[HN Gopher] Silver plunges 30% in worst day since 1980, gold tum...
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Silver plunges 30% in worst day since 1980, gold tumbles
Author : pera
Score : 249 points
Date : 2026-01-30 20:37 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| empiricus wrote:
| This looks like an IQ test, but for who?
| Ekaros wrote:
| For those on wrong side of options contracts expiring? I would
| guess that this is paper silver being manipulated.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Indeed. There's a large delta between paper silver and
| Shanghai physical silver prices right now.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| China only has one silver fund (SLV equivalent), and it
| stopped creating new shares. So the existing shares trade
| at a large premium to the value of the underlying metal. Is
| that the "Shanghai physical" price you're talking about?
| kgwgk wrote:
| https://www.shfe.com.cn/eng/Market/Futures/Metal/ag_f/
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| This was an inevitable correction. Gold and silver had gone
| parabolic for the past month. Nothing goes straight up. This
| takes the gold price all the way back to where it was last week.
|
| Honestly, I don't think Warsh's appointment had much to do with
| it.
| roenxi wrote:
| Doesn't this reset the silver price to where it was at the
| start of the month? This is hardly news, people got a bit over-
| excited in January. The spike is more newsworthy than the fall,
| and neither are all that interesting.
| Loughla wrote:
| Silver was around 1/3 of the current price a year ago.
| Calling this a crash is a bit much. If it hits $20 then it's
| a crash.
|
| Side note and completely unrelated, but I got my kid a 10 oz
| .50 caliber silver bullet last year and kicked myself for
| spending that much on a gag gift (like $300). . . . Should
| have bought a box of them.
| tootie wrote:
| I don't think people are thrilled with Warsh as much as they
| are relieved it wasn't Hassett or like Kevin O'Leary or
| something really insane. Warsh has relevant experience and
| knowledge. He is too close to Trump (and Ron Lauder) but
| hopefully knows better than to cause havoc.
| seydor wrote:
| Wouldn't even say this is interesting
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| It's looks like a flash crash. Somewhat rare, and from an
| algorithm perspective it's interesting.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_crash
| paxys wrote:
| This is the "dump" part of pump and dump. TikTok influencers have
| been pushing the gold & silver rally for weeks now, and it was
| inevitable that people at the top would eventually cash out.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Most of the influencers aren't even in on the investment, they
| just get paid to pump, and a lot of them don't even get paid,
| they just do it for the eye balls.
|
| People want to get rich quick.
|
| There's going to be a never ending list of people that will
| tell them how - just so they can get useless karma points on
| Social Media, even if they don't make any money, and just
| convince you to lose your money.
| klatchex_too wrote:
| > People want to get rich quick
|
| What about Amish people? Or Buddhists?
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| > a never ending list of people that will tell them how
|
| you mean like these trading Bros parachuting onto a yacht and
| placing a trade and telling me that I could do this too with
| the correct mindset from their exclusive Telegram group?
|
| :-D
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Too early to tell. They're both up since 6 months ago. Could be
| another one of those flash crash events. Buckle up!
| IshKebab wrote:
| They're both up since like 8 days ago. This is one of those
| classic bullshit "dramatic change if you only look at
| today!!" stories.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| True, but 30% _is_ a pretty dramatic change for one day. If
| you look at the history of the silver price - go back as
| far as you like - you won 't find many days when it moves
| 30% in either direction.
|
| Is it the beginning of a longer-term down? I have no idea.
| losvedir wrote:
| It reminds me of my days looking at biotech stocks. You'd
| have a small company stake their whole financial future
| on the outcome of a clinical trial, to know whether their
| drug works or not. Leading up to the release of the
| results, the price would veer this way or that based on
| tidbits cleaned from doctors involved in the trials or
| whatever, but the stock would mostly be in a
| superposition of the two universes, one where it succeeds
| and one where it fails (or more mundanely: the
| probability weighted average of the price that the stock
| would be in each one). Then the results would come out
| and the universes would collapse to the "works" or
| "doesn't work" one and the stock would jump 30% or crater
| 50% or whatever.
|
| I haven't been following this gold and silver saga, but
| it feels like a similar situation where there were two
| possible Fed appointees who would have vastly different
| impacts on the price of the metals. Then the announcement
| comes and the price found the world where that was the
| nominee and not the other guy.
| lazide wrote:
| Considering the array of behaviors exhibited by the
| president recently, it wouldn't be entirely unlikely to
| nominate Alex Jones, eh?
| resters wrote:
| Gold reverted to the price it was _wait for it_ five days ago.
| What actually happened was that Trump was forced /pressured to
| pick Warsh because prices were spiking in anticipation of how
| Trump's preferred pick would impact global finance.
|
| But anyone who thinks Trump won't get his way and control the
| Fed to create hyper-inflation is living in a fantasy world that
| I wish were our actual reality.
|
| We live in a world where Trump launched a criminal
| investigation against Powell. This is not someone who somehow
| learned his lesson in the last five days.
|
| The irony is that if Trump understood how markets perceive
| threats to Fed independence, he'd try to influence rates behind
| closed doors and not make a public spectacle of his attempt to
| undermine Fed independence!
| 01100011 wrote:
| Fed independence is damaged but it was never as independent
| as it should have been.
|
| No one since Volcker has been a real hawk. It hasn't led to
| hyperinflation, just a continual debasement that has served
| many purposes.
| rcv wrote:
| I have no idea about his credentials or suitability for the
| job, but Warsh is the son in law of Trump's buddy Ronald
| Lauder. I get the feeling he's not picking people he doesn't
| think he can control.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > I get the feeling he's not picking people he doesn't
| think he can control.
|
| The irony in wanting to control people when you lack self
| control.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| "Fed independence" has always been kind of a ruse. The theory
| is Congress would want to print money so they can spend it,
| so you need someone whose job it is to not do that. But then
| Congress just borrows the money instead, which forces the Fed
| to respond to keep interest rates where they want them, with
| the result that they still end up de facto printing trillions
| of dollars at the behest of Congress.
|
| To some extent the "independence" is even worse, because the
| Fed has limited ways it can respond to what Congress does and
| "long-term cause individual debt to get completely out of
| hand" is one of their primary effects, which is pretty bad
| and plausibly worse than inflation having been slightly
| higher over the same period.
| resters wrote:
| Good points -- what do you think would be effective ways to
| improve the institutions/incentives?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| You essentially need someone with the structural
| incentive to limit excessive spending to be in a position
| to actually do that. In the original design that was the
| US Senate, because Senators were elected by the state
| legislatures who would then prefer programs to be
| implemented at the state level unless there was a
| _reason_ to do them at the federal level. It 's not a
| coincidence that the massive expansion of the federal
| government happened pretty much immediately after that
| was changed to make Senators directly elected.
