Are ETFs Disrupting the Silver Market?

Jeffrey Christian: Going forward, we think that volatility is going to continue. Right now, we’re very much concerned about the silver market, because on the one hand, most of the factors point to higher prices later. When I say later, I mean like the last week of February.

Introduction:

Anchors in a shifting world—The strategic case for precious metals with Monex and CPM Group.

Sean Brazney: Coming into 2026, silver goes crazy. I mean, really since maybe September, it has been on a rocket ship ride. Coming into January in the $70s, we shoot to $121. We fall down by $46, back up by $30. There’s $20 swings. There’s a $10 move in the market today from the high to the low, and people aren’t used to this in silver. Can you kind of bring us up to speed? What got us here? You guys put out a recommendation to sell as we were crossing through $100. Again, looks like the guru comes through on the sell recommendation up there, but where have we been? Where are we going? What can we expect here coming into 2026 with silver?

Jeffrey Christian: There’s been a lot of tightness in the silver market and a lot of interest in it. It’s retail investors, but it’s family offices and institutional investors, and it’s really around the world. There’s particular tightness in the Indian market, which is perhaps the largest silver market in the world, and in India, the market has generally always been fed by people who own silver—silver jewelry, silver statues, and silver bars, and coins, and medallions, and they were a constant flow of silver. But as the price started rising over the course of 2025, those Indian sellers of silver-bearing materials stopped selling and said, “let’s see how high the price goes,” and that put a big crunch on silver supplies going into the Indian bullion market and started driving the price higher. A lot of metal came out of London and went into India. A lot of other metal came out of London and went to New York, where you also had tightness in supplies, and that drove the price higher. Yeah, we saw the price go from $40 at the end of August to $70 at the beginning of January to $121 and back down. That’s where we’ve been and it’s been a lot of investors. The role of ETFs is important, because they are this automatic purchase and sale thing. In the old days, you’d have a broker and if you came in and said I want to buy a large quantity or sell a large quantity of silver or any other commodity, the broker would say, yes, let me work that order in several tranches, so as, to not drive the price crazy. But now, if you have an investor or a group of investors, they just go online and they place orders and it’s an automated order. It’s got to be filled. So, if you look at ETFs, they added 203 million ounces of silver last year. They added, I think it was about 39 million ounces in December alone, which is why the price shot up in January. When the price shot up, they sold like 19 or 20 million ounces of silver in January. It comes in a very bulk order, clumsy fashion. So, there’s no nuance left. If you were an investor and you said, “Oh, it’s $121, let me sell and take profits,” you’d work that order. You’d put it out in tranches and try to keep the price high, but with the ETFs, it’s like, pow, there’s 20 million ounces of silver to sell and it gets sold and the price goes down $50. Going forward, we think that volatility is going to continue. Right now, we’re very much concerned about the silver market, because on the one hand, most of the factors point to higher prices later and when I say later, I mean like the last week of February, two weeks from now. But in the interim, technical chart patterns suggest that the price could fall another $50. So, you could see the price go from $84 now, back to $40, and then back up to $121, all in the next two or three weeks. In the context of a longer-term bull market, because our expectation is that investors last year on a net basis bought twice as much gold, silver as they had in 2023. Our expectation is they’re going to buy even more and a larger increase, more than twice as much silver in 2026, as they did in 2025. Now, that’s predicated on the idea that the economic and political environment globally and within the United States and elsewhere continues to be hostile. Right now, if you put a gun to my head, I’d say, yeah, I think it’s probably going to be more hostile in 2026 than it was in 2025, which is a tall order. Our expectation is the price continues to rise with tremendous volatility, because you have so many people buying and selling silver around the world, and a lot of them are using these ETFs, which don’t allow for nuanced sales and purchases.

Sean Brazney: Well, getting back to what you have talked with me about over the years, when prices go low, increase your percentage of your accumulation, and as those prices go back up again, it gives you opportunities to think about parring some of that off, maybe taking some profits and trying to do that in a volatile market like what we have. So again, your information is always spot on, Jeffrey. I want to remind our viewers that this new report, Anchors in a Shifting World, is going to be out in March, but you guys, CPM Group, also do our yearly gold, silver, platinum, and palladium reports, and those are currently available. So, remind everybody to call in, talk to an account representative, and let’s talk about the precious metals market. Thanks for your time today, Jeffrey.