New York, March 10, 2026, 13:51 EDT
- Spot silver rose 2.8% to $89.42 an ounce on Tuesday after slipping 0.2% on Monday. 1
- A weaker dollar and a sharp fall in oil prices eased fears that inflation would force U.S. rates higher for longer. 1
- U.S. consumer price data on Wednesday and the Fed’s preferred Personal Consumption Expenditures index on Friday are the next tests for the rally. 2
Spot silver, the price for immediate delivery, rose 2.8% to $89.42 an ounce on Tuesday, rebounding with gold after the dollar paused and oil prices tumbled. The move reversed part of Monday’s damage, when silver slipped 0.2% to $84.18 as a stronger dollar and higher-rate fears hit precious metals. 1
Why this matters now is pretty clear. Silver has been pulled between safe-haven buying — money moving into assets investors trust in periods of stress — and the risk that high oil prices keep the Federal Reserve tighter for longer, which is usually a drag on metals that pay no yield. Tuesday’s bounce showed that balance can flip fast. 1
Bart Melek, global head of commodity strategy at TD Securities, said easing oil prices were “no longer high enough to seriously limit” Fed rate cuts. That helped steady sentiment after Monday’s oil shock pushed the dollar toward a three-month high and knocked silver lower. 1
Oil did most of the heavy lifting. Brent fell 12.6% to $86.50 a barrel on Tuesday after leaping above $119 a day earlier, when traders feared a longer disruption to flows through the Strait of Hormuz. Suvro Sarkar, energy sector team lead at DBS Bank, said Trump’s remarks about a short war had “calmed markets.” 3
But the risk has not gone away. Reuters reported that U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran intensified on Tuesday even as markets bet on a shorter conflict, and G7 energy ministers asked the International Energy Agency to prepare scenarios for a possible emergency stock release rather than act immediately. 3
Silver was not alone. Gold rose 1.7% to $5,222.74 an ounce and platinum added 2.4% to $2,234.35, while palladium fell 0.9% to $1,675.99, showing the rebound spread across precious metals rather than sitting only in silver. 1
The longer backdrop still looks tight. The Silver Institute said in February that the market was headed for a sixth straight year of structural deficit, meaning demand is expected to exceed supply, even with total supply seen rising 1.5% to a decade high. Silver is used not only in jewellery but also in electronics, electric vehicles and solar panels. 4
That is the bullish case. The more cautious one is that price may have run ahead of use. A Reuters poll last month put silver’s 2026 average price at $79.50 an ounce, below Tuesday’s spot level, and Julius Baer analyst Carsten Menke said industrial demand was already softening as solar manufacturers used less silver or switched away from it. 5
The next shove could come from U.S. inflation data. Consumer prices are due on Wednesday and the Fed’s preferred Personal Consumption Expenditures index on Friday; the Fed is still expected to hold rates steady on March 17-18. Jim Wyckoff, senior analyst at Kitco Metals, warned on Monday that hot inflation numbers could put the Fed “into kind of a quandary.” 2
For now, silver is back near $90, but it is still well below the $121.64 peak hit on Jan. 29 after a burst of retail and momentum buying. That kind of run leaves the market jumpy. It can snap back hard, either way. 5
