Silver: Approaching the Buy Zone
Silver is now trading around the $50 level (roughly $56 at the time of this discussion), and that range is exactly where I begin to feel comfortable as a buyer. I had previously called for $50 silver — a forecast that upset a lot of people, especially those who watched silver run to $120 and then saw it fall. But the price is almost there now, and I'm starting to get "ants in my pants" to buy.
The key levels matter here. The first pivot point sits at $54, which should act as first support. I don't know for certain that it will hold, but that's where I start to nibble. The level I really want to buy is a pierce of $50. Below that, I'm looking at a broader accumulation range of roughly $54 down to $48.
Where Does the Lower Range Come From?
The $48 lower bound isn't arbitrary. It corresponds to revisiting silver's 1980 highs as well as its 2011 highs. Here's a quick lesson in chart-reading: when a trend line has been hammered on repeatedly in technical analysis and finally breaks out, there's an almost inevitable pull for price to return to "home base." Think of a kid who goes away to college and then comes back to live with their parents afterward, or comes home for Thanksgiving or Christmas. There's that same inevitability — price often comes back to that level before it begins its next move. That's exactly what silver is doing now, and it's a very normal human-psychology reaction.
The Inflation-Adjusted Rebuttal
The pushback I always hear is that, inflation-adjusted, silver should be trading far higher. That's 100% correct. But in the short term, silver and gold move on emotion. Right now that emotion is fear, and fear drives price below where it "should" be — just as greed, when we were at $120, drove price higher and faster than was justified. Longer-term fundamentals absolutely matter; short-term sentiment simply disconnects price from value in both directions. Silver today is at a discount to where it should trade over the long term, which is precisely why I'm getting very interested in buying.
Silver Price Targets
After this retest and flush, silver begins its next trek upward. I believe the fundamentals over the next year or two bring silver back toward the $90–$100 level, eventually taking out $120. From there, I think $150 is achievable, and even $200 is "very doable."
I'm not calling for the parabolic, every-single-day moves we saw on the way to $120 — I'm describing a fundamentally supported grind. When asked directly whether I mean $200 silver by 2030, my answer is yes, with leeway: it's hard to know exactly, and it could come by 2028 or 2029. I'm giving myself room because projecting three-and-a-half to four years out is genuinely difficult.
Importantly, I do not expect silver to simply rip from $50 straight back to $120. There's too much technical damage. People who bought in around $100 will panic when price climbs back near $100 and dump into that level just to say, "Thank goodness, I'm back to break even." That's human psychology — when we get crushed on a trade, we're simply relieved to escape whole. That trapped supply means silver has real work to do on the way up. But once it does reclaim the $120 level and break out, I think $150 and $200 arrive very, very quickly thereafter. By year-end, I expect silver back at $75–$80, so there's genuinely strong upside here once the weak hands are gone.
When reminded that I claim to be right about 70% of the time, I acknowledged this call could fall into the 30% — we'll see.
The Fundamentals Question: Why Don't They Drive Price Higher Now?
A fair challenge: the fundamentals for silver are not the same as in past cycles. Industrial demand is ramping hard — AI infrastructure, data centers, grid expansion, and electrification are not cyclical or optional trends. On top of that, photovoltaics and solar demand have pushed the market into a supply deficit estimated at least six years long, according to the Silver Institute. So when do fundamentals override the technicals and sentiment?
My answer: we first need a flush-out of what I call the weak hands. This applies to gold as well. When silver and gold were going parabolic every single day, people jumped in believing it was a get-rich-quick play. Those participants need to be flushed out. Those of us who have held gold and silver since the early 2000s understand that gold is a safe haven — a hedge against inflation and against relentlessly climbing US debt. It will play out over the long run, but you cannot expect it to rise 100% every single year. That's simply not how it works.
