China quietly bought 88 tonnes of gold OTC in May-June, 4x official. Silver breaks multi-year downtrend. Ag at decade high. Trump suggests military for bond yields. Hard assets rally.
Alpha Score of 58 reflects moderate overall profile with moderate momentum, moderate value, moderate quality, weak sentiment.
Agricultural commodities are trading at their highest level in a decade, and a super El Niño building for later this year could add further pressure. The DBA ETF, which tracks a basket of softs and grains, has climbed steadily since early 2025. Markets are pricing in supply disruption before a single harvest is lost, climate scientists said.
Gold has crept back to three‑month highs, driven by a surge in Chinese buying that the central bank is not fully reporting. China bought an estimated 40 tonnes of gold through the London OTC market in June alone, according to Goldman Sachs. That was 167% more than the People's Bank of China officially declared for the month. May was even larger: 48 tonnes OTC against 10 tonnes reported, a 380% gap. Together, the two months added roughly 88 tonnes, more than China's entire officially reported total for the year to date. The official holding is a record 2,366 tonnes; the real figure is almost certainly higher, analysts said.
Silver has broken out of a multi‑year downtrend that held since its early 2025 peak. The metal punched back through the high‑sixties level last week, snapping a trendline that had capped rallies for more than two years. Silver's leverage to both the gold thesis and industrial demand – solar and electric‑vehicle manufacturing – gives it more torque than gold on the upside, traders said.
The common thread tying these moves together is the bond market. Thirty‑year Treasury yields recently hit their highest levels since 2007. Asked about further intervention, President Donald Trump told reporters: “We have many types of intervention. That's one. The ultimate intervention is our military. And if we have to use that, we will.” The comment reinforced a view that fiscal discipline is not imminent, and that the administration is more inclined to jawbone markets than balance the budget, analysts said.
Hard assets – agricultural commodities, gold, silver – are all pricing in the same risk: currency debasement and a government willing to use unconventional tools to manage yields. The combination of supply threats, central‑bank demand, and fiscal uncertainty has pushed them higher in tandem.
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