Gold’s sharpest monthly price drop in almost a decade saw the number of UK private investors buying the precious metal rise by nearly one-fifth in June on BullionVault.
Led by unseasonal strength in first-time investing, that demand didn’t quite outweigh selling by existing gold owners worldwide. Most likely to sell were investors who first chose to buy gold during the past two years’ record run of new record prices.
“For some investors in gold, fear of missing out has flipped from chasing it higher to getting out in case prices keep falling,”
BullionVault director of research Adrian Ash.
“But that selling is being matched by bargain hunting from both longer-term and new gold investors. Sentiment overall is strongly positive and running ahead of its historical average.”
Down 6.5% from May with the steepest drop in UK Pounds since December 2016 (-7.5%), gold’s month-average price fell to £3178 per troy ounce in June, the lowest since November. That dive also took gold’s month-average price 14.0% below February’s record high, the steepest 4-month fall since the post-financial crisis gold price crash of spring 2013 (-17.2%).
In response, the number of private investors in the UK choosing to buy gold this June on BullionVault − now used by more than 130,000 people from 175 countries − rose 18.5% from May’s 9-month low, while the number of sellers rose 10.0% from its 9-month low.
Together, that pushed up the UK Gold Investor Index by 1.3 points to 56.2, higher by 1.4 points from its long-term average and the strongest reading on BullionVault’s unique sentiment gauge since March (61.0).
The Gold Investor Index would read 50.0 if the number of sellers exactly matched the number of sellers across the month.
Worldwide, the number of people starting to buy precious metals for the first time on BullionVault rose 10.9% last month from May’s 10-month low, setting the second-highest June total in the West London fintech’s 22 years of operation behind June 2020, summer of Western Covid lockdowns.
Because BullionVault finds 9-in-10 of its users in Western Europe or North America, the start of summer in the northern hemisphere more often sees a drop in the number of first-time investors, with June trailing each full year’s monthly average by 14.6%.
Offsetting demand, this June’s gold selling was led by BullionVault users who first bought gold in 2025 or 2026 accounting for nearly 1-in-3 (30.7%) of last month’s sellers while making up fewer than 1-in-4 of start-June’s owners (24.1%).
That made new investors from the past 18 months well over 1/3rd more likely to sell (36.3%) than BullionVault users who had first bought in the previous 20 years.
“After joining such a dramatic bull market,” says Ash, “it’s natural that more recent investors would become nervous as prices retreat. But the continued strength in new gold investing suggests that the New Year’s spike wasn’t simply a mania driven by momentum. Prices fell sharply between March and June, yet the second quarter of 2026 came in the top fifth for new UK account openings on BullionVault.”
By weight overall, BullionVault users worldwide as a group were very slight net sellers of gold last month, reducing their total holdings by just 16 kilograms from May’s 6-month high (-0.04%) to 43.6 tonnes.
Now worth £4.2bn, that gold is all secured and insured in each client’s choice of London, New York, Singapore, Toronto or (most popular) Zurich.
Silver prices fell harder than gold in June, down 7.8% to £53.18 per troy ounce, the lowest month-average so far this year in UK Pounds and 21.8% beneath January’s record high.
Investor demand worldwide outweighed selling by 0.3%, growing the quantity of this more industrially-useful precious metal belonging to BullionVault users by almost 4 tonnes to a 3-month high above 1,133 tonnes worth over £1.6bn.
The UK Silver Investor Index also outran its golden cousin, jumping by 5.2 points − the sharpest rise since December − to reach 56.0.
The highest in 3 months and 3.5 points above its historic average, that reading on the UK Silver Investor Index came as June’s steep price drop saw the number of buyers jump 31.6% from May while sellers fell 29.3%.
