Silver’s Historic January Rally Ended by the Biggest Intraday Price Drop
- January 2026 will be remembered as a historic month for precious metals, with extreme upside followed by a dramatic reversal, showcasing just how volatile bull markets can be.
- Silver delivered one of its strongest monthly performances on record, opening the year near $70 on January 1, 2026, before surging to a new all-time nominal price high of approximately $121 on January 29, 2026.
- Gold also posted remarkable gains, briefly touching nearly $5,600 per ounce during the week of January 26–29, 2026, confirming that investor demand extended across the precious metals complex.
- The month ended with a historic correction, as silver fell over 30% in roughly one day, plunging from a $121 per ounce high to an intraday low just below $75 within 30 hours between January 29–30, 2026.
- In less than 30 hours, silver collapsed from its January 29 high near $121 to an intraday low just under $75 on January 30, a brutal reminder of silver’s leverage-driven volatility.
- Even after that waterfall move lower, silver still closed the week and month near $85.26 per ounce on January 31, 2026, a level that would have seemed wildly bullish just a year earlier.
- Gold weathered the volatility better, finishing the week and month around $4,894 per ounce on January 31, 2026, after backing off its late-January highs.
- The gold-to-silver ratio snapped higher during the selloff, jumping from the mid-40s earlier in January to roughly 57:1 by January 31, 2026, reflecting silver’s outsized downside move rather than weakness in gold.
- Importantly, physical demand showed little sign of cracking during the paper-price chaos, with continued drawdowns from Western vaults and strong buying interest across Asia throughout late January.
- The takeaway is simple: January 2026 delivered historic gains, historic volatility, and a sobering correction—but none of it negates the larger precious-metals trend driven by debt, currency debasement, and tightening physical supply
After a historic surge to new highs in January, silver’s late-month correction reminded investors why bull markets in this metal are never smooth.
January 2026 will be remembered as a shock month for precious metals, delivering silver’s best performance in decades and volatility that caught even veteran market watchers off guard. Silver started the year near $70 on January 1 and surged to an all-time nominal high of $121 on January 29—then everything changed. In less than 30 hours, the market violently reversed, with silver plunging from its peak. By Friday afternoon, January 30, prices bottom just below $75 per ounce, marking one of the most brutal daily corrections in silver’s trading history. Gold and the broader precious-metals complex were swept into the chaos as well, with massive upside and downside moves packed into a single week.
Last Week
- The silver spot price melted down to close the week at $85.26 oz bid.
- The spot gold price touched nearly $5,600 oz spot last week and finished the week at $4,894 oz bid.
- The spot gold-to-silver ratio blew up from the mid-40s to close the week at 57 oz of spot silver to buy 1 oz of spot gold.
Biggest Drop in Intraday Price History Silver Correction
The largest one day sell off in silver in percentage terms intraday, occurred on Friday January 30th.
Literally falling within some 30 hours from the Silver new nominal price high of $121 oz hit on January 29th morning, eastern US time. To the intra-day low early afternoon Friday January 30th, bottom ticking just below $75 oz.
So within one historical week of time we went from triple digit-landía celebrations, to Frday's psychological pain inflicted on those who perhaps didn't understand how wild a silver bull market can be in price volatility.
Not merely up, but also wildly down in price corrections that seem like waterfalls in these overleveraged silver derivative markets.
Gold and the other precious metals saw massive price volatility as well both up and down last week.
We're going to go through of last week's crazy price action in the precious metals.
The fundamental drivers for silver and the other precious metals are fully in tact, and may only be further exacerbated from the action we witnessed to end this precious metals trading week.
Of course there will be many trying to explain away what occurred Friday. Anyone who acts like seeing the world silver price fall by a third is illustrative a healthy price discovery market can be dismissed.
I have a few thoughts I will share in a little bit, revolving around London and the Eastern world's seemingly insatiable demand for industrial sized silver bullion bars both for investment purposes and for industrial usage.
GoldChartRUs' Nick Laird suggests major silver market players were severely underwater in their positions and are likely now breathing a sigh of relief.
To him, and many other onlookers, the was a contrived correction in a bull market to clear trapped players - price will head higher.
Not merely motivated to reduce losses, I myself and others contend much of today's derivative price chart painting downward will also be used by London silver market insiders. You can expect greedy London arbitragers to use this opportunity to withdraw more 1,000 oz silver bars from unsecured ETFs and then make wild profits after having secured them on the cheap, only to flip them over to the Eastern world still paying very high premiums for industrial sized 1000 oz silver bars.
You can see here how every-time London gets into a short physical silver pinch with low to no float of available silver even with historically high silver lease rates. A new engineered spot price selloff ensues, and then magically 1000 oz silver bars come flooding out of the SLV slush fund, most of which end up in Indian ETFs or never to return unless in trace forms in their manufacturing outputs.
You can expect lease rates in London to continue going down for the foreseeable until again we go through another of these predictable cycles, wash and repeat, silver moving West to East.
