In early 2026, the precious metals market performance was somewhat disappointing. Gold, silver, and platinum group metals all declined simultaneously, directly ending the previous upward trend.

Once the specific numbers came out, the magnitude of the move was clear — spot gold briefly fell below $4,430 per ounce, with a single-day drop of over 1.4%, and New York gold futures also shrank to around $4,477. Silver fell even more sharply, with a decline of 4.6%, touching a low of $76.37 per ounce, and COMEX silver futures dropped over 3%. Platinum group metals were even more extreme, with spot platinum sliding over 7% in a single day, and palladium falling more than 5%, hitting recent lows. Domestic markets were not spared either, with the main contract of Shanghai silver futures dropping to 19,214 yuan per kilogram, a decline of nearly 2%.

Why did the market suddenly become so intense? Essentially, it’s due to Bloomberg Commodity Index adjusting its annual weights. Although this seems simple, it actually causes a big impact. According to the new plan, the gold weight drops from 19.6% to 14.9%, and silver even more drastically, from 7.7% down to 3.9%. What does this mean? Passive funds tracking this index, which could reach a scale of hundreds of billions, need to complete rebalancing within the window from January 8 to 14. This operation is expected to generate about $9 billion in technical selling, corresponding to 3% of total gold holdings and 9% of total silver holdings.

Combined with a large amount of accumulated profit-taking from earlier, these factors together became the final straw that broke the market.