Wealthion Macro Bites 1-30-26

After touching a high of $5,595 in early Thursday trading (+29.5% in Jan.), spot gold continued its Thursday pullback touching a low of $4,943 early Friday, for a peak-to-trough correction of 11.6%.

After touching a high of $121.65 in early Thursday trading (+70% in Jan.), spot silver continued its Thursday pullback touching a low of $95.26 early Friday, for a peak-to-trough correction of 21.7%.

While two-day pullbacks for gold and silver have been steep, in the context of scorching January gains we view these corrections as entirely reasonable and actually healthy for ongoing market stability. At 7:45 am ET levels of $5,075 and $101 for spot gold and silver, January performances still constitute impressive gains of 17.5% and 41% respectively!

A wave of reported speculative Chinese buying drove LME 3-mos. copper futures to an intra-day high of $14,527/t in Thursday trading (+11% on the day) before closing at $13,618/t. This morning, precautionary measures over a discovered “technical glitch” delayed opening of LME trading by one hour, leading to speculation of large losses in Thursday trading and an open near $13,000/t (-4% on day).

In tacit acknowledgement of a lack of Congressional funding and the complexity of setting market pricing, the Trump administration is reversing course on plans to guarantee minimum price for U.S. critical minerals projects. The shift comes as a Senate committee reviews price floors extended to MP Materials last year and could set Washington apart from G7 partners considering joint price support. This news follows recent closed-door Washington meetings in which senior Trump officials told U.S. minerals executives that their projects would need to prove their financial independence without government price support. Audrey Robertson, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy and head of its Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation told the executives, "We're not here to prop you guys up…Don't come to us expecting that."

As we have long predicted, President Trump backed away from lightening-rod NEC Director Kevin Hassett and selected ex-Fed Governor Kevin Warsh to be his Fed Chair nominee (to be announced today). This news may be contributing to precious metal pressure given Warsh’s reputation as an inflation hawk.

The Sprott Physical Uranium Trust purchased 1.4Mlb of uranium (4^th largest daily total), to bring Q1 purchases to 2.65Mlb and total holdings to 77.4Mlb.

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