Coincidentally, late this morning I went to one of those traveling roadshows where they purchase precious metals, bringing along a childhood coin collection that I wanted to turn into cash.
I started with a single 1 ounce silver medallion and was given a quote for $80. When I had checked the silver price earlier this morning it was above $115.
I questioned the buyer about the spread and he said the spot price was down, and the smelters were backed up so that was their best offer.
I brought out some other silver coins, specifically liberty head and Morgan dollars. He looked at the app on his phone and said “hold on I gave you the wrong price,” and then said “I’ll give you $35 for each of them,” including the pure 1 oz silver medallion.
I said no thank you and left, miffed, thinking he was jerking me around.
I didn’t realize the price of silver was collapsing.
Chances are, he was indeed jerking you around. Nearly every one of these traveling road show style buyers pay very very very very little for coins. They have no reputation to uphold and are the literal definition of “fly by night” - and by the time you realize how little they paid you, they’re gone.
Source: Am full-time professional coin dealer (who is NOT fly by night!) and have to deal with the repercussions of people getting hosed by these roadshows all the time :(
> I didn’t realize the price of silver was collapsing.
Wait. It "collapsed" to the price it was on the 9th of january 2026. Which back then was it's all-time high.
FWIW I hold SLV (a BlackRock/iShares ETF on silver, the biggest and most liquid silver ETF in the world) since $26. I noticed the recent craze. So I bought PUTs when it was at $102, protecting me at a strike of $96. These PUTs were pricey but, so far, worth it. But here comes the kicker: I'm financing those PUTs by selling CALLs on SLV (that simple options strategy is called a "collar").
And as I'm a silverbug, I own silver coins too. But these aren't liquid as you noticed.
When you trade paper silver (like the ETF SLV), the price of the market is the price of the market. SLV is not 100% following an ounce of silver's price, but SLV's market price is SLV's market price. It was $105 at close yesterday and $75 at close today and that's just the price of SLV.
I do like that: not getting ripped off by some side-of-the-road hustler.
That dude giving you $80 then giving you $35 is taking a more than 50% cut compared to the nearest low of day. That's quite a rip off.
There's a lot going on here and it's not just the price going up and then going down (see my other comments). Basically, the entirely silver market is dysfunctional at the moment. And it's all about bailing out banks who are getting wiped out by the silver rally.
So when you sell silver at a pawn shop or to a retail dealer, here's what happens in a normal market. You get an instant price, 5-10% off spot hopefully. That dealer then takes that silver and sells it to a refiner in higher volume with a lower margin (to spot). That's their profit. Refiners will convert that silver into bars and sell it to wholesalers and institutional buyers.
But instead what's happening is the refiner needs to hold onto the silver for 7-14 days before it gets smelted and processed. With high volatility, they're not paying out the dealers until it's processed and sold. That's a huge cash flow problem. Instead of instant money, it's money in 2 weeks and you have no idea how much money.
So the retail dealer has to wait and it could be 20% lower or 20% higher in the current market so instead of 5-10% they eitehr have to offer 30%+ less than spot price if they buy it at all. That money tied up has an opportunity cost.
Combine this with a shortage of physical silver to deliver on futures contracts and the refiners aren't really getting the silver they need to satisfy that demand.
So the spot price is fake. Nobody's buying anyway. Low wholesale supply means the prices continue to go up. Banks are haemorrhaging money because they have huge short positions. They have to borrow silver to meet their obligations and the silver lease rate (the price to borrow silver for a money has like 10x'ed) and this is where we are.
When the price moves violently up or down, dealers get scared. They need to keep it for an unspecified amount of time to get paid. Maybe the guy was jerking you around, or maybe he was short on cash. $35 for an oz is a terrible price when spot is $90 or something. It hit $120 during this past week and only crashed today, back to the record high from like 2 weeks ago.
He does have to turn a profit on what he's buying. You want spot price? Oddly enough, in California and maybe other states, a pawn shop will give you spot price.
I'll never forget when silver went down to $11/oz. I immediately went to my local metals dealer to make a purchase. I watched the two owners through the glass windows carrying a huge tote to the back room.
When they opened the door, they said "so many people came in and bought everything", both sweating and breathing heavy. Lied right to my face. They left out like five generic 1oz silver bars and a small gold coin.
And again, when the price was high, they don't want to pay anywhere near the spot price.
I learned this: silver/gold is definitely not something you buy to "flip", at least in the short term. It's something you buy and hold for as long as you live, if possible, perhaps passing it down to your kids.
This was an inevitable correction. Gold and silver had gone parabolic for the past month. Nothing goes straight up. This takes the gold price all the way back to where it was last week.
Honestly, I don't think Warsh's appointment had much to do with it.
Doesn't this reset the silver price to where it was at the start of the month? This is hardly news, people got a bit over-excited in January. The spike is more newsworthy than the fall, and neither are all that interesting.
I don't think people are thrilled with Warsh as much as they are relieved it wasn't Hassett or like Kevin O'Leary or something really insane. Warsh has relevant experience and knowledge. He is too close to Trump (and Ron Lauder) but hopefully knows better than to cause havoc.
Fun Fact about the Great Depression - RCA is the Poster-child of exuberance and Tesla has had a higher PE for >2 years.
Meme stocks might coincide with meme coins - but I don't know if it's fair to blame crypto for everything.
