Why gold, silver, and copper prices have gone up in recent months

Despite a sharp selloff on Friday, gold and silver prices have risen quite a bit in the past few months, as have other commodities such as copper, but what is behind that?

Gold and silver have been in the spotlight the past few weeks as prices pumped to record highs. But on Friday, there was a sharp selloff for both precious metals, and to a lesser extent, for copper. Still, taking the long view, all of those metals have far outperformed the S&P 500.

After rising above $5,600 this week, gold futures dipped to $4,920 on Friday. Still, gold is up nearly 47% in the past six months and 73% over the past year. Silver has been even more astonishing. Silver futures collapsed more than 26%