Why $50 per oz is Silver’s Most Important Battle Zone Yet
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Precious metals are increasingly outshining stocks and bonds as global debt and unfunded promises strain the system, making it tough to find long-term gold bears these days.
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Silver is closing in on its old $50 highs from 1980 and 2011, a level that could spark mainstream headlines and pull in a wave of new, often inexperienced buyers.
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In real inflation-adjusted terms, silver would need to be closer to $200–300 today just to match its 1980 value, underscoring how undervalued it remains.
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Inventories in London vaults are critically low, and analysts warn that free-floating supplies could run dry within months, setting the stage for sharp price moves.
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History shows that price suppression efforts—like the U.S. Treasury’s gold futures launch in 1975—can backfire spectacularly, fueling multi-fold rallies in gold and silver.
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Everyday examples highlight silver’s hidden value: a pre-1964 U.S. quarter now melts for more than $8, with a case easily made for much higher values down the road.
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Emerging markets, especially China and India, are buying aggressively—China’s futures and exchange data show a massive step up in physical gold settlement.
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Institutional money managers remain underexposed, with nearly 40% reporting zero gold allocation—suggesting we’re still in the early innings of this bull run.
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The gold-silver ratio, though still high at 81, is moving in the right direction; silver historically outperforms gold during strong bullion bull markets.
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Analysts now talk openly about silver overshooting $100 in the near term, with gold regaining parity to the S&P 500 over time—a reminder that market “mistakes” can correct violently once investors wake up.
As vaults dwindle and global demand surges, breaking the $50 per ounce level could trigger the next major silver bull run—here’s what it means for long-term investors.
The signs of a bullion over bonds and US stock market trade are becoming more obvious and undeniable seemingly every week now.
Of course there are both bulls and bears out there calling for price moves up and or down in the short to medium terms to come.
But you would be hard pressed to find many long term gold bears given the structural situations globally with record debt levels and unfunded liability owing Western governments who have collectively promised $100s of trillions in services they will not be able to keep in real value terms to come.
In this global bullion bull market, the walls of worry to climb ahead are still rather long and higher to come.
Silver is now beginning to make a move in earnest suggesting the test of the still ancient nominal price high for silver of around $50 from Jan 1980 and late April and early May 2011, is not long from now.
Sentiment check, I only have but one old college buddy coming out the woodwork asking about silver bullion. Why yes old college pal, we move silver bullion by metric tons seemingly each week.
Of course he knows next to nothing about bullion as long term savings, other than running into scammy coin dealer advertisements in his research of late.
Think of just how many are out there once silver blows through $50 oz and starts making more establishment media headlines which will inevitably follow. Unfortunately many will be pushed into the wrong long term products.
And so we go forth in this fiat US dollar silver market moving back towards the ancient nominal 1980 price high.
In real inflation terms, silver still needs to multiply by near of factor of four in nominal price terms just to meet the under-reported price inflation data the US government has been increasingly rigging via the BLS because being the largest debtor in world history, it was in their interest to do so for now 45 years running.
And no, this is not the late 1970s. The situation this time is much more intense and globally both Eastern and Western world reaching.
For all you old school followers of this SD Bullion YouTube channel and Weekly Bullion Market Updates. And fellow Silver Squeezers in the chat, it is not lost on me each and every week the manic depression manner in which reporting these ongoing for now nearly six years running has been.
Yes, I often feel like broken manic-depress o'clock. But our hours are coming up regardless.
It seems now that the bullion markets have broken out, revisionist financial historians are going to try gaslight anyone new to these ridiculously derivative levered precious metals price discovery markets. That the brutal cyclical bear market from 2012 through 2015 and a few years following for silver was just some kind of normal market condition. Never mind bank desks being Racketeering operations moving spot prices at their quarterly bonus wills.
Or that similar US Treasury policies spectacularly blew back in their faces when suppressing gold via then new gold futures contracts on the COMEX in 1975 resulted in gold more than eight folding in price from its 1976 low near $100 oz. Silver ran more than 10 fold from those 1976 lows, and the Hunt Brothers public scapegoating followed only shortly after.
Now we have new bullion soon to be billionaires reminding you this week that an old pre1964 quarter is now worth over $8 fiat US dollars in melt value. I can easily make a case for them being over $30 per quarter in melt value in time.
