‘It’s not normal’: Edmonton gold, silver sellers face volatile prices

The price of gold and other metals can fluctuate by the minute. Lately, gold and silver prices have only appeared to be going up.

Gold his risen close to 50 per cent in value in the last six months. Silver has gained about 125 per cent, more than double.

One Edmonton-area business sees a steady stream of customers looking to buy and sell their metals.

“We have hundreds of customers every day in each of my locations. People are buying and selling almost at the same speed. One person is selling, other people are buying”, said Clinton Beck of Beck Gold and Silver Brokers.

Earlier this week, gold was over $7,000, an all time high. But on Friday, the momentum screeched to a halt.

The last trading session of the week saw a major sell off in stocks and commodities. Gold dropped 8.95 per cent, silver tanked 25.5 per cent marking it one of the worst days in decades.

Still, the metals are up from Jan. 1. Gold and Silver have bigger gains than major stock indexes such as the TSX, S&P 500, Nasdaq, and Dow Jones Industrial Average.

“It’s not normal”, said Valeri Sokolovski, a finance professor at the Alberta School of Business.

He says the sharp rise in gold is partly due to the rising geopolitical tensions. Including the United States in Venezuela, and potential conflicts in Iran and Greenland.

“(Gold) is a significant central bank reserve asset, and a safe haven asset. All of the uncertainty led investors to hedge”, Sokolovski said.

Silver has its own reasons. Sokolovski says as it’s an industrial metal, the demand for AI and data centres is fuelling the need for it. While also getting the attention of retail investors and leverage speculators.

“What we saw over the last month-and-a-half is silver behaving like a meme stock like GameStop from way back than any serious commodity or industrial metal that we’ve seen. (The price drop) is the volatility you would expect with a lot of trend chasers, leverage players coming in, just to run on the trend rather than actually invest seriously.”

For the rest of 2026, Sokolovski expects silver to go back to normal industrial metal pricing. As for gold, it’s tough to predict given the chance for more geopolitical tensions.

“Gold is not an asset that goes up when the news is good, it spikes when news is bad. The price of gold going down is much better for the economy as a whole because it signals uncertainty is calming down.”

For Beck, he says he’s seen this volatility before and isn’t worried as people will still come in to buy or sell.

“My very first day in business, gold was around $300 per ounce. It’s a very strong market, especially in Alberta.”