On Monday 13 July 2026, the gold price dropped below a mark that had not been broken since November. According to Kitco’s live spot prices, gold traded at 14:32 US East Coast time at 3,996.30 dollars per troy ounce, a fall of 2.99 percent on the day. Silver fell harder still, to 57.38 dollars, a drop of 3.98 percent. Both precious metals thereby comfortably break the threshold usually regarded as newsworthy. The direct trigger: a new escalation around the Strait of Hormuz.
What exactly happened on Monday
The weekend brought a new wave of violence between the United States and Iran. US and Iranian forces exchanged heavy missile and drone attacks, with Tehran claiming to target sites in several Gulf states. Iran also announced it was closing the Strait of Hormuz again, the sea passage through which a considerable part of the world’s oil sails.
President Trump reacted by announcing a levy of 20 percent on all cargo ships that sail through the Strait of Hormuz, BullionVault reports. According to Trump, that levy should cover “any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the World”. The oil price reacted sharply at once: the Brent oil price for September delivery climbed, according to BullionVault, to 79.75 dollars per barrel, well above the level before the escalation.
Why the gold price falls while the conflict sharpens
As with earlier escalations this year, the unrest does not work in the gold price’s favour. The higher oil price feeds the fear of more inflation, and more inflation usually means the US central bank keeps rates high for longer. A higher rate makes savings products and bonds more attractive than gold, which pays no interest itself. So the oil shock weighs on the gold price via rate expectations, even though a war would normally attract flight money into gold.
The market is meanwhile already looking ahead. On Tuesday 14 July follow the US inflation figures for June and the first testimony of Fed chair Kevin Warsh before Congress, both closely followed for clues about the next rate step.
Any perceived dovish lean could see gold squeeze back toward $4200. A hawkish tilt keeps the $4000 retest alive.
What the dive means for those wanting to sell old gold
Gold now sits more than a quarter below the historic record of late January, when the price peaked at 5,589 dollars during an earlier escalation of this conflict. Anyone who waited in recent months for a repeat of that peak to sell old gold sees the rate meanwhile heading in a quite different direction. That mainly illustrates how capricious the gold price is, and how little it can be predicted from news headlines alone.
The gold price today differs from the gold price tomorrow, sometimes by a few percent within a few hours. The weight and carat fineness of your jewellery or coins stay unchanged in the meantime. A no-obligation valuation shows you exactly what your old gold is worth today, so you decide yourself whether this is the moment to sell.
Anyone wanting to sell old silver, cutlery or coins also sees a firm move today, from above 59 dollars to 57.38 dollars per ounce. Silver usually reacts more violently than gold to the same rate expectations, which explains the larger percentage drop. For silver, also always get yourself informed about the purity of your pieces: solid silver contains a different fineness than silver-plated cutlery, and that fineness helps determine the value per gram.
In short
A new wave of violence between the US and Iran, a US levy on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and the resulting oil price shock pushed gold below 4,000 dollars on Monday for the first time since November, a fall of nearly 3 percent in one day. Silver fell harder still, by nearly 4 percent. On Tuesday follow the US inflation figures and the first Congressional testimony of Fed chair Warsh, two events that will help determine the next rate move. For those wanting to sell old gold or silver, the core stays the same: the weight and fineness of your pieces are fixed, only the day’s rate determines what they are worth today.