I think the reality is that - for whatever reason - people are willing to take on MUCH greater risk today for reward than they were prior to the pandemic.
I don't think we can blame crypto for everything. Sure, maybe you could say crypto has been meme-ing since 2017 - 3 years before the pandemic. But we've seen plenty of speculative bubbles like that - if it even was one.
Crypto didn't really start meme-ing with clearly bullshit NFTs and meme coins until the exact same time - 2021 - when Dogecoin et al have meteoric rises coinciding almost exactly with all the meme stocks.
The Japanese Asset bubble was by far the biggest bubble of all time - and it lasted nearly 6 years. The Nifty 50 was a 7 year bubble, nowhere near this big. So, we might be in a bubble - but if we are - it's getting close to being the biggest, longest one ever.
The hype around physical silver has been astounding in 2025 and so far in 2026.
I have nothing to back this up, but I believe a group of investors learned from cryptobros just how easy it is to pump and dump with social media and scare tactics, and here we are. Somebody please correct me.
This sounds awful, silver down 30%, gold down 11%, but it just brings them back to the 50 day moving average. It doesn't even break the bull trend.
Next week we'll find out if this was a buy on dip opportunity or if it marks a multi-year top in precious metals and the start of a deeper correction and real technical damage.
One day that will happen and the trend will reverse, but it's always more probable that a trend continues.
Now, gold might not continue growing, but D.C. hasn't fixed its problems that are causing gold to rise, so I do have a degree of confidence that it will recover quickly.
Everyone is focused on commodities and ignoring basically the entire global market got shook today. Bonds, indices, commodities, and securities all got tanked. Nothing in my portfolio was in the green today, and I generally invest conservatively since it’s my (maybe, hopefully, someday) house down payment at stake.
That said, I agree with you that this feels like a bunch of prominent exits to convert paper profits into actual ones. The underlying problems remain and will become increasingly exacerbated as the year drags on.
I figure I’ll recover losses by this time next year if I just refrain from panic selling.
I'm not sure a 6 month window with a squished Y axis to make the graph a perfect 45 degree angle line means much. How it compares to currencies and other assets would be more interesting.
Silver has plenty of industrial uses. Very little has changed in industry to cause demand or supply shifts to match the massive price swings. Thus a lot of this is probably meme investors gambling
Fun fact about silver, besides its heavy industrial footprint, which you mentioned: the supply is dominated by Mexico. There have been some, uh, erratic words about Mexico from the people in the position to affect trade policy and foreign policy.
About one third of this demand (photographic film and paper) more or less evaporated in the 2000s. You don't see that on the price chart, so I don't think you can seriously argue that the price is dictated by industrial uses.
Anyone with long experience trading commodities would have expected this.
This is like the least surprising thing ever.
It is amusing reading the comments on here. Silver dropped 50% in 1980. Silver is the original memecoin. I think people care less though about market events that happened before they were born. It is like the way I know the entire story of silver in 1980 even though I was a little kid but nothing about the Nifty Fifty a decade earlier.
Nothing for me with commodities will ever top -$37 per barrel during Covid with oil. That was a level of market shell shock for me that I just can't imagine being topped.
This is the "dump" part of pump and dump. TikTok influencers have been pushing the gold & silver rally for weeks now, and it was inevitable that people at the top would eventually cash out.
Most of the influencers aren't even in on the investment, they just get paid to pump, and a lot of them don't even get paid, they just do it for the eye balls.
People want to get rich quick.
There's going to be a never ending list of people that will tell them how - just so they can get useless karma points on Social Media, even if they don't make any money, and just convince you to lose your money.
Gold has been going up for years now. I don’t know how much TikTok influencers influence the price. Seems to be mostly central banks and the falling apart of the international order that’s driving a neutral and unsanctionable tradeable asset up.
It is very hard to pump the metals. The markets for them are just too big. You'd need whole countries buying to make a dent. Miners are another story. Those can be pumped and dumped like any other stock.
The dump is proximately caused by Trump picking a normal Fed chairman. Nobody on TikTok has anything to do with that, they're just pumping everything because seeling out is their day job.
It's not just Tiktok, and not just the last few weeks. There have been pro-Gold ads in every form of media for the last couple of years, many focusing on uncertainty. The timing is pretty clear.
The 2024 election was a time of great uncertainty, and Trump's first year in power delivered a reality worse than the fears. Trump is still throwing random tariff threats (and actual tariffs) around without rhyme or reason, but he's discovered that threatening to invade (allied) countries can stir things up even more effectively. Choosing a lackey to replace a competent federal reserve chair isn't going to help matters. We're just one quarter of the way through Trump's presidency (assuming he lives and doesn't seek another term), and it seems like the uncertainty is just going to get worse.
However, that uncertainty is, by no means, certain. Domestic resistance and midterm elections could curb Trump's power. International resistance is starting to coalesce. e.g. The EU's threat to use their "trade bazooka" probably contributed to Trump's TACO on Greenland, as did the potential demise of NATO. Responses to Trump's international graspings will likely become more prompt and more muscular, reducing the instability Trump can cause. The system has been shocked, but now its adapting. Many nations are hedging against U.S. centred uncertainty by pivoting to China or other allies. Global markets will likely become more stable as nations learn how to work around Trump's chaos by working around the U.S.. Still, it's very possible that Trump will find new and "creative" ways to make everybody freak out again.
