2026-01-23 15:53:00
Silver has a long history of making incredible moves and this one is certainly on that list. It’s been a one-way parabolic move since $50 in late-November.
Before then it was a steady climb higher and was just at $23 of the time of Trump’s second election. The combination of industrial demand, low mining supply and monetary demand has been sensational. The latest leg is all retail piling in as it becomes something of a meme.
silver daily
Naturally, I would expect some profit taking here but it’s hard to turn against precious metals until gold also hits $5000. The high was $4967 earlier today and it’s about $8 below that now.
Silver has long been defined by dramatic price volatility, driven by its dual identity as an industrial metal and a monetary store of value. The most notorious event in its history remains the attempt by the Hunt brothers to corner the market in 1979 and 1980. Texas oil tycoons Nelson and William Hunt, fearing inflation and currency debasement, aggressively accumulated physical silver and futures contracts.
By early 1980, the Hunts controlled roughly one-third of the world’s tradeable supply. Their buying pressure drove the price from roughly $6 to an all-time high of nearly $50 per ounce in January 1980. The bubble burst when exchanges imposed new restrictions on margin buying, leading to “Silver Thursday,” a market crash that decimated the Hunts’ fortune.
Three decades later, silver staged another massive rally in 2011. Following the 2008 financial crisis, quantitative easing and a weakening U.S. dollar fueled a flight to hard assets. Silver climbed steadily, nearly matching the 1980 record by reaching roughly $49 in April 2011 before correcting sharply as margin requirements were raised again. That rally may have been kicked off by the advent of silver ETFs.
Most recently, the “Silver Squeeze” of early 2021 highlighted the influence of social media on finance. Inspired by the GameStop saga, retail investors on Reddit attempted to force a squeeze on institutions they believed were suppressing prices. While they successfully drove demand for physical coins and ETFs, pushing prices to an eight-year high near $30, the sheer liquidity of the global silver market absorbed the shock, preventing a squeeze comparable to the Hunt brothers’ era.
Now they’re taking another crack at it. This has been called for by corners of the internet for as long as I’ve been in markets and it’s wonderful to see the bulls getting rewarded.