|
| Changing it back would probably work, but it's also a
| good example of the _kind_ of thing that can work. You
| find someone whose incentive is to say no unless then
| answer should definitely actually be yes and you give
| them the _ability_ to say no.
| beloch wrote:
| It's not just Tiktok, and not just the last few weeks. There
| have been pro-Gold ads in every form of media for the last
| couple of years, many focusing on uncertainty. The timing is
| pretty clear.
|
| The 2024 election was a time of great uncertainty, and Trump's
| first year in power delivered a reality worse than the fears.
| Trump is still throwing random tariff threats (and actual
| tariffs) around without rhyme or reason, but he's discovered
| that threatening to invade (allied) countries can stir things
| up even more effectively. Choosing a lackey to replace a
| competent federal reserve chair isn't going to help matters.
| We're just one quarter of the way through Trump's presidency
| (assuming he lives and doesn't seek another term), and it seems
| like the uncertainty is just going to get worse.
|
| However, that uncertainty is, by no means, certain. Domestic
| resistance and midterm elections could curb Trump's power.
| International resistance is starting to coalesce. e.g. The EU's
| threat to use their "trade bazooka" probably contributed to
| Trump's TACO on Greenland, as did the potential demise of NATO.
| Responses to Trump's international graspings will likely become
| more prompt and more muscular, reducing the instability Trump
| can cause. The system has been shocked, but now its adapting.
| Many nations are hedging against U.S. centred uncertainty by
| pivoting to China or other allies. Global markets will likely
| become more stable as nations learn how to work around Trump's
| chaos by working around the U.S.. Still, it's very possible
| that Trump will find new and "creative" ways to make everybody
| freak out again.
|
| Bottom line, the uncertainty that's been driving gold prices up
| since 2024 is going to let up at some point. But when? How
| overvalued will gold be when it does let up?
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Fortunately they would have to repeal the 22nd Amendment to
| allow that dingdong a third term
|
| No person shall be elected to the office of the President
| more than twice, and no person who has held the office of
| President, or acted as President, for more than two years of
| a term to which some other person was elected President shall
| be elected to the office of the President more than once. But
| this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office
| of President when this Article was proposed by the Congress,
| and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the
| office of President, or acting as President, during the term
| within which this Article becomes operative from holding the
| office of President or acting as President during the
| remainder of such term.
| tbossanova wrote:
| Good luck with that
| macintux wrote:
| It's amazing what a little uncertainty, a supine Congress,
| and an impotent judiciary can do for your prospects of
| committing high treason.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _No person shall be elected to the office of the
| President more than twice_
|
| Which makes Trump's repeated claims that he was elected in
| 2020 doubly stupid.
| stubish wrote:
| Traditionally you put a puppet in place to avoid these
| sorts of pesky rules. Family members are popular.
| pseudohadamard wrote:
| Does Trump know that? And if he does, does he care?
| pqtyw wrote:
| Trumps tariffs are also entirely unconstitutional. An open
| and shut case, yet nothing has happened yet...
| jmyeet wrote:
| This is a prime example of being confidently wrong. As another
| commenter put it (paraphrased) if you think a few Tiktokers can
| _move the global silver market_ then you 're a deeply unserious
| person.
|
| There are fundamental issues driving up silver prices in the
| last 6+ months, capped off by China instituting strict export
| controls starting January 1, 2026, which has further tightened
| supply.
|
| This is a short squeeze, just like Gamestop from a few years
| back. Banks hold huge short positions, the prices keep going
| up, the exchanges are intentionally trying to bail out by the
| banks by crashing the market and no retailer is actually buying
| silver for a bunch of reasons I went into more detail about in
| other comments on this thread.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| I was with you till the last paragraph. Banks having a huge
| short position is a false conspiracy theory.
| Xx_crazy420_xX wrote:
| Can either one be proved?
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| You would think, if banks did have a huge short position,
| they would have announced large losses in Q4 after metals
| mooned. They did not.
| PlatoIsADisease wrote:
| I agree, Gold is a 35 trillion dollar market. There is no
| pump and dump.
|
| What happened to HN, people are totally fine with fanciful
| ideas suddenly.
|
| Normies found it?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _TikTok influencers_
|
| The dump is proximately caused by Trump picking a normal Fed
| chairman. Nobody on TikTok has anything to do with that,
| they're just pumping everything because seeling out is their
| day job.
| PlatoIsADisease wrote:
| On Gold? You know the market is 35 trillion dollars?
|
| Do you have any idea how much you'd need to pump?
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| A good portion of that has been hoarded since biblical times,
| and has not been in actual "circulation" ever.
| defrost wrote:
| What percentage is "A good portion" ? Gold
| mining dates back to ancient civilisations. Our
| best estimates suggest that around 216,265 tonnes of gold
| have been mined throughout history.
| Interestingly, about two-thirds of this gold has been
| extracted since 1950. This massive increase in
| production has been due to advancements in mining
| technology and the discovery of new gold deposits.
|
| * https://www.gold.org/goldhub/data/how-much-gold
|
| _200 Years of Global Gold Production, by Country_ -
| https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/200-years-of-global-
| go... Between 1500 and 1650, the Spanish
| imported 181 tons of gold and 16,000 tons of silver from
| the New World ...
|
| * https://www.quora.com/How-much-gold-did-the-Spaniards-
| take-f...
|
| What's your estimate for the tonnage of gold "hoarded since
| biblical times" ?
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >What's your estimate
|
| Good question, I would say your guess is as good as mine,
| but looks like you have recent statistics !
|
| Thanks for the information, it does look like realistic
| figures about as accurate as you can get.
|
| I just accept that as much as possible gold has always
| been hoarded much more strongly than silver amounts
| having the same values at the time.
|
| Enough to regard silver as a medium of exchange compared
| to gold as a store of value.
|
| Gold is so tightly hoarded that I expect that there is
| more than one accumulation established centuries ago,
| that originally consisted entirely of ancient gold which
| is comingled with material from the 20th century and
| maybe newer by now.
|
| It's also possible that before any human value was
| established for gold in prehistoric times, there might
| just have been untold megatons within reach as low-
| hanging fruit without need to do very much "mining" at
| all.
|
| Of course cave men had no formal education but they were
| sapiens just like us and had plenty of progressive
| generations over thousands of years to shrewdly recognize
| the advantage of not telling anybody about "untold"
| amounts of anything when it's regarded as valuable. At
| least some of them anyway :)
|
| And they sure had orders of magnitude more time to pursue
| economic interests and accumulate wealth before recorded
| history than there has been since then, no telling what
| they were keeping off the books when there weren't any
| books yet !