Bottom line, the uncertainty that's been driving gold prices up since 2024 is going to let up at some point. But when? How overvalued will gold be when it does let up?
This isn't a simple correction. I've been following this for a couple of months and there's a lot going on. I suspect this isn't over. It's noteworthy that the year 1980 because that was when the Hunt brothers tried to corner the silver market. It's often used as an example of the market correcting itself. It's actually a better example of how the exchanges broke the Hunt brothers to bail out the banks.
The key event that caused the collapse is sometimes called Silver Thursday [1]. The exchange changed the liquidity rules, forcing a margin call the Hunt brothers couldn't make, forcing a selloff. This was arguably to bail out banks with large short positions in silver.
Well, pretty much the exact same thing happened this week when COMEX massively increased the margin requirements [2]. It's worth noting that the market is in a state called "backwardation" where the spot prices are higher than future prices. Refiners aren't buying silver, even at the inflated spot price, because of price risk. But also, the COMEX spot price is increasingly being viewed as "fake" because foreign exchanges are paying significantly more for physical silver thna the paper COMEX price [3].
Basically, this whole thing looks like another GameStop ie a short squeeze. There's not enouugh physical silver to meet contract demands. There's like 300oz of futures silver contracts per 1oz of physical silver.
If you followed the original GameStop short squeeze, the price tumbled there too but didn't solve the short squeeze. You even have exchanges closing people's options positions (eg RobinHood) despite them being in the money.
Banks still need to cover their significant short positions and it really looks like the exchanges are trying to crash the silver market to do it.
I think that a real bubble requires margin. It's not just that people are buying because the price is going up, it's that people are buying with borrowed money because the price is going up.
That ends badly. It ends badly for the lenders. So when it starts to look like that's what's happening, a perfectly reasonable response is to change the margin requirements. When the circumstances are normal, use the normal margin requirements. But when the circumstances are abnormal, of course they should adjust.
Do me a favor and look at how many CME Notices were issued raising margin requirements for precious metals in the past year. Hint: They do this all the time to account for market volatility and the contract value. If a contract increases by 10% margin is not static. CME raised margin requirements several times in the last month to little market effect.
Silver crashed because China halted trading on the only public silver and gold ETFs Friday. There are videos of HK police arresting guys freaking out because they couldn't cash out beforehand: Apparently the fund had been operating as some kind of pyramid scheme and was not solvent at those prices.
Also on Friday, China urged investors to "invest responsibly" or some such (source: FT) and froze a bunch of suspicious accounts. I believe those accounts were behind the pump and dump social media ("AI Asian Guy" videos on Youtube, investment subreddit spam) with the help of plenty of useful idiots.
There's a ton of good coverage of the precious metals run up in FT this past week.
As someone who has been actively trading silver for the past year, the real reason that silver plummeted is because:
1) the market was looking for an excuse and the new Fed chain nominee was as good a reason as anything.
2) The margin requirements on metal futures changed THIS MONTH. Instead of having daily limits, they changed the margin requirements for futures contracts in real-time throughout this move. Futures brokerages calculate margin requirements every second, so what happened was as silver dropped today, the margin requirements got more strict and then people were being liquidated out of their positions immediately. This caused the markets to crash the way we did all day.
Previously, what you would see are circuit breakers kick in and the contracts would stop trading for a certain amount of time. You never used to see down 30% days ever, because circuit breakers would limit is. You would see limit down days, and the contracts would stop trading for the rest of the day and then reopen the next day. In the 70s and 80s I think there was a time when some contracts would open at limit down for 15+ days in a row and wouldn't trade for the entire day and people were financially ruined because they couldn't get out of a position for weeks on end.
So finding an excuse to sell on top of forced liquidation is what you saw today. It's a classic volcano top and I think silver is going to drift lower for the rest of the year.
Is there any good explanation for what is happening with gold prices long-term? If you look at 5-10 year charts it was pretty stable and started to look like NVIDIA stocks since 2023.
If you look at the history of related funds, you’ll see that there is volatility when the price gets sufficiently high as people early exit, and that historically it has gone up higher, then once the market is milked dry, it goes way down again for some years.
This has happened multiple times. You may not be able to guarantee it, but I strongly suspect precious metals are a repeating pump-and-dump scheme. It could be money waiting to be made by those that see the pattern, or maybe it won’t happen, who knows?
The headline is incorrect. It's Silver ETFs that tumbled, not silver.
The event I'm betting on is Silver shortage and the removal of ETFs from chart price calculations. Though this price drop may be a delay... Or maybe lower prices could hasten demand, leading to that scenario.
Precious metals is a weird market I guess as price rises can drive demand just as well as price drops.
Washington state, as part of their frenzy of tax increases, decided that gold and silver bullion will be subject to the sales tax. Poof! There goes any point in investing in gold and silver. (Collector coins, too.)
The way you've written it sounds like taxing unmonetized bullion is insane overreach, but is it? They're just treating them the same as any other commodities. I can understand if you're opposed to sales taxes generally, but the only reason to single out bullion for an exception I can see is historic norms.
They're also applying a tax to monetized bullion. That's more more like taxing currency exchanges and it's a bit weird since currency exchanges are normally taxed on appreciation.
Taxing bullion is absurd - it’s not a product but more like currency or a placeholder of money you already have. What other taxes are they passing when you say “frenzy”?
