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Notes -
Seventeen days ago, silver was $90/oz from APMEX. That was list price of a 1oz round, shipped and everything. Spot price was ~$80.
Today, it's $120 shipped, $110 spot, over +30% in a little over two weeks.
Gold is at $5185 for a single round delivered to your door, up from 4650, or 11%. Using spot it's about 12%.
Is this hyperinflation? Is this de-dollarization? A bubble? Does this have anything to do with Venezuela? With Iran? Taiwan? AI?
I'm honestly grasping at straws here, because metals aren't supposed to do this. I've been worried about the specter of hyperinflation since 2008, but it never really materialized, and so my worries were able to be soothed by looking at the lack of hyperinflation in reality.
You can't even tell anything happened in 2008 when you look at the money supply, but you can't help but notice that we've nearly x5 the money supply since December 2019.
Then again, silver is a useful metal. It gets blown up in missiles, it gets used in microchips and electronics, solar and battery technology, and more. Business building these things will simply pay the price for the metal they need and then use it, driving the price up regardless of speculation, but I can't believe that the usefulness of silver has quadrupled in the time since it was going for $25/oz.
China recently added export controls on silver in 2026.
The US added silver to the Critical Minerals list in November 2025.
Declining confidence in the US leads foreign investors to look for alternative investments to US treasuries/dollars.
Part of the move could just be short positioning being forced to cover. When the price moves quickly in a short time and there are a lot of people using leverage then margin requirements can cause some positions to be forcibly liquidated - which causes the price spike to go even higher for a short period of time.
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