Gold and silver outlook, February 2026

By Trey Reik, Chief Economist, GBI. In 2025, spot gold rose 65% and silver 148%, their strongest advances since 1979. The note argued that deteriorating U.S. finances, anti-dollar sentiment and eroding Fed credibility would keep supporting gold in 2026.

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Is it too late?

What the PDF covers

The PDF covers 2024–2025 returns for gold, silver, gold and silver miners ETFs, the S&P 500, real estate, Treasuries and commodities, and sets out the note’s three drivers for gold: U.S. finances, anti-dollar sentiment and Fed credibility. It covers the Fed’s balance sheet and Treasury bill purchases, a comparison with the September 2019 repo episode, and returns since 2001 for gold in five currencies. It shows how gold shares and the S&P 500 performed in three 20% market corrections. It also covers record margin debt and leveraged ETFs, CBO deficit projections, central bank gold buying and U.S. gold exports in 2025, the January 2026 blow-off and pullback, and the 2022 decline in the 60/40 portfolio, with institutional gold allocations from 13F filings. The last pages carry extended quotations from named policymakers and investors.

Download the February 2026 outlook

The full commentary as a PDF, 21 pages: performance tables, the three drivers, central bank gold buying, institutional allocations, and a section of quotations.

THE STORY

The assets already existed. The platform connection didn't.

For years, established wealth management firms and independent advisors held high-value alternative allocations across highly fragmented, legacy holding structures. While the physical precious metals were securely vaulted, the administrative overhead required to track, value, and report these assets created persistent operational friction.

The core issue was never client demand—institutional interest in alternative physical safe-havens has remained consistently strong. Instead, the barrier was systemic integration. Clients wanted their physical gold and silver holdings visible alongside their standard equity portfolios, while compliance and ops teams required structured, audited valuation streams.

We realized that the assets didn't need to be moved, re-vaulted, or liquidated. The solution lay in creating a secure digital bridge—an institutional data protocol capable of syncing physical inventory directly to traditional reporting systems without disrupting security workflows.

By establishing a direct, cryptographically verified ledger connection between the secure depository facilities and mainstream advisor dashboards, we turned isolated offline reserves into fully unified assets under advisement.

68 accounts. $54M in AUM. Zero new clients required.

THE TRANSFER-IN OPPORTUNITY

This operational milestone proved that advisor business growth doesn't always demand broad-market client acquisition campaigns. By simplifying reporting protocols and validating legacy asset pipelines, wealth management enterprises can capture substantial, pre-existing held-away physical wealth directly from their current client portfolios.

How the Migration Worked

68 accounts moved. Smooth for the
client, the advisor, and the firm.

$54M in physical precious metals, moved on-platform across one RIA book. No new
clients. No new money. No liquidations forced. Just assets that already existed, sitting in
home safes, safety deposit boxes, and private vaults, now brought above-the-line into
the firm's existing reporting stack.

01

Discovery at scale

We coordinate secure transportation from the current location to the receiving vault.

02

Transfer execution

Hold physical metals in a secure depository environment rather than at a residence or office.

03

Reporting integration

Each position landed in allocated FBO accounts, feeding the RIA's existing reporting stack as standard billable assets. Daily pricing. Unified client statements. Inspectorate-audited.

0.22%

INSTITUTIONAL GOLD ALLOCATION

This is not a one-firm phenomenon.

The median HNW household holds 3-5% of total wealth in unmanaged physical precious metals. Yet the value-weighted average institutional gold allocation sits at just 0.22% (Q3 2025 13F filings). The gap between what clients already own and what their advisors manage is the largest underdiscussed opportunity in private wealth.

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