I’ve been tracking gold and silver prices for the past several months, not as an analyst or trader, but just as someone curious about what moves markets.

It’s been a wild ride. MCX gold and silver hit record highs recently, and unimaginable pullback today - if you’ve been watching the charts, you know what I mean - there’s something different about this rally.

Wars, tariff talk, central bank moves, currency anxiety have been moving the markets in ways I never imagined they would.

Gold had always been a deeply rooted, sacred, and multi-generational ritual in Indian families, and I’ve seen families hoard them for years. When both start climbing together recently at a pace I’d not seen, I realized something broader is happening in how people think about risk.

I got a firsthand lesson in this around Diwali. Silver crashed on Friday, October 17th, right when both metals were making all-time highs.

That Friday drop felt like a warning sign, and sure enough, when markets reopened after Diwali on October 21st, gold tanked hard. The timing wasn’t lost on me - international traders got to book profits while Indian markets were closed for the holiday, and we opened to a nice surprise.

Since then it’s been wild to watch. On Friday, December 26th, there was roughly a 10% rise, and the following Monday, December 29th, it fell almost the same amount - around 9%.

And today, with no fundamental change in how the metals are valued, I saw it tank hard - upto 35%, with a reversal to 27%.

Watching these swings, I started reading about bank positioning and short interest. My research suggests banks may have been shorting, which could explain the volatility. I can’t confirm that’s what’s actually happening, but the price action has been suspicious enough to make me curious.

Commodities don’t move like tech stocks - they have cycles that span years, sometimes decades. The last big metals run was 2010–2011, and before that, the early 2000s. If you believe in cycles, we might be in the early innings of another one. Or not.

There’s something satisfying about tracking an asset class that’s been around for thousands of years. Gold doesn’t need a quarterly earnings report, and silver doesn’t pivot to AI. These metals just sit there, doing what they’ve always done - holding value when paper promises get questioned.

The Indian market has good options for exposure to these assets. ETFs like GOLDBEES and SILVERBEES trade on NSE, there’s MCX for futures, and SGBs for those who want government backing. The infrastructure for retail participation has gotten much better.

I work in tech, and I am not SEBI-registered - so I’m not qualified to tell anyone what to buy or sell.

But I can say this: watching commodity prices has taught me how interconnected the world is. Geopolitical tensions and economic tariff comments move markets. All of this makes me want to understand more.

If you’re interested in commodities, I’d say start by just watching - track the prices, read the news, notice the patterns. The learning is in the observation.