Confidence
Confidence is all important for investing in stocks and shares and right now that confidence is highly sensitive, causing great volatility in all markets.
The worldwide positivity following consecutive Monday announcements of successful coronavirus vaccines saw share prices rocket and precious metals begin to fall, however the day-to-day reality of the crippling economic effects of lockdown measures (for example the recent collapse of several giant UK retailers), the bleak-looking short term (including Brexit) and longer term uncertainty (which businesses will fail and which will survive?) has meant that metal prices have held steady and even begun to increase again.
Precious metals provide investors with much needed reassurance in times of hardship; they will at least maintain an intrinsic value as opposed to shares, which only have value so long as the company continues to trade.