How Real Interest Rates Move Gold and Silver
Gold pays you nothing. So the question every gold holder is implicitly answering is: what am I giving up by not holding a bond instead? That number is the real interest rate. For decades it tracked the gold price more closely than almost anything else — though since late 2022, heavy central-bank buying has kept gold rising even as real rates climbed.
How the color is set · < 0% Bullish · 0–1.5% Two-way · ≥ 1.5% Bearish
— The last 10 years
The background shows this site’s rule, the same one that colors the card:bullish rangetwo-way rangebearish range
Data: FRED · one point per week · hover or use the arrow keys to read each point
— What it is
The return after stripping out expected inflation — long seen as gold's most important driver.
— What it moves
Gold
The higher the real rate, the greater the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding gold. Long seen as gold's most important driver, though the link has loosened since 2022.
- ▲Real rate up → bearish for gold
- ▼Down / turns negative → strongly bullish
Silver
Silver is also a non-yielding precious metal; rising real rates raise its holding cost too.
- ▲Real rate up → bearish
- ▼Down / turns negative → bullish
Education only — not investment advice. The directional notes describe general tendencies, not predictions: the same data can move markets differently depending on context. Figures come from FRED and are labeled with the period they cover and the date they were published.