|
| Edit: Not my downvote! Where did that come from?
| Corrective upvote now placed.
| defrost wrote:
| > I would say your guess is as good as mine
|
| Spoiler: I did a few decades of exploration geophysics,
| some time working on the production circuit of the
| SuperPit, and part of a team that sold a global minerals
| intelligence database to Standard & Poor 16 or so years
| ago.
|
| (No big deal, I'm just old and happen to have literally
| mapped uranium / copper / gold / et al. resources and
| reserves about the globe for clients in the past)
|
| > there might just have been untold megatons within reach
| as low-hanging fruit
|
| And yet the total amount of known gold in all of history
| is less than a quarter of a single megaton .. you're
| suggesting _mega_ tonnes of gold from from before the
| Roman Rio Tinto mining days have lasted more than two
| thousand years stacked up as nuggets in many many many
| caves and structures without being found.
|
| That's an interesting hypothesis.
|
| > Of course cave men had no formal education
|
| Interestingly nor did my father (born 1935) and he's
| still walking about
|
| > recognize the advantage of not telling anybody about
| "untold" amounts of anything when it's regarded as
| valuable.
|
| Can you expand upon the value of megatons of gold to
| cavemen ?
|
| > no telling what they were keeping off the books when
| there weren't any books yet !
|
| Oh, you know, gravitometers, ground penetrating radar,
| seismic surveys, etc. are all means of exploring for
| things not yet on any ledger.
|
| > Edit: Not my downvote!
|
| I don't fuss much about those, not on my comments, and I
| see no reason to downvote yours - just ride it out, they
| mostly even out over time.
|
| All of this is in light humour, your comment caught my
| eye as I wasn't sure if you were serious, jesting, hadn't
| thought through the physical implications of a perhaps
| throw away comment, etc.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Thanks even more for coming back and emphasizing your
| unique experience !
|
| I think cave men are interesting because almost nothing
| is known about them.
|
| Except that they were just like us.
|
| If you go back far enough they could be in a cave lined
| with gold and not care about it at all.
|
| Sooner or later though people coveted it so much they
| would kill for it. Maybe even Neanderthals too ;)
|
| Meanwhile right there in Colorado there were many kilos
| of gold sitting at the bottom of a lonely river, still
| just waiting millennia for people to come along and
| gather it up. By the time settlers got there and were
| finished sifting out the gold, a whole city had been
| built on the spot, and Denver has been there ever since.
|
| I would expect there were a lot more places like that
| which were never recorded, and by the point that biblical
| times got here had been tapped out and forgotten for
| millennia.
|
| Sorry about seismics but my only exposure is from
| petroleum and I was not one of the geologists so not very
| involved.
|
| But Trinidad is a major example where you didn't need
| subsurface imaging to find petroleum since there was so
| much of it floating on top of the water when foreign
| explorers arrived at the islands. Some people made plenty
| of money after its value was recognized from just the
| amount that was coming out of the ground by itself,
| before any drilling for the mother lode.
|
| First come, first serve though. If an exorbitant amount
| can be controlled early it can provide an outsize hoard
| before anyone else has a comparable chance, and the
| relative advantage in financial strength so there is no
| threat to the accumulated wealth.
|
| I would think that once gold was deemed desirable in
| prehistoric times, it didn't take that many more
| generations for some to appreciate the advantage of
| keeping the hoard together so they could retain more
| "critical mass" and power relative to adversaries.
|
| When there is any adversarial situation, lots of times
| modern man didn't want anybody to really know the depth
| and type of their assets for strategic reasons. Other
| times they may have wanted the opposition to think they
| have way more resources than they actaully do. I guess
| plenty of people ever since have been no different, so
| anything is possible.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Gold has been going up for years now. I don't know how much
| TikTok influencers influence the price. Seems to be mostly
| central banks and the falling apart of the international order
| that's driving a neutral and unsanctionable tradeable asset up.
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| It is very hard to pump the metals. The markets for them are
| just too big. You'd need whole countries buying to make a dent.
| Miners are another story. Those can be pumped and dumped like
| any other stock.
| Neywiny wrote:
| While not unexpected, the numbers still say that if you bought
| silver before Trump (which given history of metals countering
| uncertainty and the promised causes of uncertainty was a smart
| move), you're making a solid > doubling even now. For me, though,
| who gets too anxious when trying to attempt such things and ends
| up ruining it, it'll just go on the list of regrets like when I
| thought to but didn't invest in zoom once we started using it in
| 2020.
| pcurve wrote:
| We knew the correction was coming, but I don't think anyone
| expected the 30% move in one day.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
| rolph wrote:
| maybe, but almost everyone will see the hot iron
| geraldwhen wrote:
| Probably the opposite. Corrections happen quickly and all at
| once, somewhat similar to growth.
|
| It would be more surprising if the 30% drop was spread out over
| a month.
| skippyboxedhero wrote:
| Correct, momentum acceleration is generally a mean reversion
| signal in futures, and can be effectively combined with
| momentum signals i.e. you go long when it goes up but when it
| starts going up a lot you reduce your position.
|
| And these signals are usually very compressed in time because
| acceleration is actually just an acceleration in the number
| of decisions being taken, which tends to blow off quite
| spectacularly.
|
| Something that has changed is the large retail participation,
| which is making the scale of these moves quite crazy. Will be
| interesting to see what happens next, as with crypto the
| scale of the wipe seems so large that it is hard to see how
| that participation continues.
|
| Healthy for markets but I am guessing this will conflict
| heavily with the politics.
| delaminator wrote:
| George Gammon did, 24 hours beforehand
|
| I cashed out :)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k9UqNA2l_4
| fatherwavelet wrote:
| Anyone with long experience trading commodities would have
| expected this. This is like the least surprising thing ever.
|
| It is amusing reading the comments on here. Silver dropped 50%
| in 1980. Silver is the original memecoin. I think people care
| less though about market events that happened before they were
| born. It is like the way I know the entire story of silver in
| 1980 even though I was a little kid but nothing about the Nifty
| Fifty a decade earlier.
|
| Nothing for me with commodities will ever top -$37 per barrel
| during Covid with oil. That was a level of market shell shock
| for me that I just can't imagine being topped.
| christkv wrote:
| Big enough dip will cause algorithmic sell off I imagine
| deepening the dip.
| lordnacho wrote:
| If memory serves, 1980 was the time of the silver corner by a
| couple of brothers.
| scandox wrote:
| The Bunkers. My father told me the story many times as a child
| and he warned me sternly never to buy Silver. There's always
| more Silver he said. People will be dredging it out of old
| cupboards.