Weimar Silver Baron posted this options screenshot for SLV, suggesting the tactic I just described being used in London to make bullion bank desk bonuses.
This week we also saw China paying over 15% above Western world silver spot price feeds to secure 15 kilo sized silver bars in their local SGE and SHFE exchanges.
If you include China's silver bar load 13% VAT on top of the ongoing 15% premium this week, we were seeing end per tory ounce prices being paid there upwards of $30 oz over our quoted spot price. That how much investors and industrialists are scrambling there to get silver in large bar formats.
Backwardation in their silver markets essentially means pay them their physical silver now for a premium, not waiting around until later.
This week another near 4 million ounces of silver got loaded out of their combined warehouses and the 13% VAT was paid on top of the 15% premiums we saw for most of the week.
China, is the world's largest manufacturer and industrial user of silver (half their auto sales are now EV require heavier silver loadings of an estimated 1 and 2/3rd troy ounce per car for instance, and of course solar panel manufacturing ongoing).
Their combined exchanges are now dow to under 1000 tons of silver combined. That is just over only 30 million ounces.
Coming back state side, the pull-able COMEX registered bar pile fell again this week down to 107 million oz, having now fallen by almost half since Sep 2025 when India began scrambling for large lots of industrial silver bars.
So in only five months half that Trump tariff inflow hoard is nearly now gone from the Registered pile. Like 1/3rd of that eligible pile is unsecured SLV in NY. Probably only a matter of a few years before that gets drawn down as well.
When today started, I was reminded of the times I first cut my teeth in this colorful industry.
Back during the GFC when many understandably thought the banking system may implode. One weak handed then recent bullion buyer called us frantically looking to offload some new RCM silver maples leaf coins right near the $9 oz low that spot price ticked in November that year.
This is the kind of overreaction and price volatility fear physical bullion buyers should not sell into, this is kind of weakness you buy.
Now in the middle 2020s, add a 0 to the price per ounce on this chart here.
Think about the value stored from then to now.
The domestic fiat US dollar M2 supply is back and growing higher.
Our country and the Western world at large have unpayable levels of debts and unfunded liabilities galore.
There is no getting out of this other than defaults and currency debasement to come.
The precious metals markets had incredible up down volatility through the week.
The spot silver price melted down to close the week at $85.26 oz bid. I would have been thrilled a year ago if you had told me that.
The spot gold price touched nearly $5600 oz spot this week and finished the week at $4,894 oz bid.
The spot gold silver ratio blew up from the mid 40s to close the week at 57 oz of spot silver to buy 1 oz of spot gold.
First US bank failure of the year of course reported at the end of the week so as to pretend there are not other insolvent banks teetering on the edge of failure as well.
Keep an eye out for this trend especially if the long end of the US bond markets cannot get suppressed down by currency creation forces to come.
The World Gold Council reported on record gold demand last year 2025. They guesstimate central banks bought a total of 863 tons of gold reserves. And you can bet a large portion of those bullion buyers are right here selling down our promise piles over time.
Gold over our debt is the trend on foreign central bank balance sheets, get used to it.
Before the end of this weeks silver market carpet bombings.
It was admitted that the current modern version of the fiat greenback was melting down versus silver at a one month rate of speed not seen since the US Civil War.
This is how crazy things were getting this January.
I have briefly covered the then fiat greenback's meltdown of 1864 before.
It was a frenetic albeit much smaller market at the time. US Congressional testimony described the then over-usage of levered paper derivatives with little no physical bullion exchanging hands in relation to the notional amounts of proxies being traded into a gold silver mania and political scandal.
It's a fascinating story and human beings are still flawed human beings. Perhaps this time we'll do it worldwide.
Silver is nowhere close to being done, accounting for the lunatic levels of fiat currency creation we've done worldwide.
The Japanese yen melt down in silver is only just getting out of a 45 year cup with gold having already nearly quadrupled in price there.
Swiss franc, similar story. This is still early innings.
All eyes on how the precious metals open up in Asia this coming Sunday into Monday, and how Indian and Chinese premiums behave after a weekend of rumination and much cheaper industrial and investment silver price offerings there now as well.
Describing how in price action terms, the "World Silver Market is Now Attempting to Rebalance".
It is not an overly long read but it breaks down my contention for silver targeting near $400 oz using its outside COMEX trading hours aggregated rolling price data.
For this market to move back into supply demand balance, a fifth reconvening of these price lines is required.
It took near five years from this outside COMEX price feed to blow up and out from around $80 oz to now hovering near $400 oz. The red spot line is screaming up a wall, with a record sized derivative induced hick-up today.
I content this phenomenon cannot be stopped. The wheels are inevitability are already turning faster and faster.
REFERENCES:
World Silver Market is Attempting to Rebalance by James Anderson
https://jameshenryanderson.substack.com/p/world-silver-market-is-attempting
