Christmas 2025 proved a remarkable end to a remarkable year for precious metals prices and trading, and the New Year has begun stronger still at world-leading marketplace BullionVault.
Now used by more than 125,000 people in 175 countries and entrusted with over £6.5 billion of gold, silver, platinum and palladium − a rise of 69.1% from 12 months ago − BullionVault last month saw more people start buying precious metals than any December in the West London fintech’s 21-year history, rising 309.3% from the previous December.
That capped 2025 as BullionVault’s 3rd best year for new client acquisition worldwide, lagging 2020’s Covid Crisis by 10.1% and the financial crisis’ peak of 2011 by just 3.8%.
The start of 2026 has now marked the strongest ever start to a calendar year, matching last January’s full-month total in less than 6 days.
Already the best performing asset class of the 21st century to date, precious metals blew past all other investments last year,” says BullionVault director of research Adrian Ash. December crowned a remarkable 2025 for precious metals, with a surge in first-time buyers spurring record-heavy trading over Christmas and New Year.
2026’s record-strong start for new investing says that gold and silver are only gaining appeal as Trump’s White House continues ripping up the alliances and rules which Western investors thought they could rely on.
Christmas Week saw more than £109 million in precious metal change hands via BullionVault’s 24/7 website and smartphone apps, with trading volume on the 25th itself setting a Christmas Day record near £3m.
That festive record was followed on New Year’s Day by trading volume in gold, silver, platinum and palladium hitting £5m − again, a holiday when the world’s stock markets and retail bullion stores were shut, leaving investors unable to buy or sell precious metal ETFs, coins or small bars.
Across 2025 as a whole, trading volume on BullionVault set a new full-year record, beating the Covid Crisis record of 2020 by 13.6% in UK Pound terms at £2.4 billion.
Focusing on UK investors, and including existing BullionVault users, the number of UK residents buying gold across December rose 21.3% from November’s 3-month low, while the precious metal’s fresh record prices spurred a 16.1% rise in the number of sellers.
That saw the UK Gold Investor Index, a unique measure of private behaviour in physical bullion, rise 1.4 points to 56.9, its highest December reading since the Covid lockdown of winter 2020 (57.2).
Any reading above 50.0 signals more net buyers than net sellers across the month. The UK Gold Investor Index set a series low of 47.3 in March 2024 and a post-Covid peak of 60.0 this October.
With central bank demand continuing to put a solid floor beneath gold’s underlying uptrend,” says Ash, “2025 showed that it takes private investment demand to really send bullion prices soaring.
“While existing investors continue to take a little money off the table as gold runs to fresh record highs, the pace of profit-taking remains very measured. That signals long-term confidence in gold as a hedge against uncertainty and risk.
By weight, gold’s festive price spike saw BullionVault users as a group cut their gold holdings by just over one-third of a tonne, taking net liquidation across 2025’s run of new record prices to half-a-tonne, down 1.3% from 2024 to finish the year with total holdings of 43.5 tonnes.
But by value, and held in high-security vaults in each client’s choice of London, New York, Singapore, Toronto or (most popular) Zurich, BullionVault customers’ gold leapt by 51.9% last year to a record £4.5 billion.
Silver’s dramatic spike to new record prices also spurred profit-taking by weight in December, with net selling of a little more than 1.5 tonnes taking total outflows across 2025 to just over 4 tonnes.
That cut client silver holdings 0.4% by weight from the end of 2024, slipping to 1,152 tonnes. But by value, that private stockpile of the industrially-useful precious metal leapt 127.9% in 2025 to a record of almost £2.0bn.
Including existing investors, December saw a record number of UK residents buy silver on BullionVault, leaping 151.0% from November’s 3-month low.
The number of silver sellers meantime rose 25.7% as prices leapt to fresh all-time highs. Together that sent the UK Silver Investor Index surging by 15.2 points to 68.4, the strongest reading since March 2020’s Covid Crash in industrial commodities spurred heavy bargain hunting.
Says Ash: “Silver has really grabbed investors’ attention, leaping to new record prices and delivering strong out-performance over gold.
While 2026 should struggle to repeat last year’s stellar gains in precious metals, the forces driving gold and silver higher remain very much in place.
“The breakdown of Western dominance and co-operation is accelerating as government debt continues to swell, forcing investors to seek a hedge against currency debasement as well as geopolitical risk.”
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