| kamarg wrote:
| The Hunt brothers.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Thursday
| WalterBright wrote:
| Washington state, as part of their frenzy of tax increases,
| decided that gold and silver bullion will be subject to the sales
| tax. Poof! There goes any point in investing in gold and silver.
| (Collector coins, too.)
| laurencerowe wrote:
| That's a win for society if the money is instead invested into
| something productive!
| WalterBright wrote:
| I never invested in gold because it is not productive. I
| don't have any money, either (other than pocket money),
| because I've invested all of it.
|
| Gold is usually invested in as a hedge against inflation.
| It's not really the gold that goes up and down in value, it's
| the dollar that goes down and up.
| fjordofnorway wrote:
| Given that the gold and the dollar are not productive I
| think one is betting that society is less productive than
| inflation when one invests in gold and that one will need
| to pay a ransom over a long weekend when one holds dollars.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| This is an oversimplification IMO. There are higher order
| effects on the price of gold that makes it not directly
| related to the value of the dollar.
|
| I'm pointing this out because I have seen a lot of
| sentiment recently about how the dollar is crashing, just
| look at the price of gold. Yes, the dollar is decreasing in
| value faster than usual, but it also isn't crashing in the
| way that gold is spiking.
|
| This sentiment I think drives speculative gold demand, from
| standard speculative investing FOMO as well as from
| emotionally driven inflation fear well beyond what is
| realistic. The same thing happens to the stock market.
| taneq wrote:
| Wouldn't gold be spiking in proportion to the market's
| predicted future value of the dollar, rather than its
| current value? If the market's paying attention you'd
| expect its gold valuation to lead the actual inflation
| numbers.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| It does but that is the first order effect only. You also
| have people buying gold because number going up means
| number goes up more. This has a positive feedback loop
| since the people buying for that reason also makes number
| go up, which sucks in more people. You also have people
| bandwagoning hyperinflation type scenarios without a
| plausible thesis, which results in I think much more
| hedging in this area than usual. I hadn't seen
| hyperinflation as a topic break into the mainstream
| before. You also have opportunistic savvy speculation
| that is based on a perception of the perception of the
| people doing the other ones. And probably more scenarios
| since there are a lot of interactions possible at higher
| orders.
|
| So like some of the increase in gold price is due to the
| decrease in dollar value, certainly, but it isn't all of
| it, and at the present time I don't believe it is near to
| most of it.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| You can call it emotionally driven, but if it's taken as
| a fact that the dollar is and will continue to lose value
| ( and the president is incentivized to pump the price of
| Bitcoin, whatever level of hell/episode of Mr Robot that
| is) - then you should expect gold to go up infinitely,
| relative to a worthless dollar. People aren't necessarily
| trading out of fear, just trying to predict the future.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| But the perception of future worthlessness of the dollar
| cannot actually make the dollar worthless. It doesn't
| work like that.
|
| In a theoretical scenario where there are many competing
| substitutable currencies it should work like that, but we
| are not in that theoretical scenario, are we?
| pqtyw wrote:
| How would you explain the price of gold between 1980 and
| 2000, then? It's price collapsed, was there no inflation
| back then?
| pqtyw wrote:
| Gold was worth about as much in nominal(!) terms ~2006 as
| it was in back in 1980 then doubled in a couple of years.
| Doesn't seem like a very good hedge but rather a very
| volatile speculatory asset...
| oraphalous wrote:
| But it's a loss if it's forced into risky investments that
| aren't productive.
| jkhdigital wrote:
| People choose to hold non-yield-bearing assets when they
| believe the returns offered by current investment
| opportunities are not sufficient to justify the risks.
|
| It is the miracle of modern capital markets that enables
| almost anyone to quickly and easily invest their savings in
| productive assets, but of course capital markets aren't
| perfect. The availability of "none of the above" options
| (like gold) that remove savings from the pool of active
| investment capital is the essential feedback loop that
| balances risk and return.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Modern capital markets also have non-yield-bearing assets
| like gold ETFs. The only practical difference is a tiny
| expense ratio and more liquidity.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| Taxing bullion is absurd - it's not a product but more like
| currency or a placeholder of money you already have. What other
| taxes are they passing when you say "frenzy"?
| jfengel wrote:
| Why is it more like a currency than any other object? It's
| not negotiable currency or legal tender.
|
| People buy it and sell it. I don't see any difference between
| bullion, iron ore, frozen concentrated orange juice, and
| Pokemon cards. You buy a thing, you pay the sales tax.
| its_ethan wrote:
| Well it's more like a currency than any other object
| because it has been used historically to either a) be the
| currency, or b) back the currency. Sure that's not true
| today in the United States, but like, it's obviously
| different than frozen concentrated orange juice... can we
| not at least agree on that pretty tame assumption? Or is
| this just some semantics race to non-meaning?
|
| Iron ore is similar physically, but it's really just a raw
| input material/ingredient used for heavy industrial
| manufacturing and production, it's never been intended to
| be an appreciating asset/hedge against inflation.
|
| I'm unfamiliar with whatever tax is being referred to in
| this specific comment thread, but I'd be curious how
| something like $SIVR is handled, considering it's backed by
| actual silver in vaults. That could lead to some unintended
| consequences if the investment plans of a lot of money
| suddenly changes how it's being allocated.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > Iron ore is similar physically, but it's really just a
| raw input material/ingredient used for heavy industrial
| manufacturing and production, it's never been intended to
| be an appreciating asset/hedge against inflation, not any
| intrinsic property of gold itself.
|
| Gold is not _intended_ to be an asset /hedge against
| inflation either. Market participants _believe_ that gold
| has value and that it can hedge against inflation. The
| belief is what gives life to gold being as a hedge
| against inflation.
|
| Gold is not an asset, it's a commodity, an industrial
| input, and material for jewelry, and for some reason I
| fail to understand, people buy and hold it because they
| believe it is an asset that will appreciate in value, but
| it's just an elementary metal that is useful for being
| easy to work with (jewelry) and because it doesn't
| oxidize. It does not generate income, you can't eat it,
| and in a post-apocalyptic scenario, it's useless. I
| suppose the density of gold would allow some very small,
| very high mass slingshot balls you could defend yourself
| against people with?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| A system is what it does, and gold is popular for jewelry
| because it's a useful way to wear money.
|
| Off topic and this might be apocryphal, but I heard on
| the internet a good reason to keep "money" in the form of
| gold chains and other jewelry, is that it counts as
| personal property, so if you're arrested during a drug
| bust or trafficking women, your cash and bank accounts
| may be seized, but whatever you wear to prison gets put
| in a ziplock bag and returned to you when you leave :)
| dmos62 wrote:
| Is taxing investment absurd?
| kyboren wrote:
| "Tax what you want less of."
|
| Do you want less investment?
