🚨 Silver plummets 15%, gold falls 7%, dragging down miners and ETFs🚨
Friday morning felt like a "day of reckoning" for the markets. Gold and silver—the absolute titans of 2025—just took a massive hit. 📉 Here is the breakdown of the "Perfect Storm" hitting your portfolio right now: 💰 The Numbers are Jarring: Silver: Plunged 15%, crashing back below the psychological $100 milestone. Gold: Shed 7%, fighting to hold the $5,000 line. The Ripple Effect: Platinum and Palladium followed suit, dropping 14% and 12% respectively. 📉 Mining & ETFs are bleeding: From London to Wall Street, the sell-off is aggressive. Fresnillo is down 7%, while silver miners like Endeavour and First Majestic are seeing double-digit pre-market losses. Silver ETFs are feeling the heat even more, with some down as much as 25%. 🤔 Why is this happening NOW? After a record-smashing 2025 (Gold +65%, Silver +150%), the market is facing a "concentration risk" reality check. - Crowded Trades: Just like AI tech stocks, everyone was leaning the same way. When the narrative shifts, the exit door gets very small, very fast. - The "Trump/Fed" Factor: The market is on edge awaiting the nomination of the next Fed Chair. Speculation that a more "dollar-friendly" successor might replace Jerome Powell is sending shockwaves through dollar-sensitive assets. - Geopolitical Fatigue: While tensions in Venezuela, Iran, and even Greenland pushed prices to record highs, the "Greenback" has finally stabilized, removing the primary tailwind for metals. 💡 The Lesson: Even "safe haven" assets aren't immune to gravity. As Katy Stoves of Mattioli Woods puts it: "When everyone is leaning the same way, even good assets can sell off." Is this a healthy correction or the start of a long-term reversal? Source: CNBC
Uranium on fire as it jumps to highest price since May 2024
Source: Barchart
China only has one Silver fund and the demand is so rampant it had to shut off subscriptions so it's now at 42% premium
Source: Eric Balchunas @EricBalchunas Bloomberg
The best performing commodities over the past year:
Silver (+273%), Platinum (+178%), and Gold (+89%). These are the biggest YoY gains for these 3 precious metals since 1979-1980. Source: Charlie Bilello
A Historic Moment for Silver
Yesterday, SLV (the world’s largest Silver ETF) traded $38 Billion in total value and 393 Million shares in total volume: - It was SLV’s highest-ever value traded (no other day in history even came close). - It was SLV’s highest-ever volume (prior records: May 5 2011, February 1 2021). To gauge the true scale of this frenzy… Let’s compare it to SPY which traded $42 Billion yesterday (chart). In its entire 20-year history, SLV traded this much relative to SPY *only once* before: On April 25 2011. Source: Macro charts
Gold volatility is now the global cross-asset volatility outlier (silver too, though that market is essentially broken for now).
Hedging “global” risk via gold volatility at these levels is very unattractive. Source: The Market Ear
If you want to understand why silver is hitting $100/oz in 2026, stop looking at the news and start looking at the 1-year silver swap minus US interest rates.
In a "sane" market, this line stays above zero. It’s called Contango. 📈 It means: There’s plenty of silver to go around. No one is panicking. You pay a small premium to hold it later because of storage and insurance costs. But right now? We aren’t in Contango. We aren’t even in "normal" Backwardation. We are in EXTREME BACKWARDATION. 📉🔥 When that line drops below zero, the math flips. The market is effectively saying: “We need your silver so badly that we will literally PAY YOU to sell it to us today and buy it back later.” What does this tell us? The Vaults are Bleeding: LBMA and COMEX inventories are hitting decade lows. Industrial Desperation: AI chip manufacturers and EV giants aren't waiting for "better prices"—they are buying everything that isn't bolted down. The Great Decoupling: The "paper price" on a screen is becoming a fantasy. The price of a real bar in your hand is the only thing that matters. When lease rates for silver stay higher than cash interest rates, you aren't looking at a "bubble." You’re looking at a physical shortage. The shorts are being squeezed. The vaults are being drained. Does it mean the silver rally 🚀 has further to go??? Source: Karel Mercx @KarelMercx Bloomberg
January 2017 Silver was trading at $16.50
Source: @realDonaldTrump