The emerging world continues buying silver for industrial demand and store of value reasons. That trend will likely continue growing into eventual shortages without spot prices rapidly climbing also.
You can see the potential silver bullion shortages of our future by simply looking at dwindling piles of silver in London warehouses.
TD Securities Daniel Ghali spoke to this point this week in two separate interviews, have a look at the most silver pertinent clips.
Let me take this moment to remind us all again, the supposed precious metals price analyst crowd the world over has been proven dead wrong and inaccurate in their 2025 price predictions for silver with this flock's guess of around a $35 oz average this year.
Meanwhile China is officially signaling to foreign counter-parties and trading partners that their gold market is open for physical settlements.
Data from their Shanghai Future Exchange show there has been a massive step change in the gold metric tonnage holdings this past year rising by a factor of five fold in gold tonnage held by that particular gold futures exchange. Of course the Shanghai Gold Exchange is also the larger physically settled gold market in China often with a similar number of some 50 tons of gold being used for settlement not each month, but each week instead.
The price guesses on gold for 2025 have been proven wholly incorrect and low with their average price forecast from this crowd below $3,000 oz this year. Not at all close, so much so that one of them admitted this week that, "gold is less vulnerable to a serious correction than might otherwise be, for those forces behind the climbing gold price worldwide are high quality, high-conviction buyers, less interested in taking short term profits on big gains."
Meanwhile the tightest market in the physical precious metals complex at the moment remains platinum judging by spiking short term lease rates signaling shortage, and a rapidly climbing spot price of late.
Platinum spot price closed this week now threatening just under $1600 oz bid.
Finally behold, the collective's guess work that platinum was going to stay polite priced near $1000 oz this year has been proven erroneous.
It's not these people's fault to be honest. They were working with recency bias, apparently not understanding many of the now not so hidden forces at play this far this year for gold, silver, and platinum. Each metal's performance thus far in 2025 blowing away 5, 10, 20, and 50 year rolling price appreciation by percentage gain averages throughout this full currency era ongoing.
The most important slide to examine here before we go to break was this interesting financial manager survey conducted by Bank of America recently.
Of the finance managers surveyed, 39% of them admitted to having zero exposure to gold. In other words, they have been totally flat footed and dead wrongly positioned this year. Better start thinking about those 60/20/20 portfolios we highlighted last week. Your further underperformance and even career might be on the line.
We're still in the early not even middle innings based on such institutional financial data surveys.
The silver and gold markets continued in bull market mode in this week's trading.
The spot price of silver closed this week priced over $46 oz bid.
The spot price of gold ended this week at $3,762 oz bid.
The spot gold silver ratio fell as I thought it technically looked it would finishing at a still historically high level of 81.
But moving in the correct direction it typically and eventually historically does in bullion bull markets past.
Yesterday morning I went on the ForexAnalytix premarket trader zoom call to discuss the gold and silver markets with long time trader Dale Pinkert.
Here are a few highlights juxtaposed with charts and splices of points I made.
We didn't even get into the real term purchasing power gains set up for silver bullion vs the S&P 500 through this decade into next.
Based on this 130 year chart, the range of silver buying double digits more in US stocks from here into the 2030s is a very real potential rhyme in time, as silver in mania phases tends to sharply outperform gold over short brilliant runs in relative gains versus major stock indexes like the US S&P 500.
So buckle up, get ready to get ready. Over the ancient nominal $50 oz nominal price point is not long for silver now.
That will be all for this week's SD Bullion Market Update.
And as always, take great care of yourselves and those you love.
REFERENCES:
- Johnny Come Lately's and Old Wall St commentators are going to try and rewrite Silver Gold Value rigging History 2010s
Remember from whence we came: https://x.com/jameshenryand/status/1545115474735890432 - They're gonna roll up and pretend likewise wasn't US Treasury policy in the mid 1970s as well.
Of course it blew back in the short's faces back then, as it likely will again: https://x.com/jameshenryand/status/816065891741921281 - The west is driving the gold rally: Ghali
- Silver surges as gold glitters: what's fueling the recent rally in precious metals
- Michael Oliver $100 Silver clip source:
- SEP 25th 2025. James believes The SPX and Gold with converge to the same nominal price, so parity of 1:1 Gold spot vs the S&P 500.
- www.GoldChartsRUs.com