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| Gold is not an investment. It takes otherwise productive
| capital out of the economy and produces nothing. It's
| functionally no different than stuffing your money in a
| mattress.
| kajecounterhack wrote:
| It has utility though: unlike the dollars in your
| mattress, it can't be printed into oblivion by your
| central bank. It is relatively portable, and people have
| flocked to it as a store of value especially during
| periods of socioeconomic instability when assets are
| going down and gov't spending is going up. It's tradeable
| for fiat in any country, so it allows you to bring value
| along if you relocate.
|
| Its price reflects that utility and like any modern
| asset, a lot of speculation. You can speculate on whether
| it's more or less useful given current events -- nothing
| wrong with speculating that it is only going to be
| increasingly useful.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| You're right that it has utility, but being fungible
| doesnt imply that it is automatically an investment.
|
| Speculation is not the same as investment, and it is
| still completely non-productive.
| kajecounterhack wrote:
| Agree it doesn't generate wealth. It's explicitly a store
| of wealth.
|
| Investment is a weird term because most people would
| consider keeping cash or cash equivalents (gold) to be
| investments, even if they don't generate wealth. Cash is
| also an opinion, in terms of the market.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| An investment creates a return
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Roger, sometimes positive, sometimes negative.
| its_ethan wrote:
| What is it that you're arguing for then? That there be
| some entity that gets to decide what is and isn't a
| productive use of all of our excess money? Who gets to
| decide what's excess? Who gets to decide what is and
| isn't a productive use of the money?
|
| How is this any different than buying a house? Buying a
| house that's already been built is pretty damn close to
| the same thing as buying gold. No new "work" is being
| done into the economy, you're just exchanging dollars for
| an asset that will likely appreciate a bit faster than
| inflation but less than $SPY.
|
| The person you bought it from can do something else with
| that money, sure, but that's also true of the other
| person in your transaction to buy gold.
|
| Maybe you'll say a house has more utility than bars of
| gold, but all of this at the end of the day, seems to
| come down to _your_ specific views and judgements of what
| it means for capital to be used productively. So to
| circle back to the beginning, what is it you 're
| advocating for here? That because _you_ don 't see gold
| as a low risk hedge against inflation as being
| "productive" it should face more taxes to incentivize it
| not happening?
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| No, im not arguing that it should be illegal. Im just
| saying, as Warren Buffet before me did, that its not an
| investment.
|
| It relies on the greater fool theory to produce excess
| returns. It is bad for the economy when money idles in
| non productive speculative assets.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| The money didn't disappear, it just changed hands.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| You are forgetting the opportunity cost. The gold does
| not generate wealth it just stores value, like a mattress
| stuffed with bills. It has become a dead, stagnant, and
| unproductive thing and by doing that it has removed value
| from the overall economy that was previously there.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| How? The money that was used to buy it is now in the
| hands of somebody else that can invest it. Nothing was
| lost. It just changed hands.
| mapontosevenths wrote:
| There are two sides to every transaction.
|
| In this case 1/2 of the trade is a dead end. In another
| hypothetical transaction we might see that the money was
| instead used to pay for services, and that profit was
| then spent on food, and then it was spent on fertilizer,
| and then it was spent on chemicals, and then it was spent
| on mining, and then it was spent on energy, and then it
| was invested in.... You get the idea. You can follow a
| single dollar around the world for years. The money is
| exchanged, and then exchanged again and again generating
| profits and adding value to the economy with every
| exchange.
|
| With the purchase of gold that half of the transaction is
| instead just... dead. The money is no longer in the
| economy, it's locked in some dudes junk drawer or a safe
| instead. Worse, it's not being used to generate excess
| returns like all of the items above are.
|
| Gold is just... useless. Except of course as a store of
| value, but even then it's only good if you think the
| dollars value will decrease and don't care that it's not
| great for the world around you to extract money from the
| economy and render it effectively dead.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| So before, person A has the dead thing, and after, person
| B has the dead thing. The result for the economy is
| exactly the same as if the transaction didn't occur,
| except the people have switched places.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| You either maintain the house for others use and extract
| rent or live in it. This is productive.
|
| If you are hoarding an unused house we should heavily tax
| that to make it unreasonable to do so.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _Buying a house that 's already been built is pretty
| damn close to the same thing as buying gold. No new
| "work" is being done into the economy, you're just
| exchanging dollars for an asset that will likely
| appreciate a bit faster than inflation but less than
| $SPY._
|
| I mostly agree with you, but I don't think the house
| comparison is good. Houses require lots of maintenance,
| and to hold their value (comparable to other houses) they
| often need remodeling every decade or so. If instead of
| houses we just said "land" then I think the comparison
| would hold up more.
| ahtihn wrote:
| Why would you want to encourage investment in gold?
| lostlogin wrote:
| > Tax what you want less of.
|
| How do you apply this to housing?
|
| You want investment in housing. You don't want slumlords
| ramping up prices for slums. Presumably somewhere has got
| the balance correct. I haven't been to that place.
| roenxi wrote:
| Because we need a low risk system to track whether people
| are net-contributing or -draining society's resources,
| otherwise it isn't easy to tell who is creating more
| wealth so they can be supported. Gold remains the best
| option after centuries (if not millennia) of
| experimentation.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| This investment is now taxed more than other types of
| investment. Is sales tax charged when you buy stock? Should
| it be?
| quickthrowman wrote:
| In physical metals that don't generate income or induce
| further economic activity, I don't believe so. What good
| does a hunk of gold sitting in a safe do for the economy?
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >What good does a hunk of gold sitting in a safe do for
| the economy?
|
| Not a whole lot once legal tender certificates can no
| longer be redeemed for the same amount of metal year
| after year.
| 15155 wrote:
| https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary/?BillNumber=1386&Year=202.
| ..