In English-speaking countries, we have a system that prints money and gives it to asset owners. Gold is still an asset, so buying it will still let people participate in that system. Increasing taxes by whatever (I'll assume 10%) is material but it doesn't remove any point, just makes it a bit less attractive. It could easily be a less risky play than investing in US bonds given that they can't pay them back in real terms.
The risk for Central Banks holding their own bullion is low, away from the almighty Dollar, and Gold has never ceased to hold value, while Silver is actually useful but seriously overbought.
We're actually paying a premium for risk-averseness in the very nature of Gold, an asset that produces no dividends other than holding its own intrinsic value.
This time the bullish-on-Gold news outlets are right: there are fundamentals driving the madness that is the Market.
Something about Japanese rice futures candlestick school of days past predicting sell-off after 8 to 10 sucessive record highs...
Summing it up, the volatility specially of Gold (Silver is a bubble may I remind you) doesn't discount the possibility of an overall upward trend of years for Gold and a respectable USD$4000 for the spot troy ounce does not seem crazy at all, as momentum builds for regime change in Iran.
It's a plain analysis. Trump may not TACO on this and after hell on Earth is unleashed, Gold will actually see action to unprecedented levels. Maybe. Maybe not, but USD$4000? I doubt very much it would break through that support level.
How do people feel about gold? To me it is purely speculative vs. index funds. If I were rich mabe have a bit of gold for the bunker next to the long life tinned gourmet meals. Better than fiat but not as good as company investments.
I think gold will keep going up over the next few years, because many central banks are converting from dollar reserves to gold. That means very large demand which is mostly price-insensitive.
I didn't invest and generally avoid anything other than s&p500, ftse 100 and just letting money compound over time (because if I wanted to really gamble I would go Las Vegas) but I wonder how many 'ordinary' people are silently getting burned out there by how much hype there is now online.
Huge numbers based on the forum posts on my investment app. Literally Christmas for companies offering long leverage and CFD products. A few “survivorship bias” type people managed to put in a short at the $120 top of silver and accidentally made a killing and this weekend will be believing they are prophetic genii.
Energy and Materials were among the most notionally net sold US sectors this week, GS Prime Book: US Long/Short Ratio (MV) driven by both short and long sales. Collectively, this week's $ net selling across the two sectors was the *largest since April '25* and ranks in the 96th percentile vs. the past five years.
I watched in amazement as the price tickers for gold and silver shot off the screen and then crashed mightily a day
later. What surprised even more was that Bitcoin decided to join in - something I'd normally expect to rise as gold and silver fell.
While not unexpected, the numbers still say that if you bought silver before Trump (which given history of metals countering uncertainty and the promised causes of uncertainty was a smart move), you're making a solid > doubling even now. For me, though, who gets too anxious when trying to attempt such things and ends up ruining it, it'll just go on the list of regrets like when I thought to but didn't invest in zoom once we started using it in 2020.
The Bunkers. My father told me the story many times as a child and he warned me sternly never to buy Silver. There's always more Silver he said. People will be dredging it out of old cupboards.
Earlier today, it occurred to me that the "spot" price could go to zero if the physical metal isn't available for delivery. I missed the dip down into the 70s.
Trump announces Warsh and this happens. Can't be a coincidence.
Incidentally Warsh's father in law is billionaire Ronald Lauder who is trying to get Trump to capture Greenland. Sounds like father-in-law got him the role.
Warsh played a substantive role in addressing the financial crisis in 2008 and has a lot of relationships and respect across financial markets.
How independent will he be? Who knows. But folks believe he is at least knowledgeable and competent. Which is not widely believed of all the president’s appointees.
I am super confused about the markets stance on gold, silver and the dollar.
Did the market consider Powell the cause of a weak dollar and not Trump? I thought Powell was what was standing between the dollar and complete recklessness.
I knew that Silver prices were going all time high but I had still assumed that Silver (and to that extent Gold) were stable.
Looks like atleast for Silver, that gets completely thrown out of the window now for some time.
I also thought Gold was a safe haven but I checked and it seems that it lost (10%?)-ish as well.
I have some complex thoughts and reasonings but I really liked Gold as an idea but looks like it is vulnerable to volatility at times too.
I used to think that maybe banks can have gold itself and gold usually does or ~ equal to inflation itself rise and I mean theoretically net I think even this year it does definitely beat Inflation (I mean it grew double I guess in 1 year) but for banking concerns especially supposing someone got money this time and let's hypothetically assume they get into this gold bank, then its still volatile & they could've lost 10% and then tried to withdraw money and more short squeeze so the idea has a major flaw after this incident.
I wonder how swiss franc is doing. I looked at it and it looks like its doing fine (1% down but I do feel like that's really okay) given how Swiss franc (seeing another cnbc article or yahoo finance ig) grew what 13-14%
Although the problem with people holding swiss franc is that when I searched swiss franc I found this article (from CNBC itself) which actually shows how a strong swiss franc might be/is bad for swiss economy
I do wonder, then what's the ideal solution of "safety"
I am scratching a lot of options now & I am either thinking US inflation protected assets or World Equity are the only two stable/(really valuable) because the whole essense of value behind gold/silver was its stability which especially for silver feels broken but gold isn't that far behind either.
Although atleast in my original context of banking, I later came to know about the concept of narrow banking and how there was a bank which actually wanted to invest in TIPS itself but that was blocked off by the feds for many reason.
