Silver price: Here’s what to watch for after wild ride past $80

Silver’s exceptional volatility in recent days has captured the zeitgeist — with even the likes of Elon Musk drawing attention to the metal’s ferocious rally to all-time highs.

The metal rose to a record above $84 an ounce early Monday, before promptly crashing close to $70 in thin, post-holiday trading. It was one of silver’s largest price reversals ever.

Prices remain up more than 150% this year. Now the big question is: where does silver go from here?

Here are key charts to watch in the silver market to evaluate what happens next.

Chinese buying

Surging investor interest in China has been a key driver of silver prices in recent days. Speculators piled into the precious metal, mirroring a similar dynamic playing out in platinum. Elevated buying in the Shanghai Gold Exchange’s silver contract in December has pushed premiums to a record high, dragging other international benchmarks along.

The blistering rally provoked the country’s only pure-play silver fund to turn away new customers last week, after repeated risk warnings went unheeded. The fund’s manager announced the unusual step Friday after multiple actions — from tighter trading rules to cautionary advice about “unsustainable” gains — failed to quell an eruption of interest fueled by social media.

ETF inflows

Holdings in physical-backed silver exchange-traded funds have surged this year, rising by more than 150 million ounces. The total amount of metal held by the funds is still below a peak set during a Reddit-driven retail investment surge in 2021, but the inflows have been instrumental in eroding available supplies in an already tight market. Holdings in the funds have risen every month but one this year, according to Bloomberg calculations.

Technical indicators, margins

Silver prices jumped more than 25% in December alone, on track for the biggest monthly increase since 2020. The speed of the gains meant some technical indicators were signaling that prices had run too far, too quickly. The metal’s relative strength index — a gauge of buying and selling momentum — has stayed above 70 for most of the past few weeks. A reading higher than 70 usually indicates that too many investors bought silver in a short period.

Some exchanges are moving to rein in risk amid heightened volatility. The margins for some Comex silver futures contracts will be raised from Monday, according to a statement from CME Group Inc. That’s adding to headwinds since traders will need to put up more cash to keep their positions open. Some speculators won’t want to do that and will be forced to shrink or close their trades instead.

Options frenzy

One indication of speculative fervor has been the level of buying for call options, both on silver futures and related ETFs. Call options, which give the buyer the ability to buy a security at a pre-determined price level, are typically seen as a cheap way to bet on market upside.

For iShares Silver Trust (SLV), the largest silver ETF, total call volume hit the highest since 2021 last week. The cost of buying calls on silver futures relative to the cost of buying equivalent puts, which protect against price declines, also jumped to historical highs in December.

Borrowing costs

Thanks to a tariff-related trade, much of the world’s available silver still remains in New York warehouses. Meanwhile, the market is awaiting the outcome of a US Section 232 probe into critical minerals, which could lead to levies or other trade restrictions on the metal.

The surge of metal into the US pushed the London market into a full blown squeeze in October, and borrowing costs there still remain well above their normal levels of close to zero. That helped set the stage for increased volatility and frequent price spikes.

Catching up with gold

Precious metals generally have seen a surge in investment demand this year, supported by a sagging US dollar, President Donald Trump’s aggressive moves to remake global trade and threats to the Federal Reserve’s independence.

Gold was the first to rally, benefiting additionally from strong buying by global central banks. Some market watchers hold as a rule of thumb that when gold makes a decisive move, silver will eventually move twice as far in the same direction — this year, of course, they would have been right.

Many investors also track the ratio between the two commodities. After gold’s initial surge in the early months of this year, that ratio stretched above 100 to 1, signaling to some that it was time to buy the white metal. But in recent weeks, the ratio has rapidly shifted lower.

(By Jack Ryan)