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Gold hasn't been money since 1971.
| loglog wrote:
| Wealth tax is the best type of tax, because it incentivizes
| productive activities against speculation. It should be
| levied on a continuous basis rather than on transaction basis
| though, which is just basic numerical analysis.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| Not my downvote, but the least devastating tax is only on
| commerce, and it has to be at insignificant levels to keep
| from resuting in undue damage.
|
| Taxing wealth, property, wage income, or just plain
| existence has always sapped productivity like few other
| things.
|
| It's foolish to try and tax "wealth" when you should
| instead be taxing the creation of wealth as it's in
| progress and nothing else. When actual _ongoing business
| operations_ are going forward is the only time _anybody_
| can _truly afford_ to pay any _significant_ tax at all.
| Even if they are billionaires, and I say this as someone at
| the complete opposite end of the spectrum.
|
| Ordinary wage income doesn't even make sense to tax
| whatsoever when you want max productivity, unless income is
| excessive enough to reach so far above average that greater
| capitalist profits can be earned on the surplus. Then
| _maybe_ more than just those gains should be taxed.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > What other taxes are they passing when you say "frenzy"?
|
| https://www.ballardspahr.com/insights/alerts-and-
| articles/20...
|
| It's incomplete, it doesn't list the gold tax.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The way you've written it sounds like taxing unmonetized
| bullion is insane overreach, but is it? They're just treating
| them the same as any other commodities. I can understand if
| you're opposed to sales taxes generally, but the only reason to
| single out bullion for an exception I can see is historic
| norms.
|
| They're also applying a tax to monetized bullion. That's more
| more like taxing currency exchanges and it's a bit weird since
| currency exchanges are normally taxed on appreciation.
| nerdsniper wrote:
| We do not charge sales tax when you exchange Dollars for
| Euros. Bullion advocates argue that exchanging dollars for
| physical gold is a currency exchange rather than a
| consumption purchase.
|
| If you were to turn that bullion into an actual product like
| jewelry, then it would be taxed.
|
| When a firm with tank capacity takes delivery of an oil
| contract they secured via the CBRE, do they pay sales tax on
| that? No, because it's intended for resale.
|
| Unmonetized gold bullion is similarly generally intended for
| resale. Generally no one is "consuming" gold bullion.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Currency exchanges are exactly why I differentiated between
| monetized and unmonetized bullion. I don't see why going to
| Costco and buying a bar of gold is fundamentally different
| than buying the same weight of gold jewelry. That jewelry
| may very well be intended for resale the same way.
| nerdsniper wrote:
| Whereas to me, it's wild that thousands of years of gold
| bullion trade as a form of currency exchange is
| supplanted basically overnight and now only "gold but
| only on paper" would be considered the only form of real
| gold currency.
|
| "Monetized" gold has only existed for 50 years since gold
| futures started being offered in 1972. But the real
| "retail era" of "gold but only on paper" started just ~20
| years ago with gold ETF's in 2003 (Australia) and 2004
| (USA). So in just 20 years, we're now arguing that the
| norm from the past 3,000 years of gold trade is
| completely invalidated.
|
| That said, you're not completely out of line with the
| views of the USA federal government. Gold has fascinating
| history of regulation. There was the 1933 total ban on
| private ownership when U.S. citizens were given until May
| 1, 1933, to surrender all gold coins and bullion. That
| lasted until 1974. Or that gold bullion is not subject to
| FinCEN Form 105 (currency) but rather CBP Form 6059B
| (goods).
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Much of the 3,000 years of history you're referring to
| saw precious metals used as wealth storage primarily in
| the form of objects like jewelry, silverware, and
| candlesticks. All of which have sales taxes.
|
| The question I'm asking is why it's unreasonable that
| bullion that we've agreed isn't currency isn't being
| treated differently than these other things?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| A fork is a finished consumer product. Even if it's made
| of silver, you can use it to eat with.
|
| Bullion isn't a finished consumer product, it's the
| packaging format for the raw material.
|
| Sales tax applies to finished consumer products. The
| intermediary stages are traditionally exempt, i.e. the
| person who buys bullion in order to make silver forks
| doesn't pay sales tax, the person who buys the fork does.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Craft stores still add sales tax to raw material. Costco
| charges sales taxes to business accounts, unless given a
| certificate of resale or buying from an exempt category
| in whatever state. I could go on, but clearly sales taxes
| apply to more than "just" finished consumer products.
| They apply pretty broadly to retail sales as a whole.
|
| It's at least a distinction though, unlike the other
| arguments.
| thrawa8387336 wrote:
| Sales taxes is a much more modern invention not 3000.
| Gold was money and still is in freer jurisdictions
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Whereas to me, it's wild that thousands of years of
| gold bullion trade as a form of currency exchange is
| supplanted basically overnight and now only "gold but
| only on paper" would be considered the only form of real
| gold currency.
|
| I mean, it's not a coincidence. For example, the US
| government has laws against using gold as currency, and
| they take those laws seriously and enforce them with
| vigor. They don't want dollars to suffer the competition.
|
| Given the laws, it is necessarily the case, by
| definition, that gold is not currency.
| nerdsniper wrote:
| > the US government has laws against using gold as
| currency
|
| I don't think that's true, or I can't find any evidence
| of it. If you want to buy a car and the seller agrees to
| accept 50 gold coins instead of $100,000 cash, that is
| perfectly legal. Hell, the US makes currency out of pure
| gold that are currency at face values of $5-50 (but the
| gold in the coins is worth 100x more than the face
| value).
|
| Are you talking about the Gold Reserve Act of 1934 and
| Executive Order 6102? That banned private ownership of
| gold and demanded that citizens turn in their gold. But
| it was lifted in 1974.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > If you want to buy a car and the seller agrees to
| accept 50 gold coins instead of $100,000 cash, that is
| perfectly legal.
|
| You're free to barter in general. 50 gold coins, though,
| would probably be illegal even though 50 marble statues
| is fine.
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/486
|
| Using gold (or any metal) _as currency_ [ "current
| money"] is specifically illegal if the metal is coined.
|
| You'd need to establish that it never crossed the
| seller's mind that he might later exchange those coins
| for something else. As an isolated incident, you'll have
| a fairly strong defense. If there's been another
| transaction in gold coins in your area recently enough
| that either of you might have known about it, you won't.
| anabab wrote:
| How do goldbacks fit into this? They contain gold (up to
| 3 grams, a non-trivial amount), they are accepted by a
| (small) number of businesses, and they are supposed to be
| reused for further transactions.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| If you were prosecuted under 18 USC SS486 for
| manufacturing or spending goldbacks, you'd presumably be
| relying on the argument that, while they are gold
| intended for use as current money, they aren't "coins".