I do feel like TIPS might protect inflation protection but they don't really protect the erosion of wealth because I feel like (I am not sure I can be wrong I usually am) but the pricing of houses and other assets are rising higher than inflation rises & inflation itself can vary depending (so housing rent inflation might be higher) & depending on your lifestyle. Maybe TIPS really wouldn't be able to help you to say.. save to get house or really have you give the ability for money to do what it actually does. To me the idea of inflation includes buying houses too so if say someone with some salary was able to buy a house 20 years ago then imo when I consider inflation protection or investing or anything in general, I expect that my wealth could be able to buy me things ~generally at a good amount & that's the point of good investing to get good returns at understandable/ your own risk profile.
I guess now I am personally more inclined towards world index funds in general I guess as a form of real stability where value gains are still backed by real gains (Something which I feel is core philosophy of the bogle philosphy & the reason why people should invest in first place)
I may have gotten a bit off topic here but coming on the point again here about Silver.
Would this be considered as (expected?) or is it a black swan event especially considering the 30% fall off.
From the headline, it feels like a black swan event (especially when they compare it to 1980's) but I am curious to know what others think too. I do feel like these black swan events really shift how we think tho & we can have it in our better judgement for future ig imo.
"Safe haven" and "lost 10% in one day (that it gained the previous week)" are not contradictory. "Safe haven" is "will retain value even if the dollar becomes worthless".
Fair to assume trillions of the physical metal weren't simultaneously dumped onto the market in the past day; this is entirely ETF driven therefore it's also safe to assume there is manipulation taking place to drive the price down.
What I don't understand is why, when there appear to be signs of a supply shortage, market forces appear to want to drive the price down and cause any remaining inventory to flow towards China where there is a $30~/oz arbitrage to be made.
ilamont|1 month ago
I started with a single 1 ounce silver medallion and was given a quote for $80. When I had checked the silver price earlier this morning it was above $115.
I questioned the buyer about the spread and he said the spot price was down, and the smelters were backed up so that was their best offer.
I brought out some other silver coins, specifically liberty head and Morgan dollars. He looked at the app on his phone and said “hold on I gave you the wrong price,” and then said “I’ll give you $35 for each of them,” including the pure 1 oz silver medallion.
I said no thank you and left, miffed, thinking he was jerking me around.
I didn’t realize the price of silver was collapsing.
nlh|1 month ago
Source: Am full-time professional coin dealer (who is NOT fly by night!) and have to deal with the repercussions of people getting hosed by these roadshows all the time :(
TacticalCoder|1 month ago
Wait. It "collapsed" to the price it was on the 9th of january 2026. Which back then was it's all-time high.
FWIW I hold SLV (a BlackRock/iShares ETF on silver, the biggest and most liquid silver ETF in the world) since $26. I noticed the recent craze. So I bought PUTs when it was at $102, protecting me at a strike of $96. These PUTs were pricey but, so far, worth it. But here comes the kicker: I'm financing those PUTs by selling CALLs on SLV (that simple options strategy is called a "collar").
And as I'm a silverbug, I own silver coins too. But these aren't liquid as you noticed.
When you trade paper silver (like the ETF SLV), the price of the market is the price of the market. SLV is not 100% following an ounce of silver's price, but SLV's market price is SLV's market price. It was $105 at close yesterday and $75 at close today and that's just the price of SLV.
I do like that: not getting ripped off by some side-of-the-road hustler.
That dude giving you $80 then giving you $35 is taking a more than 50% cut compared to the nearest low of day. That's quite a rip off.
jmyeet|1 month ago
So when you sell silver at a pawn shop or to a retail dealer, here's what happens in a normal market. You get an instant price, 5-10% off spot hopefully. That dealer then takes that silver and sells it to a refiner in higher volume with a lower margin (to spot). That's their profit. Refiners will convert that silver into bars and sell it to wholesalers and institutional buyers.
But instead what's happening is the refiner needs to hold onto the silver for 7-14 days before it gets smelted and processed. With high volatility, they're not paying out the dealers until it's processed and sold. That's a huge cash flow problem. Instead of instant money, it's money in 2 weeks and you have no idea how much money.
So the retail dealer has to wait and it could be 20% lower or 20% higher in the current market so instead of 5-10% they eitehr have to offer 30%+ less than spot price if they buy it at all. That money tied up has an opportunity cost.
Combine this with a shortage of physical silver to deliver on futures contracts and the refiners aren't really getting the silver they need to satisfy that demand.
So the spot price is fake. Nobody's buying anyway. Low wholesale supply means the prices continue to go up. Banks are haemorrhaging money because they have huge short positions. They have to borrow silver to meet their obligations and the silver lease rate (the price to borrow silver for a money has like 10x'ed) and this is where we are.
wakawaka28|1 month ago
blitzar|29 days ago
Apofis|1 month ago
0xmattf|27 days ago
When they opened the door, they said "so many people came in and bought everything", both sweating and breathing heavy. Lied right to my face. They left out like five generic 1oz silver bars and a small gold coin.
And again, when the price was high, they don't want to pay anywhere near the spot price.
I learned this: silver/gold is definitely not something you buy to "flip", at least in the short term. It's something you buy and hold for as long as you live, if possible, perhaps passing it down to your kids.
