It's just Thursday! Gold and silver will face the "first calamity" of the new year: tens of billions of dollars in selling orders are already on the way.

After experiencing record highs last year, silver and gold will face the first challenge of the new year on Thursday (January 8): selling pressure brought about by the reweighting of the Bloomberg Commodity Index. Gold and silver to face the first challenge of the new year Last year, precious metal prices rose significantly, with spot silver and spot gold rising by about 148% and about 65% respectively, marking the largest annual increases since 1979, even outperforming the stock price increases of tech giants like NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Apple. However, J.P. Morgan warned that the annual rebalancing of the Bloomberg Commodity Index is coming, which could dampen the recent volatility of precious metals. The Bloomberg Commodity Index, a benchmark index of a basket of commodities, tracks around $109 billion in funds. The index will undergo a rebalancing from January 8 to January 14. J.P. Morgan analyst Gregory Shearer had previously warned that this could lead to sales of around $3.8 billion in silver and $4.7 billion in gold. Other analysts expect larger-scale sales. Daniel Ghali, senior commodity strategist at TD Securities, estimates that during the rebalancing period starting on January 8, around $6 billion in gold futures could be sold. Furthermore, currently silver accounts for 9% of the index, but its target weight for 2026 is slightly lower at 4%. Based on this calculation, it is expected that nearly $5 billion of silver holdings will be sold from January 8 to 14. Holiday effects may amplify price fluctuations Ghali said, "We expect that 13% of the total open interest in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) silver market will be sold in the next two weeks, leading to a significant drop in silver prices." He also added that price fluctuations may intensify due to reduced market liquidity after the New Year holiday. J.P. Morgan analysts had previously warned in December, "Given the overall low market liquidity, larger-scale sales of silver could still have a greater impact on silver prices, which is something we need to closely monitor in January." They also noted, "Given the outstanding performance of precious metal prices this year (2025), current open interest and prices suggest that around 11,000 contracts (3% of total open interest) of COMEX gold and around 13,000 contracts (9% of total open interest) of COMEX silver could be sold to reach the target position for 2026." This article is reprinted from Cailian Press, edited by GMTEight: Chen Wenfang.