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the US government has laws against using gold as
| currency, and they take those laws seriously and enforce
| them with vigor_
|
| This is nonsense. If you'd like, you can absolutely sell
| your house for gold bullion. (Or Japanese yen or bails of
| peanuts.)
| usednoise4sale wrote:
| I believe that is a widely misunderstood conception of
| the origin of money. Gold has generally not been used as
| currency. The sovereign right to dictate the value of a
| coin struck in a metal is called "seigniorage", and
| exists for all of those 3000 years. The value of the
| currency comes from the demand for it by the government
| to pay taxes, not the value of the metal in the coin. The
| metal in the coin makes it expensive to counterfeit said
| coin, with punishment by death doing the rest of the
| disincentive.
|
| There is a reason the coins have the emperor's face on
| them. They are what he will accept as payment for the
| taxes he requests, and in assessing taxes according to
| his power, he dictates their value by fiat.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > The value of the currency comes from the demand for it
| by the government to pay taxes, not the value of the
| metal in the coin.
|
| That's the fantasy, not the reality.
|
| > The metal in the coin makes it expensive to counterfeit
| said coin, with punishment by death doing the rest of the
| disincentive.
|
| What actually happens is the government declares a dollar
| value for the coin, and then alloys the gold with cheaper
| metals. This results in inflation. The usual content of
| counterfeit gold coins is less than the gold in the
| government issue, which is where the death threat comes
| in.
|
| Only one counterfeiter ever put more gold in the coin
| than the government, that was Baraha. The government got
| mad at him because a Baraha sovereign was worth _more_
| than the government issue.
|
| > he dictates their value by fiat
|
| Governments always try that, and it never works.
| Governments are always alloying the precious metal with
| cheaper metal, but nobody is fooled, and the result is
| inflation.
|
| Why do you think the government no longer issues gold
| coins? why there's no silver in a dime anymore?
|
| Inflation.
| pqtyw wrote:
| >Why do you think the government no longer issues gold
| coins?
|
| Because it became self evident in the 1800s and first
| half of the 20th century that a commodity backed
| currently is not a good idea in any non static economy
| with a reasonably stable government?
|
| Deflation and constant boom and bust cycles (something
| like the 2008 crisis would have been pretty mild back in
| the gold standard days) are somewhat of a drag on
| economic productivity.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > That jewelry may very well be intended for resale the
| same way.
|
| It isn't.
|
| There is a widespread belief that jewelry is a durable
| investment, that if you fall on hard times you will be
| able to sell the jewelry for an amount similar to what
| you paid for it, or more.
|
| It's fair to say that many people have this idea in mind
| when they buy jewelry, and that it pushes up the price.
|
| But it isn't true; if you resell your jewelry you're
| going to get basically nothing compared to what you paid,
| unless you like to wear gold chains. The resale value of
| new jewelry is more like the resale value of a new car.
|
| If there was any significant demand to resell jewelry,
| _everyone would know this_. The fact that they don 't is
| sufficient to demonstrate that they have no intention of
| actually reselling.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| You can sell jewelry for the same price as the equivalent
| weight in whatever purity of precious metals it is and I
| specified same weight in the parent comment. They won't
| be the same price originally, but that's not particularly
| germane to this discussion of whether there should be a
| sales tax on one vs the other.
|
| And for what it's worth, people buy things for different
| reasons. It's very common for Indians to explicitly value
| jewelry as a wealth store (among other reasons), to give
| one example.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > You can sell jewelry for the same price as the
| equivalent weight in whatever purity of precious metals
| it is and I specified same weight in the parent comment.
|
| Yes, of course. Didn't you see my aside?
|
| >> unless you like to wear gold chains
|
| But you can't _buy_ jewelry for the price of the precious
| metal content. You get charged for the jewels too, and
| they have very limited resale value.
| flir wrote:
| Some cultures hold a lot of household wealth in that
| format (predominantly-gold jewellery). South East Asia,
| North Africa, Middle East...
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > It's fair to say that many people have this idea in
| mind when they buy jewelry, and that it pushes up the
| price.
|
| Jewelry is the single biggest usage of gold, worldwide.
| It makes for nearly half of all the gold's reserve and
| usage. Jewelry alone represent as much gold as all the
| gold held by central banks and hoarded by individuals (be
| it bars or coins). There's also some gold use by various
| industries but that gold is often lost.
|
| So it's fair to say that jewelry does, indeed, push
| gold's price up.
|
| But maybe I misunderstood your comment.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Indeed, you misunderstood my comment. It says:
|
| (1) Many people believe they can sell jewelry for
| something approximating the purchase price;
|
| (2) This belief is false;
|
| (3) But _the false belief_ that the money they are
| spending is recoverable makes those people willing to pay
| more for jewelry, pushing up the price _of jewelry_
| compared to what it would be if people knew they couldn
| 't resell it effectively.
| bwestergard wrote:
| "Generally no one is "consuming" gold bullion."
|
| Huh? Gold bullion is an input to hundreds of industrial
| processes. If it weren't, why would gold have any value?
| nerdsniper wrote:
| That's not consumption _as it applies to sales tax
| rules_. In almost every jurisdiction, raw materials and
| inventory purchased for resale or industrial processing
| are exempt from sales tax.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Which is why Value added tax is superior system. Though
| gold is in some jurisdictions treated different when it
| is considered investment. But for rest it is like any
| other metal.
| ta9000 wrote:
| Why would gold, something that's had value for thousands
| of years prior to the Industrial Revolution, have any
| value?
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Even in ancient times it was consumed to make jewelry and
| decorations. People used to go to the goldsmiths to sell
| their gold.
| ta9000 wrote:
| Sorry I clearly should have added a /s.
| irishcoffee wrote:
| Wouldn't that be for the same kinds of reasons things
| like purple dyes were valuable: rare to find, hard to
| harvest, hard to transmogrify (insect/sea life guts into
| clothing dye, gold into chains or other wearables), hard
| to break, which all culminates into a quick visual
| indication of wealth.
|
| Now? Gold is a great conductor of electricity (of course
| silver is better) and some people still like wearing lots
| of flashy jewelry.
|
| I have no earthly clue why people find it valuable to
| invest in other than it's like bitcoin: it's valuable
| because everyone else also thinks it's valuable.
|
| Never once have I read a quarterly progress report from
| the CEO of the element "gold" outlining profit strategies
| for the next year.
| ta9000 wrote:
| Just because it doesn't generate a yield doesn't mean it
| doesn't have value. Fresh drinking water is incredibly
| valuable and will be more so as its supply dwindles.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Gold doesn't corrode away. If gold was cheap, my roof
| shingles would be made of gold. You'd also have gold
| wires instead of copper wires.
| kristjansson wrote:
| > Bullion advocates argue that exchanging dollars for
| physical gold is a currency exchange rather than a
| consumption purchase.
|
| One can argue that until they're blue, but it'd still be
| wrong. Gold is a commodity, and if you're buying it shell-
| packed at Costco you probably should be paying sales tax on
| it.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Washington State will do anything to avoid just having an
| income tax.
| WalterBright wrote:
| They already have a draft income tax proposal, and are
| eager to pass it.
| 15155 wrote:
| Buy and keep it elsewhere? Buy futures?
| ortusdux wrote:
| The law covers "monetized bullion" - bars and coins
| -https://dor.wa.gov/education/industry-guides/jewelry-
| stores/...
| roenxi wrote:
| In English-speaking countries, we have a system that prints
| money and gives it to asset owners. Gold is still an asset, so
| buying it will still let people participate in that system.
