If you spent any time watching markets this weekend, you already know the broad strokes: US-Iran talks in Islamabad collapsed without an agreement, the US announced a Strait of Hormuz blockade effective this morning, and gold opened the week down roughly $80 from Friday’s close — now trading near $4,700.
That’s the surface. Here’s what’s underneath it, and why this week’s data calendar matters more than the daily price move.
What Happened Last Week
The Federal Reserve held rates at 3.5%–3.75% for the second consecutive meeting — no surprise there. What was notable was what Chair Powell said afterward: the Fed doesn’t know yet how the Iran war’s oil shock will flow through inflation, employment, and growth. He declined to speculate about the path forward. Markets heard that as permission to worry, and they did.
March CPI came in at 3.3% year-over-year — the hottest reading since May 2024 — with a 0.9% monthly jump that was the steepest single-month increase since mid-2022. The inflation that was supposed to be fading is re-accelerating, driven in large part by oil. The Fed, which already couldn’t clearly cut, now has even less room to move.
Gold hit $4,780 on Friday before pulling back this morning. It remains down roughly 16% from its record near $5,589 set in January. Sentiment per LunarCrush sits at 95% — near a 52-week high. Investors are bullish on gold even as the price corrects. That divergence is worth watching.
Then on April 10, Bloomberg reported that China will halt sulfuric acid exports starting in May. We’ll get to why that’s a silver story in a moment.
What To Watch This Week
Tue Apr 14
March Producer Price Index
The upstream inflation read. Deutsche Bank expects wholesale prices to have picked up. Watch the PCE-linked components — those feed directly into the Fed’s preferred inflation metric. A hot print extends gold’s near-term pressure. A softer read gives it a floor.
Wed Apr 15
Federal Reserve Beige Book
The first qualitative read on how the oil shock is flowing through regional economies — input costs, hiring, consumer spending. Watch for language around manufacturing cost pressure. Not a market-mover alone, but it frames everything else this week.
Thu Apr 16
Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index
Market consensus forecasts a drop from 18.1 to 3.3 — one of the sharpest one-month decelerations in recent memory. Growth slowing while prices don’t is the textbook stagflation setup. If this comes in near the forecast, that word will get louder everywhere.
All Week
Fed Speakers + Chair Transition
Jerome Powell’s term expires May 15. Kevin Warsh, the expected successor, has a hawkish reputation — but he inherits $35 trillion in federal debt and over $1 trillion in annual interest payments. Any Fed chair’s actual range of motion is constrained by that arithmetic, regardless of stated preferences.
The Story Nobody Is Framing as a Silver Story
China’s sulfuric acid export ban — confirmed April 10, effective May — is being covered as a copper and fertilizer story. It is both of those things. It is also a silver story, and most coverage is missing the connection.
Sulfuric acid is the critical input for heap leach copper mining — the dominant processing method in Chile, the world’s largest copper producer. Approximately 30% of global silver is not mined from silver deposits. It comes out of the ground as a byproduct of copper mining. Less acid supply means reduced copper output. Less copper output means less silver produced.
This arrives on top of a Hormuz-driven sulfur shortage — the Middle East produces roughly a third of global sulfur, the primary feedstock for sulfuric acid. Sulfur prices were already up approximately 70% since the conflict began. The China ban layers a second constraint on the same supply chain from a different direction.
Silver was already in its fifth consecutive year of supply deficit before any of this. The acid ban adds to that picture, it doesn’t replace it.
The Longer View
Gold’s 16% correction from its record high, a hot CPI print, a Hormuz blockade, a paralyzed Fed, and a new supply disruption in silver: this week has a lot of moving parts. For investors trying to decide what to do with their positions, that volume of news can feel like it demands a response.
It mostly doesn’t.
The structural case — central banks buying roughly 800 tonnes of gold annually, the dollar below 100 on the DXY, $7.5 trillion sitting in money market funds waiting for a reason to rotate, and now a demonstrably fragile industrial supply chain for silver — is not a thesis that changes week by week. It accumulates evidence.
This week’s data releases will tell you where the economy stands in April 2026. What they won’t tell you is whether the conditions that drove gold from $2,000 to $5,589 are still in place. They are. Read the releases. Hold the thesis.
EDUCATIONAL & INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY — This is not financial advice. Data sourced from Bloomberg, CNBC, Mining.com, FX Leaders, NBC News, Al Jazeera, and CoinCentral. Analyst price targets cited for informational context only. Precious metals involve risk; past performance is not indicative of future results.