevert back the other way in September, especially given how binary the near-term catalyst (a possible Fed hike) now looks. I'm treating August as the first real evidence for the thesis rather than proof it's played out — the ratio would need to keep compressing over another month or two, ideally back toward the low-to-mid 60s or below, before I'd call this confirmed rather than just "no longer contradicted."
Final comments
August was the strongest month for precious metals since the spring, and — for the first time since this thesis was laid out in the June edition — the gold/silver ratio actually moved the way the thesis predicted it eventually would. Cooling US rate-hike fears, record central bank demand, and a genuine broadening of silver's industrial demand base drove gold to a fresh yearly high and silver to its best month of the quarter, before a hawkish Fed speech and Iran-conflict volatility clipped both metals into month-end. The hypothesis holds, and August gave it its best supporting evidence yet.
Sources
Benzinga "Gold ETF Leads Inflows as Mega-Cap ETFs Shed Billions"
Fortune "Current price of gold: August 31, 2026"
Federal Reserve Chairman Warsh's Jackson Hole keynote remarks, 28 August 2026
ETF Action "SPDR Gold Shares Leads Commodity Surge with $1.3 Billion Inflow"
mygoldcalc.com August 2026 gold price archive
PV magazine USA — "Silver prices rebound as AI, data centers add to industrial demand"
Silver Institute 2026 deficit forecast
Trading Economics gold price commodity page
World Gold Council Gold Demand Trends Q2 2026
Yahoo Finance / ETF.com "Silver prices today, Monday, August 31, 2026"