Gold and silver rose this week after Democrats won control of Congress in the U.S. midterm elections, while copper fell to its lowest level since July as traders cut bets on a U.S. tariff on refined copper.
Gold traded at $4,043.20 an ounce at 9 a.m. EST Friday, up 3.3% from $3,915.20 a week earlier, according to Metal Sentinel data.
Silver rose 4.9% to $51.66. Copper fell 3.1% to $6.353 a pound.
The moves came in a week packed with U.S. events: the elections on Tuesday, a sell-off in technology stocks on Thursday and the October jobs report on Friday.
The week in numbers
Metal | Oct. 30, morning | Nov. 6, 9 a.m. EST | Change | Range, Nov. 2-6 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Gold, per ounce | $3,915.20 | $4,043.20 | +3.3% | $3,879 to $4,148 |
Silver, per ounce | $49.26 | $51.66 | +4.9% | $48.50 to $53.60 |
Copper, per pound | $6.557 | $6.353 | -3.1% | $6.32 to $6.60 |
Prices are Metal Sentinel bid quotes. Live figures are on the gold, silver and copper price pages.
Gold: back above $4,000
Gold started the week near a one-year low. Spot gold fell to $3,869.85 an ounce on Friday, Oct. 30, CNBC reported, after inflation data kept a December rate increase by the Federal Reserve on the table.
The election changed the direction. Gold rose about 3.4% on Wednesday, Nov. 4, its biggest one-day gain since Aug. 19, according to CNBC, as the dollar weakened and Treasury yields fell.
On Thursday it reached $4,146.63, the highest since Oct. 20.
Lower yields matter for gold because the metal pays no interest.
The 10-year Treasury yield fell 6 basis points to 4.829% on Thursday, FXStreet reported. The dollar index dropped to its lowest level since Sept. 30, according to CNBC.
Traders also scaled back bets on a Fed rate increase. CME Group's FedWatch tool showed a 66% chance of a December hike on Thursday, down from 82% a day earlier, FXStreet reported.
"It's not that at this point rate hike expectation has completely disappeared," David Meger, director of metals trading at High Ridge Futures, told CNBC on Thursday.
Gold eased on Friday morning ahead of the jobs report. Metal Sentinel's gold forecast for Nov. 2-6 set out the levels traders watched going into the week, and the midterms report from Wednesday covered the election-day move.
Silver: above $50 again
Silver fell below $50 on Oct. 30 for the first time since November 2025. It touched about $48.50 on Tuesday, then rose back above $50 on Wednesday with gold and reached about $53.60 on Thursday, according to Metal Sentinel data.
Silver moved more than gold in percentage terms, as it often does. The gold/silver ratio, the number of ounces of silver it takes to buy one ounce of gold, stood at about 78 on Friday, FXStreet reported, down from about 79 on Thursday.
The silver forecast for Nov. 2-6 covered the fund outflows and weaker solar demand behind the October drop. Daily and historical silver prices are in the silver price tables.
Copper: lowest since July
Copper went the other way. The London Metal Exchange three-month contract fell 1.3% on Friday to $13,663 a metric ton by 7 a.m. GMT and was on course for a weekly loss of about 3.4%, its largest since March, Reuters reported.
The election also changed the outlook for U.S. tariffs. Expected import tariffs had kept U.S. copper prices above global prices and pulled metal into American warehouses.
That U.S. premium disappeared on Thursday, Bloomberg News reported.
"Many traders believe aggressive copper tariffs are now less likely with the Democratic Party controlling the US Congress," TD Securities said in a note cited by Bloomberg. The White House has not ruled on a proposed tariff on refined copper.
Copper is also tied to the AI trade through data-center cabling and power equipment. The Nasdaq 100 fell nearly 5.9% on Thursday as investors moved out of technology shares, FXStreet reported.
Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank, said copper "could be the one to be hurt the most" if tariff expectations fade, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
China's market pointed the other way. Copper stocks in warehouses monitored by the Shanghai Futures Exchange fell more than 24% in a week to 33,848 tons, the lowest in nearly three years, and the Yangshan import premium rose to $210 a ton on Thursday, matching its record, Reuters reported.
Craig Lang, chief analyst at CRU, linked the price drop to concerns about AI investment but cautioned against reading it as a sustained correction, citing mine supply problems and limited metal outside the United States, according to Reuters.
The copper forecast for Nov. 2-6 described the record China premium and the tariff wait before the vote. Recent copper headlines are in the copper news feed.
The U.S. data
U.S. factories kept growing. The Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing index rose to 55.5 in October from 54.5 in September, and its prices index stayed high at 75.2, the group said Monday.
Private employers added 86,000 jobs in October, according to ADP, above the 75,000 economists had expected, CNBC reported. Initial jobless claims fell to 189,000 in the week ended Oct. 31, the Labor Department said Thursday.
The Labor Department's report on Friday came in well above forecasts. Nonfarm payrolls rose by 165,000 in October, compared with the 59,000 that economists polled by Dow Jones had expected, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.1% from 4.2%, CNBC reported.
Average hourly earnings rose 0.4% from September and 3.1% from a year earlier, both above estimates. The department also revised August and September payrolls up by a combined 84,000 jobs.
After the report, traders raised the odds of a quarter-point Fed rate increase at the Dec. 8-9 meeting to 76.8%, according to CME Group's FedWatch tool, and Treasury yields rose, CNBC reported. Gold slipped from $4,057.90 at 8:25 a.m. EST to $4,043.20 at 9 a.m., and silver eased to $51.66 from $52.03, according to Metal Sentinel data.