So I fully agree the fundamentals point eventually higher — that's why I'm a buyer in the lower-$50s range. But simultaneously, consider how many people bought between $100 and $120 who are now feeling the pinch and getting ready to throw in the towel. The crucial insight is that supply deficits alone have never guaranteed immediate price appreciation. Strong demand and falling prices can coexist while leveraged participants unwind their positions. Markets first need speculative excess removed before fundamentals can regain control of pricing. Breaking even is not the same as successful investing, and trapped buyers become future sellers who create resistance long before fundamentals fully reassert themselves.
The Final Flush and Physical Delivery
Here's the fear in plain terms: silver is no longer the sexy trade, so it has to be dumped. Holders will eventually throw in the towel, and when they do, that's the final flush-out. We get a bottom, and then we start trading back — which is how I arrive at $75–$80 by year-end. You simply have to get rid of these weak hands first.
Why Physical Demand Matters
There's a critical distinction between paper and physical silver. Increasingly, actual physical silver is being delivered — not just futures contracts or options. This matters for silver's monetary role (it has that "jewel" property as a store of value), and new exchanges are opening outside the West, in the East. For a long time, the argument goes, price has been manipulable through derivative markets dominated by COMEX and the LBMA. That manipulation becomes much harder when Eastern exchanges that actually result in physical delivery come online.
Physical delivery is enormously important. So many instruments now — perpetuals on stocks and even on Bitcoin — let people trade an underlying asset without ever owning it or holding it in hand. If you could strip that paper layer away, these metals would instantly move up significantly. Unfortunately, I don't think the system gets rid of it; it actually looks like they're trying to push it the other way. Long-term investors should watch inventory movement as carefully as they watch price charts, because persistent physical demand gradually limits the influence of paper price discovery over time.
Nefarious Action and Suppressed Prices
Don't assume there's no nefarious activity going on. I discussed this with Andy recently and agree with his framing: if you're a central bank or a country buying tons of metal, you don't want silver at $120 — you want it down. So you do your best to keep it down. We still see central banks buying gold and silver, but they would much rather buy at a discount, get retail scared and dumping, and then swallow it up. I could absolutely see that as part of what's happening here. Wealth gets transferred from impatient sellers to patient buyers.
Insider trading is another factor, and it's now blatant. Look at Micron: yesterday it was at $310 — actually trading around $990 — and for the rest of the day it soared back to $1,050, then "miraculously" earnings popped it to $1,250. Insider information is leaking in every direction at record levels. It has always happened, but it's now so obvious in the charts and at such magnitude. I'm certain some of that occurs in silver and gold too — pushing out negative information to drive price down and scare retail, while the big players quietly accumulate underneath. If you're a long-term investor, just focus on the fundamentals. The fundamentals are golden down the road. That's where you have to look.
Gold: The Wedge and the Flush
I previously made a controversial call for gold at $3,500; instead, gold broke above $4,000. When the largest buyers benefit from lower prices, optimistic headlines deserve extra scrutiny — central banks have every incentive to accumulate more cheaply when the chance arises.
The Chart Setup
On the gold chart, price came into key support. There's a beautiful upward trend line — a high pivot, a low, then support, then support again, with price bouncing every time it hits that line. Combined with a beautiful down-sloping trend line above, this forms a wedge pattern. Wedges squeeze price tighter and tighter until it explodes in one direction.
- If gold breaks above the upper trend line, currently around $4,300, then I might honestly concede we won't get to $3,500 — we may have already broken out.
- If gold breaks below the $3,980 level, we probably trade down to major support at $3,500.
I'm still leaning toward the downside; I don't think gold has been fully flushed out yet. A move to $3,500 would wash out the weak hands — the people who bought gold thinking it was a get-rich-quick memecoin, when in reality it's an insurance policy against all the craziness we see with fiat and governments.
