Precious Metals Rally Through CME Outage: A Week Defined by Stimulus Bets and Market Stress

Gold ended the week with exceptional resilience, surging sharply despite a rare and disruptive CME outage that halted futures trading for nearly ten hours across equity, bond, and commodity markets. The interruption officially attributed to a “cooling issue” at a data center occurred during the quiet Thanksgiving period, but it nevertheless underscored a structural vulnerability in global price discovery: precious metals markets remain heavily dependent on the CME futures complex, with limited redundancy in OTC and LBMA market-making. The outage coincided with Silver’s explosive breakout above its 1980 and 2011 highs, reaching a record $56.50/oz, while Gold climbed another 2% and Platinum 4%. Rather than selling off on impaired liquidity as historically expected precious metals rallied aggressively, reinforcing the prevailing theme of markets rewarding scarcity, liquidity gaps, and debasement hedges. 

Macro conditions amplified by these moves. Liquidity expectations strengthened as investors assessed a reopening US government, the likelihood of renewed fiscal stimulus, and potential balance sheet expansion from the Federal Reserve to address emerging repo-market strains. Markets continue to price in Trump-era fiscal expansionism marked by direct-transfer stimulus proposals, tariff-linked rebates, and structurally higher deficits deepening demand for hard assets. Meanwhile, global risk asymmetry widened: Bitcoin fell into negative YTD territory, the yen weakened under Japan’s dovish fiscal stance, and EM equities rotated higher on commodity-linked optimism, shrinking the universe of reliable safe havens and strengthening gold’s relative appeal. 

Looking ahead, the release of the September US PCE inflation index, a flurry of PMIs, and ECB/BOE communications will shape expectations into the December FOMC meeting. With data disruption risks still looming and geopolitical tensions elevated, gold remains well supported by liquidity dynamics, structural market fragilities, and sustained investor rotation into real assets.