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.