Gold price

After hitting a record high of close to US$5,600 per ounce, gold closed out January by embarking on one of the biggest price slides it’s seen in decades. By early morning trading on Monday (February 2), the yellow metal had dropped as low as US$4,400 for a significant loss of more than 21 percent.

However, gold regained much of that lost ground by Tuesday’s (February 3) close, trading back above US$4,935. By Wednesday (February 4) morning, gold was once again back above the key psychological US$5,000 mark, although it couldn’t maintain that level for long and slipped back down into the US$4,900 range.

Gold price chart, January 28, 2025, to February 4, 2026.

The primary drivers for gold this past week are:

Silver price

The silver price has tracked gold on these macro trends. The white metal fell from the all-time high of more than US$120 per ounce that it reached on January 29 to a low of about US$71 on Monday.

Silver price chart, January 28, 2025, to February 4, 2026.

Although silver lost 35 percent from its peak in such a short time, the precious metal has rebounded to an intraday high of US$92.32 as its fundamentals remain strong.

Platinum price

Platinum tracked its precious metal sisters down from a January 29 high of US$2,816 per ounce to as low as US$1,882. By Tuesday, the metal was back above US$2,200 and has traded mostly around that price mark for Wednesday.

Platinum price chart, January 28, 2025, to February 4, 2026.

Platinum is one of the top-performing metals over the past year, reaching 12 year highs in recent weeks. Demand is being driven by the metal’s essential role in the emerging hydrogen economy. Its also still seeing robust demand from the auto sector despite the emergence of electric vehicles and uneasy consumer confidence in the economy.

On the supply side, global platinum reserves remain critically low, especially as the world’s biggest producer, South Africa, continues to be plagued by power shortages and operational disruptions.

Palladium price

Palladium has been the black sheep of the precious metals family for the past few years, remaining well below its March 2022 all-time record of US$3,440.76 per ounce.

On January 29, palladium got in on the party and rallied to an intraday high of US$2,172.50.

Then on Monday it came along for the slide, falling as low as US$1,529. After a slight rebound on Tuesday, the precious metal has traded around US$1,700 to US$1,800.

Palladium price chart, January 28, 2025, to February 4, 2026.

The palladium price is being held down by a slump in demand for electric vehicles and a looming oversupply situation. Analysts at Heraeus and Metals Focus predict the palladium market may move into a surplus in 2026 as secondary supply from recycling increases by 10 percent.

1. ‘No realer thing than critical minerals’ — Vance

‘And as much as we talk about the modern economy, the digital economy, the high-tech economy, the President said something that was very, very important, and I think should inform a lot of how we think about future growth, which is that as much as data centers and technology and all of these incredible things that we’re all working on matter, fundamentally you still have an economy that runs on real things. And there is no realer thing than oil — and I would add to that there’s no realer thing than critical minerals.’

2. ‘We will establish reference prices for critical minerals’ — Vance

‘So, this morning, the Trump Administration is proposing a concrete mechanism to return the global critical minerals market to a healthier, more competitive state — a preferential trade zone for critical minerals, protected from external disruptions through enforceable price floors. We will establish reference prices for critical minerals at each stage of production, pricing that reflects real-world, fair-market value.

‘And for members of the preferential zone, these reference prices will operate as a floor, maintained through adjustable tariffs to uphold pricing integrity. We want to eliminate that problem of people flooding into our markets with cheap critical minerals to undercut our domestic manufacturers because we know, of course, that as soon as they’ve undercut our domestic makers, they — the domestic markers — they’d leave the market and the people who undercut them then jack up the price to a completely unfair level. We’re going to fix that problem.’

3. ‘We … outsourced our economic security’ — Rubio

‘The United States used to produce its own critical minerals and derivative products like rare earth magnets. Back in 1949, miners in Mountain Pass, California discovered one of the world’s richest mineral deposits. By 1952, the United States, we were mining rare earths there, and that discovery sparked a revolution.

‘American scientists and engineers, alongside innovators from many of the countries that are here today, rushed to discover new applications for these minerals and, with these new technologies, ushered in the jet age, we ushered in the space age, we ushered in the computer age.

‘And then we became blinded, blinded by the potential of the technologies those metals enabled, but we neglected their importance. Mining is less glamorous than building computers. It’s less glamorous than building cars or airplanes. But building computers and cars and airplanes is less glamorous than designing them.

‘As we embraced what was new and glamorous, we outsourced what seemed old and unfashionable. We allowed, for example, Mountain Pass — and with it, most of America’s critical mineral industry — to wither and to die so that we could focus on manufacturing. Then we outsourced the manufacturing.

‘And I know this is a story I’m telling, but it’s a story many of the advanced economies represented here today understand well. We outsourced the manufacturing so we could focus on designing these goods. And then one day we woke up and we realized we had outsourced our economic security and our very future. We were at the mercy of whoever controlled supply chains for these minerals. So my hope is that we are gathered here today as the first but important step to rectifying this mistake, to bring together our collective talent for innovation, when our advantage over rivals — where our advantage over rivals has only grown, and to apply it to bringing back manufacturing and reopening mines here in the United States, but also in all the partner nations represented here today.’

