Silver tumbled as much as 9% on Friday while gold slid roughly 3%, as a burst of rising U.S. Treasury yields and a firmer dollar rattled precious-metals markets and helped drag equity indexes lower. Why it happened - Higher yields raise the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding assets like silver and gold. With Treasuries offering better returns, investors rotated out of metals. Silver, which can be more sensitive to rate moves, suffered the bigger decline. - A stronger U.S. Dollar Index also pressured demand: dollar-priced metals become more expensive for overseas buyers, reducing foreign buying. - Fresh inflation data (the latest Consumer Price Index) surprised to the upside, dimming the odds of another Fed rate cut and boosting the probability of a rate hike this summer. That shift in monetary expectations adds an additional headwind for precious metals. What analysts say ANZ economists Daniel Hynes and Soni Kumari warned that “inflation expectations, higher yields and a stronger dollar are likely to keep gold under pressure in the near term.” They added that the stronger-than-expected rise in consumer and producer prices has raised concerns the Fed may need to lift rates in the short term — a dynamic that typically weighs on metals prices. Outlook Both metals remain well below their recent peaks reached earlier this year, and given the current trajectory — higher yields, firmer dollar and stickier inflation — it looks unlikely they’ll reclaim those highs in the near term unless inflation cools and rate expectations pivot. For crypto traders and macro-focused investors, these moves are a reminder that shifts in yields and dollar strength can reverberate across risk assets, including precious metals and digital currencies. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news