Silver slips to £48.89 an ounce as hawkish Fed remarks weigh on both metals

Silver has eased to around £48.89 a troy ounce today, according to pricing from Trading Economics, working out to roughly £1.57 a gram before dealer costs. That is down about 1 per cent on the day, extending Monday's pullback. Gold has slipped too, easing to around £3,232 an ounce, or £103.92 a gram, a fall of roughly 0.6 per cent.

The catalyst is a pair of comments from regional Federal Reserve presidents. Chicago Fed president Austan Goolsbee said policymakers must account for persistent supply shocks, while St Louis Fed president Alberto Musalem said further interest rate increases may be needed to bring inflation back to target. Neither gold nor silver pays interest, so a higher for longer rate path tends to make cash and bonds relatively more attractive to investors, and traders are now pricing an 88 per cent probability of another US rate rise by December, according to the CME FedWatch tool.

Falling oil prices offered some offsetting support to both metals, easing for a fourth straight session amid diplomatic efforts around the Middle East conflict. US president Donald Trump addressed the UN General Assembly in New York today and was reportedly expected to meet Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, on the sidelines.

At £48.89 an ounce for silver against £3,232 for gold, the gold to silver ratio sits at around 66, roughly where it has held for much of September. For UK buyers, physical silver carries 20% VAT on top of the spot price, premium and delivery, while investment grade gold remains VAT exempt. This is market information, not financial advice.