ProjectArcturis|1 month ago
Honestly, I don't think Warsh's appointment had much to do with it.
roenxi|1 month ago
tootie|29 days ago
trollski|1 month ago
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int32_64|1 month ago
onlyrealcuzzo|1 month ago
Meme stocks might coincide with meme coins - but I don't know if it's fair to blame crypto for everything.
I think the reality is that - for whatever reason - people are willing to take on MUCH greater risk today for reward than they were prior to the pandemic.
I don't think we can blame crypto for everything. Sure, maybe you could say crypto has been meme-ing since 2017 - 3 years before the pandemic. But we've seen plenty of speculative bubbles like that - if it even was one.
Crypto didn't really start meme-ing with clearly bullshit NFTs and meme coins until the exact same time - 2021 - when Dogecoin et al have meteoric rises coinciding almost exactly with all the meme stocks.
I think this is actually one the best meme indicators: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/dogecoin/doge/btc/
The Japanese Asset bubble was by far the biggest bubble of all time - and it lasted nearly 6 years. The Nifty 50 was a 7 year bubble, nowhere near this big. So, we might be in a bubble - but if we are - it's getting close to being the biggest, longest one ever.
Loughla|1 month ago
I have nothing to back this up, but I believe a group of investors learned from cryptobros just how easy it is to pump and dump with social media and scare tactics, and here we are. Somebody please correct me.
neals|29 days ago
slashdev|1 month ago
Next week we'll find out if this was a buy on dip opportunity or if it marks a multi-year top in precious metals and the start of a deeper correction and real technical damage.
One day that will happen and the trend will reverse, but it's always more probable that a trend continues.
MetricT|1 month ago
If gold continues growing at the same rate as the last 6 months, it will take gold all of a month and a half to get back to where it was.
https://i.imgur.com/bRAy1FB.png
Now, gold might not continue growing, but D.C. hasn't fixed its problems that are causing gold to rise, so I do have a degree of confidence that it will recover quickly.
stego-tech|1 month ago
That said, I agree with you that this feels like a bunch of prominent exits to convert paper profits into actual ones. The underlying problems remain and will become increasingly exacerbated as the year drags on.
I figure I’ll recover losses by this time next year if I just refrain from panic selling.
CyberDildonics|1 month ago
KellyCriterion|1 month ago
daedrdev|1 month ago
fdr|1 month ago
xingped|1 month ago
the_fall|29 days ago
About one third of this demand (photographic film and paper) more or less evaporated in the 2000s. You don't see that on the price chart, so I don't think you can seriously argue that the price is dictated by industrial uses.
carlosjobim|28 days ago
While dollars, euros, and all other currencies are all imaginary within databases and don't exist in reality.
chaostheory|29 days ago
pcurve|1 month ago
fatherwavelet|29 days ago
It is amusing reading the comments on here. Silver dropped 50% in 1980. Silver is the original memecoin. I think people care less though about market events that happened before they were born. It is like the way I know the entire story of silver in 1980 even though I was a little kid but nothing about the Nifty Fifty a decade earlier.
Nothing for me with commodities will ever top -$37 per barrel during Covid with oil. That was a level of market shell shock for me that I just can't imagine being topped.
geraldwhen|1 month ago
It would be more surprising if the 30% drop was spread out over a month.
christkv|29 days ago
WalterBright|1 month ago
[deleted]
delaminator|1 month ago
I cashed out :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k9UqNA2l_4
paxys|1 month ago
onlyrealcuzzo|1 month ago
People want to get rich quick.
There's going to be a never ending list of people that will tell them how - just so they can get useless karma points on Social Media, even if they don't make any money, and just convince you to lose your money.
1970-01-01|1 month ago
coffeebeqn|1 month ago
wakawaka28|1 month ago
JumpCrisscross|1 month ago
The dump is proximately caused by Trump picking a normal Fed chairman. Nobody on TikTok has anything to do with that, they're just pumping everything because seeling out is their day job.
PlatoIsADisease|1 month ago
Do you have any idea how much you'd need to pump?
beloch|1 month ago
The 2024 election was a time of great uncertainty, and Trump's first year in power delivered a reality worse than the fears. Trump is still throwing random tariff threats (and actual tariffs) around without rhyme or reason, but he's discovered that threatening to invade (allied) countries can stir things up even more effectively. Choosing a lackey to replace a competent federal reserve chair isn't going to help matters. We're just one quarter of the way through Trump's presidency (assuming he lives and doesn't seek another term), and it seems like the uncertainty is just going to get worse.
However, that uncertainty is, by no means, certain. Domestic resistance and midterm elections could curb Trump's power. International resistance is starting to coalesce. e.g. The EU's threat to use their "trade bazooka" probably contributed to Trump's TACO on Greenland, as did the potential demise of NATO. Responses to Trump's international graspings will likely become more prompt and more muscular, reducing the instability Trump can cause. The system has been shocked, but now its adapting. Many nations are hedging against U.S. centred uncertainty by pivoting to China or other allies. Global markets will likely become more stable as nations learn how to work around Trump's chaos by working around the U.S.. Still, it's very possible that Trump will find new and "creative" ways to make everybody freak out again.
Bottom line, the uncertainty that's been driving gold prices up since 2024 is going to let up at some point. But when? How overvalued will gold be when it does let up?
resters|1 month ago
[deleted]
constantcrying|1 month ago
[deleted]
jmyeet|1 month ago
[deleted]
jmyeet|1 month ago
The key event that caused the collapse is sometimes called Silver Thursday [1]. The exchange changed the liquidity rules, forcing a margin call the Hunt brothers couldn't make, forcing a selloff. This was arguably to bail out banks with large short positions in silver.
