Gold was the star of the show, at the center of widespread attention while gaining 65% in 2025. This marked the third straight year of double-digit gains for this glittering store of value.
| Date | $/oz. |
| December 30th, 2025 | 4318 |
| December 30th, 2024 | 2624 |
| December 30th, 2023 | 2063 |
| December 30th, 2022 | 1823 |
For the past decade, gold has been an excellent hedge against market volatility while also acting as the de facto protection against the current trend of currency devaluation.
Other metals, although much less publicized, shined as well. Gold’s sibling, silver, was up 141% for the year, its largest yearly gain since 1979 when the Iranian Revolution caused the second oil crisis and US inflation peaked. Among the industrial metals, copper posted a 41% gain while aluminum was also up 17%.
Price performance of selected metals are shown below.
| Commodity | Performance (2025) |
| Gold | +65% |
| Silver | +141% |
| Copper | +41% |
| Aluminum | +17% |
| Iron | +5% |
| Tin | +41% |
| Nickel | +9% |
| Zinc | +5% |
| Platinum | +127% |
| Palladium | +77% |
| Lithium (Hydroxide) | +38% |
| Uranium (U3O8) | +12% |
The spot performance of metals translated into outsized gains for the miners in 2025.
While the gold spot price increased by 63%, the gold miners (GDX) enjoyed a 143% index gain in 2025. This type of outperformance by the miners compared to the spot prices is not a common theme, as in 2024 the spot price increased about 2 times more than the miners.
Miners depend on offload contracts that act as hedges to guarantee profitability in cases where metal pricing is weak. However, this limits their upside for the duration of the contracts.
When spot prices are strong for an extended period such as they have been for the past 2-3 years, these hedges start rolling off the book and new offload contracts are signed to reflect the new prices. Also, as the production costs are only slightly affected by the spot price, most of the increases in metal prices go directly to the company’s bottom line.
The effects are evident in the quarterly earnings of gold mining companies such as Agnico (AEM):
From Q3 ’24 to Q3 ’25, revenue increased from 2.12 to 2.93B, an increase of 38%. Consequently, GAAP EPS increased from 1.02 to 1.97, which is an increase of 93% in net income.
With a 38% increase in revenue, the company was able to bring in 93% more in net income. Gold was up approximately 64% in that same period. When considering that 99% of Agnico’s revenue comes from gold, it means that there were considerable hedges in place that prevented the company from making even more in revenue. With gold prices even higher from that point and with hedges rolling off, companies such as Agnico will be able to increase their net incomes by a multiple of the increase in their revenues.
The stock performance of the largest gold miners in 2025 are shown below.
None of the gold miners underperformed relative to the gold spot price in 2025.
In 2026, metals are up even with the insane drop in spot prices at the end of January.
Silver plunged 25% on the 30th of January, but was still up by 11% for the year.
Systemic shortages in metal production is self-evident as shown in the Bloomberg forecast for copper.
This sort of imbalance between supply and demand exist in most of the industrial metals today, and the deficit will only grow as mines live out their operating lifespans.
A simple search yields similar charts such as the one below on the shortage of various industrial metals.
Although spot prices have gone parabolic in the past year, holding at least some exposure in the metals space will be a good hedge against increasing costs in materials. When considering that spot pricing tends to be very volatile and with companies set to fully monetize the pricing, getting exposure through mining companies could ultimately offer higher alpha with less beta.
Current Positions
Diversified – TECK, BHP.AX, 5713.T
Gold – BTG, CDE, EQX, NEM, NST.AX, VAU.AX, TIG.V
Silver – PAAS, SVM, IVR.AX, SS1.AX, AGA.V
Copper – FCX, IVN.TO
Lithium – ALB, 9696.HK
Uranium – URA
Graphite – WWR
Other – CRML, MP, LSX.AX