Silver Rises Over 120% YTD 
🌅 Morning News Nuggets | Today’s top stories for gold and silver investors
March 26th, 2026 | Brandon Sauerwein, Editor
Gold is down 15% since the Iran war began — and investors are asking whether gold is still a safe haven at all.
Why Are Gold and Silver Falling During a War?
Gold and silver are having a brutal month — and Thursday was no exception. Spot gold fell over 1% to around $4,450, while silver dropped nearly 5% to around $68.00.
Both metals are getting squeezed from two directions. Ceasefire talks remain murky. The Fed has turned hawkish. Markets have now priced out any rate cuts this year — a sharp reversal from expectations of at least two cuts before the conflict began. A stronger dollar is piling on.
Silver is feeling it more acutely than gold. It wears two hats: investment metal and industrial commodity. When the economy looks shaky, it gets hit from both sides. That double exposure explains why silver’s monthly losses run even deeper than gold’s — which is already on track for its worst monthly decline since October 2008.
The price moves are striking. But they only tell half the story. The more unsettling question is why gold and defense stocks — the two assets investors typically reach for in a crisis — both pulled back when the shooting started.
Why Did the Crisis Trades Stop Working?
This conflict has rewritten the crisis investing rulebook — and not in a reassuring way. When U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran began, gold and silver responded exactly as expected: gold briefly topped $5,400, silver reached $97. That lasted about a week.
Since then, both metals have cratered. The turning point was the Fed’s March 18th decision. The dot plot signaled just one rate cut left for 2026 — driven by energy-fueled inflation. Rising Treasury yields made the cost of holding non-yielding gold too high for institutional desks. Selling accelerated.
Defense stocks followed the same arc. They rallied when the war began, then gave back gains as ceasefire speculation grew. Northrop Grumman dropped nearly 4% in a single session. The geopolitical premium evaporated almost as fast as it arrived.
The pattern reveals something important. “Safe haven” isn’t a permanent label. It’s a relative one — and it bends to the rate-and-yield environment. When oil drives inflation higher and the Fed refuses to blink, even war-tested assets can lose their appeal.
If gold isn’t acting as a haven, what is it doing? Bloomberg’s Marcus Ashworth has a pointed answer: it’s becoming a piggy bank.
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Is Gold Still a Safe Haven — or Just a Piggy Bank?
Bloomberg Opinion columnist Marcus Ashworth has a sharp take on gold’s brutal month: it’s a piggy bank, not a panic button.
The 15% drop since the Iran conflict began looks alarming. But Ashworth argues it’s less anomaly than pattern. The same dynamic played out in 2008 and during the March 2020 Covid selloff. When an asset has run up that much, it becomes the easiest thing to sell. Despite the decline, gold is still up more than 50% over the past year. Holders aren’t panicking — they’re profit-taking.
The more significant shift is structural. Central banks have been the biggest gold buyers over the past four years. Now some are contemplating the reverse. Surging energy and defense costs need to be paid for somewhere. Gold reserves — sitting on large gains — are an obvious place to look. The world’s oldest safe haven is quietly becoming a war chest.
The metal isn’t broken. It’s being repurposed. And the pressure driving that repurposing isn’t going away anytime soon. Corporate America’s CFOs have set their own deadline on just how long the global economy can absorb it.
How Long Can the Global Economy Absorb a Closed Strait of Hormuz?
The Strait of Hormuz has been virtually closed for nearly a month. Corporate America’s patience is running out.
Energy market expert John Kilduff told CFOs on a recent CNBC council call that the window is weeks, not months. If the strait doesn’t reopen soon, oil reprices sharply higher. Asia faces real energy shortages. Industrial activity gets curtailed. And a permanent risk premium gets baked into oil prices — one that doesn’t disappear even after a ceasefire.
The economic models are sobering. Goldman Sachs raised its 2026 U.S. inflation forecast by 0.8 percentage points and trimmed GDP growth. Oxford Economics went further: oil averaging $140 a barrel for just two months would push the eurozone, the U.K., and Japan into contraction — and bring the U.S. economy to a standstill. EY-Parthenon now puts U.S. recession odds at 40% and rising.
There’s a twist embedded in all of this. The worse the economic damage gets, the harder it becomes for the Fed to stay hawkish. A growth collapse could force a policy reversal — and that’s the scenario where gold’s structural case reasserts itself fastest.
One person has been unusually blunt about where this ends up. And he runs the world’s largest asset manager.
$40 or $150: BlackRock’s Larry Fink Says There’s No In-Between on Oil
Larry Fink isn’t hedging. The BlackRock CEO — who oversees $14 trillion in assets — told the BBC this week that the Iran war ends in one of two extremes. There is no middle ground.
In the optimistic scenario, Iran rejoins the international community. Its oil flows freely. Prices fall back toward $40 a barrel. Growth rebounds.
In the other, Iran remains a threat to trade and the Strait of Hormuz, even after a ceasefire. Oil stays above $100, potentially grinding toward $150, not for months but for years. “We will have global recession,” Fink said flatly.
Fink also made the human cost explicit. Sustained high energy prices, he noted, are a “very regressive tax.” They hit lower-income households hardest because energy takes up a larger share of what they spend.
The implications for gold cut both ways. A $150 oil world keeps the Fed hawkish and the dollar strong — headwinds that have defined this month’s selloff. But a world where growth collapses under that weight is a world where the Fed eventually has to pivot. That’s the scenario where gold’s long-term case stops being theoretical.
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