Gold Crash! Down $3.4 Trillion as Silver Sinks 12% from New Record Highs
Thu, 29-Jan-2026 16:16
GOLD and SILVER SANK from fresh record prices on Thursday, with a crash in the 'safe haven' knocking it almost $500 per ounce lower to $5100 as the industrially-useful precious metal plunged by 11.9% amid a slump in major US AI and tech stocks, led by a crash in Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT).
The world's largest software company dropped a quarter-billion-dollars of market cap at the New York opening, crashing by 11.9% after quarterly earnings showed a slowdown in its Azure cloud computing and AI data segment.
But with gold peaking Thursday just $5 per ounce beneath $5600, the precious metal's 8.7% plunge knocked $3.4 trillion off the value of all the gold now estimated to be above ground.
Finding ever-more demand from AI computing and green-energy tech meantime, silver peaked above $121 per Troy ounce − more than 68% higher across January, silver's strongest ever monthly gain outside December 1979 − before sinking to $107 as cloud-computing and data giant Oracle sank 5.4% (NYSE: ORCL) on worsening fears that the AI bubble is about to crash, with chipmaker Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA) losing 2.7% at the open.
A rally in both precious metals then put them back at what was a new all-time high on Monday for silver and Wednesday for gold.