Well, pretty much the exact same thing happened this week when COMEX massively increased the margin requirements [2]. It's worth noting that the market is in a state called "backwardation" where the spot prices are higher than future prices. Refiners aren't buying silver, even at the inflated spot price, because of price risk. But also, the COMEX spot price is increasingly being viewed as "fake" because foreign exchanges are paying significantly more for physical silver thna the paper COMEX price [3].
Basically, this whole thing looks like another GameStop ie a short squeeze. There's not enouugh physical silver to meet contract demands. There's like 300oz of futures silver contracts per 1oz of physical silver.
If you followed the original GameStop short squeeze, the price tumbled there too but didn't solve the short squeeze. You even have exchanges closing people's options positions (eg RobinHood) despite them being in the money.
Banks still need to cover their significant short positions and it really looks like the exchanges are trying to crash the silver market to do it.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Thursday
[2]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-28/cme-raise...
[3]: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4861917-why-silver-prices-i...
AnimalMuppet|1 month ago
That ends badly. It ends badly for the lenders. So when it starts to look like that's what's happening, a perfectly reasonable response is to change the margin requirements. When the circumstances are normal, use the normal margin requirements. But when the circumstances are abnormal, of course they should adjust.
pmnerd|1 month ago
Silver crashed because China halted trading on the only public silver and gold ETFs Friday. There are videos of HK police arresting guys freaking out because they couldn't cash out beforehand: Apparently the fund had been operating as some kind of pyramid scheme and was not solvent at those prices.
Also on Friday, China urged investors to "invest responsibly" or some such (source: FT) and froze a bunch of suspicious accounts. I believe those accounts were behind the pump and dump social media ("AI Asian Guy" videos on Youtube, investment subreddit spam) with the help of plenty of useful idiots.
There's a ton of good coverage of the precious metals run up in FT this past week.
alunchbox|1 month ago
dsolo777|1 month ago
blindriver|1 month ago
1) the market was looking for an excuse and the new Fed chain nominee was as good a reason as anything.
2) The margin requirements on metal futures changed THIS MONTH. Instead of having daily limits, they changed the margin requirements for futures contracts in real-time throughout this move. Futures brokerages calculate margin requirements every second, so what happened was as silver dropped today, the margin requirements got more strict and then people were being liquidated out of their positions immediately. This caused the markets to crash the way we did all day.
Previously, what you would see are circuit breakers kick in and the contracts would stop trading for a certain amount of time. You never used to see down 30% days ever, because circuit breakers would limit is. You would see limit down days, and the contracts would stop trading for the rest of the day and then reopen the next day. In the 70s and 80s I think there was a time when some contracts would open at limit down for 15+ days in a row and wouldn't trade for the entire day and people were financially ruined because they couldn't get out of a position for weeks on end.
So finding an excuse to sell on top of forced liquidation is what you saw today. It's a classic volcano top and I think silver is going to drift lower for the rest of the year.
oytis|1 month ago
andrewpedelty|1 month ago
https://markets.financialcontent.com/stocks/article/marketmi...
g-mork|1 month ago
goldfinger26|29 days ago
This has happened multiple times. You may not be able to guarantee it, but I strongly suspect precious metals are a repeating pump-and-dump scheme. It could be money waiting to be made by those that see the pattern, or maybe it won’t happen, who knows?
jongjong|1 month ago
The event I'm betting on is Silver shortage and the removal of ETFs from chart price calculations. Though this price drop may be a delay... Or maybe lower prices could hasten demand, leading to that scenario.
Precious metals is a weird market I guess as price rises can drive demand just as well as price drops.
WalterBright|1 month ago
AlotOfReading|1 month ago
They're also applying a tax to monetized bullion. That's more more like taxing currency exchanges and it's a bit weird since currency exchanges are normally taxed on appreciation.
SilverElfin|1 month ago
otterley|29 days ago
15155|1 month ago
roenxi|1 month ago
thijson|1 month ago
laurencerowe|1 month ago
SantalBlush|1 month ago
chaostheory|1 month ago
1. Geopolitics. Globalization is dying. See 3.
2. Debt. Countries refuse to tax or do austerity. The only thing left is to destroy their currency by printing away their debt.
3. Preparation for a new global war which requires massive spending.
4. Basel III which made gold tier one. Unallocated gold does not qualify as a tier 1 asset
geraldog|29 days ago
We're actually paying a premium for risk-averseness in the very nature of Gold, an asset that produces no dividends other than holding its own intrinsic value.
This time the bullish-on-Gold news outlets are right: there are fundamentals driving the madness that is the Market.
Something about Japanese rice futures candlestick school of days past predicting sell-off after 8 to 10 sucessive record highs...
Summing it up, the volatility specially of Gold (Silver is a bubble may I remind you) doesn't discount the possibility of an overall upward trend of years for Gold and a respectable USD$4000 for the spot troy ounce does not seem crazy at all, as momentum builds for regime change in Iran.
It's a plain analysis. Trump may not TACO on this and after hell on Earth is unleashed, Gold will actually see action to unprecedented levels. Maybe. Maybe not, but USD$4000? I doubt very much it would break through that support level.