What to watch next week
Tuesday, Nov. 10: October consumer price index, 8:30 a.m. EST.
Wednesday, Nov. 11: Veterans Day, a U.S. federal holiday.
Friday, Nov. 13: October producer price index, 8:30 a.m. EST.
The inflation reports feed directly into the Fed's December decision. A copper tariff ruling from the White House could also move prices at any time.
How to get gold, silver and copper prices from the Metal Sentinel API
The Metal Sentinel prices in this article come from the same REST API that developers can call from their own apps. The steps below show how to pull this week's numbers yourself.
1. Get a key
Subscribe to Metal Sentinel on RapidAPI. The free plan includes 7,500 requests a month, up to 1,500 a day and 60 a minute, and needs no credit card.
Paid plans start at $7.99 a month for 45,000 requests; all limits are on the pricing page.
Every request sends two headers: X-RapidAPI-Key with your key and X-RapidAPI-Host set to metal-sentinel.p.rapidapi.com.
2. Request a live quote
The /api/metal-quote endpoint returns one metal in one currency. Use AU for gold, AG for silver and CU for copper.
curl "https://metal-sentinel.p.rapidapi.com/api/metal-quote?symbol=AU¤cy=USD" \
-H "X-RapidAPI-Key: YOUR_KEY" \
-H "X-RapidAPI-Host: metal-sentinel.p.rapidapi.com"The response for gold on Friday morning looked like this, trimmed to the main fields:
{
"results": [{
"symbol": "AU",
"currency": "USD",
"bid": 4069.6,
"ask": 4071.6,
"mid": 4070.6,
"high": 4107.9,
"low": 4035.5,
"change": -17.6,
"changePercentage": -0.43,
"unit": "OUNCE",
"timestamp": 1793965740
}]
}The same call with symbol=CU returns copper with "unit": "POUND", so copper prices are per pound. Multiply by 2,204.62 to compare them with LME prices per metric ton.
Quotes refresh every 15 seconds during market hours.
Gold and silver also have dedicated endpoints. /api/gold-price adds 24-karat, 18-karat, 14-karat and 9-karat prices, and /api/silver-price adds 999, 958, 925, 900 and 800 fineness.
The spot price documentation lists every parameter.
3. Price the metals in another currency
Change the currency parameter to quote in euros, pounds, rupees or another code, including crypto tokens. A jeweler in India can request /api/gold-price?currency=INR and get karat prices in rupees without a separate exchange-rate feed.
4. Pull the week's history
The /api/metal-history endpoint returns one price point per day between two Unix timestamps. This request covers Nov. 2-6 for silver:
curl "https://metal-sentinel.p.rapidapi.com/api/metal-history?symbol=AG¤cy=USD&startTime=1793577600&endTime=1794009600" \
-H "X-RapidAPI-Key: YOUR_KEY" \
-H "X-RapidAPI-Host: metal-sentinel.p.rapidapi.com"Each day includes a high and a low, which is how the weekly ranges in the table above were built. The /api/historical-points endpoint returns snapshots from 30 days, 60 days, one year and five years before a timestamp, which suits "compared with last year" widgets.
Parameters for both are in the historical data documentation.
5. Fetch all three metals in code
This JavaScript example requests gold, silver and copper at once and prints the bid prices:
const headers = {
'X-RapidAPI-Key': process.env.RAPIDAPI_KEY,
'X-RapidAPI-Host': 'metal-sentinel.p.rapidapi.com',
};
const symbols = { AU: 'gold', AG: 'silver', CU: 'copper' };
const quotes = await Promise.all(
Object.keys(symbols).map(async (symbol) => {
const url = `https://metal-sentinel.p.rapidapi.com/api/metal-quote?symbol=${symbol}¤cy=USD`;
const response = await fetch(url, { headers });
const { results } = await response.json();
return [symbols[symbol], results[0].bid, results[0].unit];
}),
);
console.table(quotes);The same request in Python, using the requests library:
import os
import requests
HEADERS = {
"X-RapidAPI-Key": os.environ["RAPIDAPI_KEY"],
"X-RapidAPI-Host": "metal-sentinel.p.rapidapi.com",
}
for symbol in ("AU", "AG", "CU"):
response = requests.get(
"https://metal-sentinel.p.rapidapi.com/api/metal-quote",
params={"symbol": symbol, "currency": "USD"},
headers=HEADERS,
timeout=10,
)
quote = response.json()["results"][0]
print(symbol, quote["bid"], quote["unit"])6. Plan your request budget
Each call returns one metal, so three metals cost three requests. Polling more often than the 15-second refresh adds requests without new data.
Every 15 minutes on weekdays: about 6,300 requests a month for three metals, within the free plan.
Every minute on weekdays: about 95,000 requests a month, within the Ultra plan at $29.99.
Every 15 seconds on weekdays: about 380,000 requests a month, within the Mega plan at $49.99.
The /api/market-status endpoint returns {"status":"OPEN","next":36720}, where next is the number of seconds until the status changes. Checking it first lets an app stop polling over the weekend, when the markets are closed.
It is documented with the other reference endpoints.
For a website that only needs to show a price, the free embeddable price widgets need no code beyond a copied snippet.
Follow the metals
Metal Sentinel publishes forecasts at the start of each week and recaps at the end. Next week's coverage begins with the rhodium forecast for Nov. 9-13.
More analysis is in the gold, silver and copper sections of the blog, and live prices for all three are on the gold, silver and copper price API pages.