The week ending April 7, 2026 was a milestone for gold and a broadly positive one for the precious metals complex. Here is a comprehensive breakdown of price action, key market drivers, and positioning data for the week.

Gold

Gold broke above $3,400 per troy ounce on Wednesday, April 2, and held that level through the Friday close at $3,416.20, up $68.40 or 2.0% on the week. The catalyst was Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, in which he described inflation risks as "two-sided" and declined to signal any urgency around rate increases. Markets interpreted the language as consistent with a patient, hold-or-cut bias, supportive of gold.

ETF flows were positive for the third consecutive week. Global gold ETF holdings rose by 21 tonnes to 3,148 tonnes, the highest level since August 2025. COMEX open interest increased by 14,200 contracts to 512,000, confirming that new speculative longs are entering rather than short positions being covered.

Silver

Silver gained $1.44, or 4.1%, to close at $35.70 per troy ounce. The gold/silver ratio fell from 97.2 to 95.7 — a modest compression but still historically elevated. Solar industry sources confirmed that spot silver premiums in China were trading at $0.18 above global benchmarks, suggesting tightness in the Chinese physical market ahead of Q2 panel installations.

Platinum

Platinum rose $18.60, or 1.9%, to $981.30 per troy ounce — approaching the psychologically significant $1,000 level. Demand from hydrogen fuel cell applications, particularly from commercial vehicle fleets in South Korea and Japan, is providing an emerging demand source that partially offsets declining gasoline-engine autocatalyst demand. The World Platinum Investment Council raised its 2026 demand forecast by 120,000 ounces in its latest quarterly review.

Palladium

Palladium added $112.40, or 2.9%, to $3,887.60 per troy ounce. Supply risks from Russian production (Russia accounts for roughly 40% of global palladium output) remain elevated given the ongoing war in Ukraine and associated sanctions on Russian metals. A single Norilsk Nickel smelter in Kola, Russia accounts for an estimated 15% of annual global palladium production — a concentration risk that sustains a geopolitical risk premium in the market.

Industrial Metals

Copper rose 2.3% to $4.71 per pound on the strong Chinese PMI data. Aluminum gained 0.8% to $2,693 per tonne. Zinc fell 1.1% to $2,814 per tonne following an announcement of new mine supply from a large Peruvian operation coming online ahead of schedule. Nickel continued to lag the complex, falling 0.4% to $16,980 per tonne amid ongoing Indonesian supply growth.

Outlook for the Coming Week

The key data releases for the week of April 8 include U.S. CPI (Tuesday) and PPI (Wednesday). A hotter-than-expected inflation print would push back Fed cut expectations and create short-term headwinds for gold, while a soft print could accelerate the rally. The CFTC positioning report for the prior week (released Friday) will also be watched for signs that speculative positioning has become stretched, which would increase the risk of a short-term pullback.