KellyCriterion|1 month ago
tim333|1 month ago
nitwit005|1 month ago
hahahahhaah|1 month ago
ProjectArcturis|1 month ago
unknown|1 month ago
[deleted]
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm|29 days ago
gadflyinyoureye|29 days ago
This is a mid term investment. Probably see $70 and a slow build to $200 a once in two years.
gizajob|28 days ago
Joel_Mckay|29 days ago
hckrnrd|1 month ago
deadbabe|1 month ago
pfannkuchen|1 month ago
rationalist|29 days ago
Not telling the spouse is pretty bad though.
FerretFred|28 days ago
Neywiny|1 month ago
lordnacho|1 month ago
scandox|1 month ago
kamarg|1 month ago
sakopov|1 month ago
KellyCriterion|1 month ago
thrawa8387336|1 month ago
vr46|1 month ago
At least we can afford nice things again
joquarky|29 days ago
kleiba|1 month ago
almosthere|1 month ago
sparrish|1 month ago
mikewarot|1 month ago
MisterMower|29 days ago
seydor|1 month ago
1970-01-01|1 month ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_crash
empiricus|1 month ago
Ekaros|1 month ago
sharadov|1 month ago
Incidentally Warsh's father in law is billionaire Ronald Lauder who is trying to get Trump to capture Greenland. Sounds like father-in-law got him the role.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/15/ronald-laude...
snowwrestler|1 month ago
How independent will he be? Who knows. But folks believe he is at least knowledgeable and competent. Which is not widely believed of all the president’s appointees.
alecco|29 days ago
Unless you have physical metal you are just gambling on a videogame playing against the dev studio.
wodenokoto|1 month ago
Did the market consider Powell the cause of a weak dollar and not Trump? I thought Powell was what was standing between the dollar and complete recklessness.
burnt-resistor|1 month ago
causalscience|1 month ago
[deleted]
glass1122|29 days ago
[deleted]
nozzlegear|1 month ago
/s
nikolay|1 month ago
[deleted]
TrainedMonkey|1 month ago
When prices are determined by speculation it do be do like that.
KK7NIL|1 month ago
I think you meant "most retail gold and silver investors are Trump voters".
trollski|1 month ago
[deleted]
Imustaskforhelp|1 month ago
Looks like atleast for Silver, that gets completely thrown out of the window now for some time.
I also thought Gold was a safe haven but I checked and it seems that it lost (10%?)-ish as well.
I have some complex thoughts and reasonings but I really liked Gold as an idea but looks like it is vulnerable to volatility at times too.
I used to think that maybe banks can have gold itself and gold usually does or ~ equal to inflation itself rise and I mean theoretically net I think even this year it does definitely beat Inflation (I mean it grew double I guess in 1 year) but for banking concerns especially supposing someone got money this time and let's hypothetically assume they get into this gold bank, then its still volatile & they could've lost 10% and then tried to withdraw money and more short squeeze so the idea has a major flaw after this incident.
I wonder how swiss franc is doing. I looked at it and it looks like its doing fine (1% down but I do feel like that's really okay) given how Swiss franc (seeing another cnbc article or yahoo finance ig) grew what 13-14%
Although the problem with people holding swiss franc is that when I searched swiss franc I found this article (from CNBC itself) which actually shows how a strong swiss franc might be/is bad for swiss economy
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/28/swiss-franc-us-dollar-price-...
I do wonder, then what's the ideal solution of "safety"
I am scratching a lot of options now & I am either thinking US inflation protected assets or World Equity are the only two stable/(really valuable) because the whole essense of value behind gold/silver was its stability which especially for silver feels broken but gold isn't that far behind either.
Although atleast in my original context of banking, I later came to know about the concept of narrow banking and how there was a bank which actually wanted to invest in TIPS itself but that was blocked off by the feds for many reason.
I do feel like TIPS might protect inflation protection but they don't really protect the erosion of wealth because I feel like (I am not sure I can be wrong I usually am) but the pricing of houses and other assets are rising higher than inflation rises & inflation itself can vary depending (so housing rent inflation might be higher) & depending on your lifestyle. Maybe TIPS really wouldn't be able to help you to say.. save to get house or really have you give the ability for money to do what it actually does. To me the idea of inflation includes buying houses too so if say someone with some salary was able to buy a house 20 years ago then imo when I consider inflation protection or investing or anything in general, I expect that my wealth could be able to buy me things ~generally at a good amount & that's the point of good investing to get good returns at understandable/ your own risk profile.
I guess now I am personally more inclined towards world index funds in general I guess as a form of real stability where value gains are still backed by real gains (Something which I feel is core philosophy of the bogle philosphy & the reason why people should invest in first place)
I may have gotten a bit off topic here but coming on the point again here about Silver.
Would this be considered as (expected?) or is it a black swan event especially considering the 30% fall off.
From the headline, it feels like a black swan event (especially when they compare it to 1980's) but I am curious to know what others think too. I do feel like these black swan events really shift how we think tho & we can have it in our better judgement for future ig imo.
andsoitis|29 days ago
This universe doesn’t guarantee safety, but you can mitigate risk via a diversified portfolio.
AnimalMuppet|1 month ago
hd4|1 month ago
What I don't understand is why, when there appear to be signs of a supply shortage, market forces appear to want to drive the price down and cause any remaining inventory to flow towards China where there is a $30~/oz arbitrage to be made.