Gold’s Price Is Higher Off a 13-Month Low as PPI Comes In Line. Silver’s Price Isn’t. 

Published: 11-13-2026, 02:18 pm

Last verified: November 13, 2026, 1:15 p.m. ET 

A government inflation report just did two contradictory things at once on Friday. It came in soft enough to interrupt gold’s worst week since June. It also came in hot enough, on an annual basis, to be the sharpest producer-price reading since November 2022. Gold took the soft part as good news. Silver did not. 

Spot gold is trading near $3,884 an ounce Friday afternoon, up about 0.2% from where the session opened. That is a modest bounce off Thursday’s 3% plunge to the metal’s lowest level in more than a year. Spot silver tells a different story. It sits near $49.13, down almost 2% on the day, and it kept sinking as the session wore on. You can track both prices live on GoldSilver’s price charts. 

Key Takeaways 

• October producer prices rose 0.3% month over month, below the 0.4% forecast. That eased December rate-hike odds to about 89% from roughly 96% right before the report. 

• Even so, annual producer-price inflation climbed to 6.5%, the hottest reading since November 2022. The underlying pressure has not actually eased; only the monthly pace surprised to the soft side. 

• Silver did not bounce with gold. It fell almost 2% today while gold rose, pushing the gold-silver ratio to roughly 79 to 1, up from about 77.5 to 1 a day earlier. 

Why Is Annual Inflation at a Four-Year High While the Monthly Number Cooled? 

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday that the producer price index for final demand rose 0.3% in October. Economists polled by Reuters had expected 0.4%. September’s reading was revised up sharply, to 1.4%, so October’s figure looks tame only by comparison to an unusually hot month before it. Zoom out a year, though: producer prices are up 6.5%, the fastest pace since November 2022. Gold spiked to $3,922.97 the moment the data hit, then gave most of that gain back within the hour. 

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Why Did Gold Bounce While Silver Kept Falling? 

The real driver here is not the inflation print itself. It is what the print does to the Federal Reserve’s next move. Markets had priced a 96.2% chance of a quarter-point hike at the December 8 to 9 meeting before Friday’s report. After the in-line PPI, that probability eased to 89.4%. The odds of a larger, half-point hike slipped too, from 13.8% to 10.6%. 

Every point that probability moves changes the cost, in forgone yield, of holding gold instead of a short-term Treasury bill. A smaller chance of a big hike makes that trade-off a little less painful, so gold caught a bid. But a 90% chance of some hike is still close to a sure thing, and that keeps real borrowing costs elevated. Silver, which tends to move with industrial demand as much as with safe-haven flows, did not get the same relief. One session proves little by itself, but it is worth watching: silver usually amplifies gold’s moves either way, and today it refused to. 

Independent analyst Tai Wong summed up the mood to Reuters: “Gold is struggling to hold initial gains from PPI as bond markets continue to struggle confronted with Fed hawkishness.” He added that gold “may struggle to retake $4,000 with Fed hawks out in force.” 

What This Means for Owners of Physical Metal 

For an owner of physical gold or silver, the lesson is not about today’s tick. It is about what is doing the pricing. Every basis point the market shaves off that hike probability is the market repricing the opportunity cost of sound money against the government’s own cost of borrowing. The case for holding metal was never that gold wins every single data release. It is that paper assets carry the same rate risk investors just watched whipsaw gold today, while metal carries none of that counterparty exposure. 

What Would Actually Change This Picture? 

Monday, November 16, brings both the Empire State manufacturing survey and October retail sales, two modest but real inputs into the same hike-odds math that moved gold this morning. The bigger date is Wednesday, November 18, when the Fed releases minutes from its October meeting, offering a fuller look at how divided officials actually are. Until then, the 89% hike odds sitting on the board are the number to watch, not the daily spot price. Readers who held through the slide into Thursday’s low and the earlier CPI-driven selloff already know the pattern: the swings are about rate expectations, not about anything happening to the metal itself. The gold-silver ratio is one more place that mechanism shows up, and today it moved the other way. 

SOURCES
1. Reuters — Rate Hike Bets Keep Gold on Track for Its Worst Week in Four Months
2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Producer Price Index News Release, October 2026

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions.  

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