Why the Exact Number Stops Mattering
Once you're below $4,000, the zone between $4,000 and $3,500 becomes a rounding error. I believe gold is heading to $10,000 — probably at the same time silver reaches roughly $200. If that's the destination, what does a few hundred dollars matter at the bottom? In practical terms, once we're below $4,000, as price falls I'm simply placing buy orders every $100. The most valuable decision isn't predicting the exact bottom; it's preparing before it forms. Long-term wealth builders scale into weakness rather than waiting for a perfect certainty that never arrives — timing discipline tends to outperform emotional conviction.
How do you not like physical gold? For thousands of years people have called it real wealth. Governments have come and gone; civilizations like Rome have come and gone; and gold has remained a store of value throughout. So from here, below $4,000, it's a buy — a little at a time, accumulating for that longer-term horizon move I see coming.
How Gold Got to $4,000 — and Why It Dropped
When asked how gold reached $4,000 amid an astronomical rise, persistent central-bank accumulation, and the smartest money in the world loading up, then why it dropped back to $4,000, my answer focuses on its corrupted character: gold became a risk-on trade, which it was never meant to be. We'd see the NASDAQ rise and gold jump significantly alongside it. In fact, gold's highs roughly coincided with the S&P and NASDAQ highs earlier in the year. People bought gold for the wrong reasons — they saw it ripping and bought into the narratives being spun. I actually believe in those narratives, but the hype pulled too many individuals in.
When a safe haven becomes a speculative trade, corrections become far more severe than fundamentals alone would justify. This is the rubber-band effect in charts: the further you stretch the band, the harder it snaps back when released. Get a crowd buying gold near the highs of $5,000 or above, then let the bottom drop out, and those sellers push price down dramatically. That's largely what we've seen.
Meanwhile, the risk-on trade has been deteriorating. Stock-market breadth has grown more and more negative. Even though the broad market sits near all-time highs, we know only a handful of stocks are keeping the indexes elevated — and gold has been reflecting that. Eventually, I think gold flushes out its weak hands just like silver and reverts to being a true risk-off trade, with people buying it again and pushing it higher as the stock market comes down. Narrow leadership often hides growing systemic fragility until liquidity suddenly disappears.
Gold also did exactly what it's supposed to do during the war with Iran: central banks such as Turkey's sold gold to support their currencies and finance oil purchases, and we saw some gold selling out of the UAE as well. That is precisely what gold is for — the ability to liquidate quickly and easily in emergencies.
The Debasement Trade: Dead or Just Repackaged?
Last year the banks pushed the "debasement trade" — the idea that investors were piling into gold and Bitcoin because of the debasement and devaluation of fiat currencies, driven by fears of inflation, deficits, debt, and loose monetary policy. Now a curious Bloomberg article claims the debasement trade is fading. According to Bloomberg, it began losing momentum following President Trump's nomination of Kevin Warsh: although Warsh has supported lower rates, his reputation as an inflation hawk has shifted market expectations, and that's being cited as the reason the trade is losing its shine.
Is the trade really dead? Nothing fundamental has changed — currencies are still being debased. So why would Bloomberg publish that kind of article?
My read: it's tough to know whether they're pushing a narrative designed to drive gold down so institutional money can buy, or whether this simply now looks like the prevailing story. But I don't buy that Kevin Warsh suddenly arrives as a hawk. President Trump is not going to mess that up. Think about everything he went through with Jerome Powell — he's not going to install a hawk who won't do his bidding when the time is right. So this narrative shift feeds directly into the flush-the-weak-hands play. It pushes gold down, which gives me and the institutions I speak with exactly what we want: a sub-$4,000 level to buy. The narrative flip is pushing gold down while feeding straight into the institutional buy side.
The broader lesson is that the story surrounding an asset often changes long before the underlying monetary conditions actually do. Regardless of media interpretation, persistent deficits, debt expansion, and currency dilution remain long-term structural forces. Smart investors watch actions far more closely than they watch headlines — and recognize psychology itself as a market force, every bit as real as mining supply or industrial demand.