4. ‘Diversity … is what makes us resilient’ — Horii

‘Japan strongly believes that FORGE will become an important venue and a vehicle for us to focus on supply chain diversification and ensure policy coordination. Japan stands ready to actively contribute to discussions to further deepen collaboration with partners and to ensure the effective implementation of this initiative.

‘So how should we move forward from here? On the supply side, diversification is essential. Diversity as opposed to concentration is what makes us resilient. This has to be one of the — our major guiding principles.’

5. ‘Four key initiatives’ — Copley

‘So, four key initiatives — we’re investing, we’re stockpiling, we’re going to protect our mining companies, and we’re fixing our mining ecosystem — because this industry is so important to our national development, as I know it is to your countries as well. But most importantly, under President Trump’s leadership, we are no longer standing around admiring the problem. We’re not spending our time writing 200-page book reports about how important critical minerals are. We have a plan, and we’re focused on project execution — getting deals done, getting companies their permits, stockpiling minerals, and hopefully moving forward with all of you, our international partners, to protect our mining companies and to rebuild global mining in a fair and balanced way.’

Miners, developers welcome new policy

For domestic critical-minerals developers, the announcement has landed as a major policy signal.

“This effort represents exactly the kind of bold and innovative public-private partnership that the US needs right now to facilitate the rapid build-out of domestic critical minerals production and integrated supply chains,” said Mark A. Smith, chairman and chief executive officer of NioCorp Developments Ltd. (NASDAQ:NB). “I commend President Trump and EXIM Chairman John Jovanovic for their vision.”

The company said Project Vault, combined with recent Section 232 findings and a January presidential proclamation targeting imported critical minerals, demonstrates the administration’s intent to move aggressively to address what it views as excessive US reliance on foreign-produced materials.

Mining developers with US-based projects also see potential downstream benefits. American Pacific Mining (CSE:USGD,OTCQX:USGDF) chief executive Warwick Smith said the initiative enhances the strategic relevance of domestic copper assets.

“Once again, President Trump and the current administration are shining an important light on the need for more critical metals within the United States,” Smith said.

He pointed to copper’s role in electrification, transmission infrastructure and advanced manufacturing, adding that American Pacific’s Madison copper-gold project in Montana is “well aligned to benefit from Project Vault and the associated push to secure domestic critical metals supply.”

Beyond miners, industrial groups have viewed the project as a structural shift in how the US approaches supply-chain resilience.

The New American Industrial Alliance (NAIA) called the program “a perfect example of the public and private sectors working together to tackle the urgent issues facing our country,” noting that stockpiling critical minerals is essential to protecting supply chains from “malicious foreign actors.”

Battery manufacturers, meanwhile, welcomed the initiative as a necessary safeguard against future disruptions. The Responsible Battery Coalition (RBC) called Project Vault “a generational investment in American dominance and critical mineral independence.”

“Project Vault is exactly the kind of serious, industrial-strength action America needs right now,” said coalition president Adam Muellerweiss in a statement.

Analysts urge caution on near-term impact

Market analysts, however, stress that the stockpile should be viewed as a strategic backstop rather than a near-term solution to China’s dominance.

“The announcement is a step in the right direction, that direction being minimizing China’s ability to disrupt the US economy and manufacturing/technology base by manipulating both price and supply of critical elements,” said Dmitry Silversteyn, analyst at Water Tower Research.

Still, he cautioned that Project Vault is “not a quick solution,” given that many US-backed mining projects remain in early development stages or are producing limited commercial volumes.

Others echoed that view, emphasizing that stockpiling alone cannot solve structural constraints in global supply chains. Helen Amos, a commodities analyst at BMO Capital Markets, said the administration is deploying multiple tools at once.

“They’re investing directly in equity, they’re building up stockpiles and looking at strategic partnerships with trading companies,” Amos told Bloomberg. “They’re coming at it from all possible angles.”

Meanwhile, questions about the program’s scale also prompted some scrutiny. Almonty Industries (TSX:AII) chief executive Lewis Black described US$12 billion as modest when spread across dozens of critical minerals and compared with Cold War-era stockpiling efforts.

“Where are they going to get the material from? There’s nothing out there,” Black said, noting that in tight markets such as tungsten, the US will still have to compete with China for global supply.

“China is extraordinarily aggressive in buying non-Chinese concentrate and scrap, and the financial regulations that apply to us don’t apply to them,” he added.

Despite the cautious sentiment, there is a shared recognition that critical minerals have moved from a niche policy concern to a central economic and national-security issue.

As Jefferies analyst Charles Boakye put it, Project Vault is “a first big step of many” needed over the next several years.

“This is not a nationalization of US minerals,” Boakye told Fortune. “It’s state capitalism and it’s industrial policy.”