Silver drops to around £48.65 an ounce as a firmer dollar greets Xi's Washington visit

Silver has dropped to around £48.65 a troy ounce, roughly £1.56 a gram before dealer costs, after falling 3.1 per cent to $64.99 in Wednesday's session, according to GoldSilver.com. The sterling figure is our conversion at about $1.336 to the pound. Gold fell a gentler 1.3 per cent and was trading just below $4,300, or about £3,210, in Asian hours on Thursday, according to FXStreet.

The main pressure came from a firmer US dollar. Oil prices rebounded towards $100 a barrel, reviving inflation worries and pushing US Treasury yields higher, while Federal Reserve officials continued to signal that interest rates could rise further. Neither metal pays interest, so higher yields tend to weigh on both, and silver usually moves more sharply than gold.

Traders are now watching today's meeting in Washington between US president Donald Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping, which could touch on trade, rare earths and artificial intelligence. Ahead of the talks, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US-China trade truce would be extended to 10 January.

Silver's underperformance pushed the gold to silver ratio back up to about 66.2, from 65.0 on Tuesday. For UK buyers, physical silver carries 20% VAT on top of spot, dealer premium and delivery, so comparing the all-in price matters more than the headline figure. This is market information, not financial advice.