Silver prices at lifetime high due to supply concerns; precious metals rise in domestic futures trade

Silver prices soared to a new record high on Monday, December 1, rising by 1.4% to $57.29 in the spot market to surpass its previous peak, hit on Friday, on the back of a global trading outage and supply shortage.

According to a report by Bloomberg, the precious metal rose as much as 1.4% to $57.29 in the spot market, following its lifetime high struck on Friday, when trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange was disrupted for many hours due to a data-center fault. 

“With Comex futures and options contracts affected, some traders said they had reverted to calling brokers and dealers by phone to hedge their exposures,” the Bloomberg report said.

The white metal has zoomed remarkably in 2025, primarily due to the supply-demand deficit with silver’s rising use in crucial industries, including EV, solar and 5G. The increasing industrial demand for silver has led to record-high prices in both domestic and international markets. 

Silver prices have been on an upward trend, rising for six consecutive sessions and doubling in value in 2025. The recent supply concerns in the global market have been boosting the white metal further.

“Despite a record amount of metal flowing into London to ease a historic squeeze, the cost of borrowing the metal over one month remains elevated,” the report said. 

US Federal Reserve rate-cut hopes

Overall supply of the white metal remains tight in global markets, with inventories in warehouses linked to the Shanghai Futures Exchange hitting their lowest in nearly a decade recently. 

Moreover, expectations of another 25 basis points (bps) rate cut in December by the US Federal Reserve have been rising due to the weakening American labour market and delayed release of economic data following the US government shutdown for six weeks. 

After its October meeting, the US Fed cut the interest rates by a quarter-point (25 bps), but said that hopes for another cut in December were premature. Currently, the markets are fully expecting and pricing in a cut this month. The Fed is scheduled to meet on December 9-10. 

Meanwhile, gold has also been rising following a volatile session on Friday caused by the CME outage. 

Gold, silver futures on MCX

In the domestic futures market, both silver and gold are trading higher. At around 9:30 am, gold futures for the February 2026 delivery were trading 0.6% up at ₹1,30,363 per 10 gram on the Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX) on Monday.

Silver contracts for the March 2026 expiry were trading higher by 1.76% at ₹1,78,069 per kg with an open interest of 15,835 lots.