| Increasing taxes by whatever (I'll assume 10%) is material but
| it doesn't remove any point, just makes it a bit less
| attractive. It could easily be a less risky play than investing
| in US bonds given that they can't pay them back in real terms.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Can you please make your substantive points without snark,
| flamebait, swipes, or personal attack? Regardless of how
| wrong someone is or you feel they are, you can make your
| substantive points without these things. We're trying for
| something else here.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking
| the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be
| grateful.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| I can certainly do that, and I can see how my comment came
| across as unnecessarily harsh. I just want to be clear that
| my issue was with the reasoning, not the position, and not
| the individual.
| thijson wrote:
| Oregon just south of you has no sales tax
| otterley wrote:
| What about GLD (SPDR)? I've been investing in a gold derivative
| for nearly a year and haven't touched a physical object yet.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I knew that Silver prices were going all time high but I had
| still assumed that Silver (and to that extent Gold) were stable.
|
| Looks like atleast for Silver, that gets completely thrown out of
| the window now for some time.
|
| I also thought Gold was a safe haven but I checked and it seems
| that it lost (10%?)-ish as well.
|
| I have some complex thoughts and reasonings but I really liked
| Gold as an idea but looks like it is vulnerable to volatility at
| times too.
|
| I used to think that maybe banks can have gold itself and gold
| usually does or ~ equal to inflation itself rise and I mean
| theoretically net I think even this year it does definitely beat
| Inflation (I mean it grew double I guess in 1 year) but for
| banking concerns especially supposing someone got money this time
| and let's hypothetically assume they get into this gold bank,
| then its still volatile & they could've lost 10% and then tried
| to withdraw money and more short squeeze so the idea has a major
| flaw after this incident.
|
| I wonder how swiss franc is doing. I looked at it and it looks
| like its doing fine (1% down but I do feel like that's really
| okay) given how Swiss franc (seeing another cnbc article or yahoo
| finance ig) grew what 13-14%
|
| Although the problem with people holding swiss franc is that when
| I searched swiss franc I found this article (from CNBC itself)
| which actually shows how a strong swiss franc might be/is bad for
| swiss economy
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/28/swiss-franc-us-dollar-price-...
|
| I do wonder, then what's the ideal solution of "safety"
|
| I am scratching a lot of options now & I am either thinking US
| inflation protected assets or World Equity are the only two
| stable/(really valuable) because the whole essense of value
| behind gold/silver was its stability which especially for silver
| feels broken but gold isn't that far behind either.
|
| Although atleast in my original context of banking, I later came
| to know about the concept of narrow banking and how there was a
| bank which actually wanted to invest in TIPS itself but that was
| blocked off by the feds for many reason.
|
| I do feel like TIPS might protect inflation protection but they
| don't really protect the erosion of wealth because I feel like (I
| am not sure I can be wrong I usually am) but the pricing of
| houses and other assets are rising higher than inflation rises &
| inflation itself can vary depending (so housing rent inflation
| might be higher) & depending on your lifestyle. Maybe TIPS really
| wouldn't be able to help you to say.. save to get house or really
| have you give the ability for money to do what it actually does.
| To me the idea of inflation includes buying houses too so if say
| someone with some salary was able to buy a house 20 years ago
| then imo when I consider inflation protection or investing or
| anything in general, I expect that my wealth could be able to buy
| me things ~generally at a good amount & that's the point of good
| investing to get good returns at understandable/ your own risk
| profile.
|
| I guess now I am personally more inclined towards world index
| funds in general I guess as a form of real stability where value
| gains are still backed by real gains (Something which I feel is
| core philosophy of the bogle philosphy & the reason why people
| should invest in first place)
|
| I may have gotten a bit off topic here but coming on the point
| again here about Silver.
|
| Would this be considered as (expected?) or is it a black swan
| event especially considering the 30% fall off.
|
| From the headline, it feels like a black swan event (especially
| when they compare it to 1980's) but I am curious to know what
| others think too. I do feel like these black swan events really
| shift how we think tho & we can have it in our better judgement
| for future ig imo.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| "Safe haven" and "lost 10% in one day (that it gained the
| previous week)" are not contradictory. "Safe haven" is "will
| retain value even if the dollar becomes worthless".
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| yes I can agree but I also assumed that it wouldn't be
| volatile and (could be?) used in place of a currency.
|
| Well technically speaking gold rose so much in terms of $ for
| so long so technically if we were on gold standard, the value
| of $ would've lost too (and become volatile too)
|
| So I get that part I guess but still I do feel like swiss
| francs are a more safe haven while not being volatile but
| looks like switzerland really doesn't want its currency to
| de-inflate.
|
| It's an interesting thing for sure to find out I guess. I
| mean long term, gold is definitely hedge against inflation
| but so do other investment options for the most part.
| int32_64 wrote:
| Crypto markets won in the sense that every single asset class can
| somehow trade like a memecoin now.
| Loughla wrote:
| The hype around physical silver has been astounding in 2025 and
| so far in 2026.
|
| I have nothing to back this up, but I believe a group of
| investors learned from cryptobros just how easy it is to pump
| and dump with social media and scare tactics, and here we are.
| Somebody please correct me.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I might be cynic and consider that other side in media have
| no marketable skills and other side is there just to get
| their name out so they can find a few suckers to give them
| money manage. Or they have something to sell like courses and
| seminars. Or it is free publicity for them. Pandering to
| various fields is likely profitable, be it cryptobros,
| goldbugs, silverstackers, hard money advocates, doomsday
| preppers, permabears or those believing in astrology I mean
| technical analysis...
| its_ubuntu wrote:
| You are correct, but the truth is much uglier and deeper. All
| of this is scripted and controlled. It was planned for many,
| many years in advance.
|
| GameStop = Gold. AMC = Silver. Same script, same playbook,
| same timing and everything, different name.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Fun Fact about the Great Depression - RCA is the Poster-child
| of exuberance and Tesla has had a higher PE for >2 years.
|
| Meme stocks might coincide with meme coins - but I don't know
| if it's fair to blame crypto for everything.
|
| I think the reality is that - for whatever reason - people are
| willing to take on _MUCH_ greater risk today for reward than
| they were prior to the pandemic.
|
| I don't think we can blame crypto for everything. Sure, maybe
| you could say crypto has been meme-ing since 2017 - 3 years
| before the pandemic. But we've seen plenty of speculative
| bubbles like that - if it even was one.
|
| Crypto didn't really start meme-ing with clearly bullshit NFTs
| and meme coins until the exact same time - 2021 - when Dogecoin
| et al have meteoric rises coinciding almost exactly with all
| the meme stocks.
|
| I think this is actually one the best meme indicators:
| https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/dogecoin/doge/btc/
|
| The Japanese Asset bubble was by far the biggest bubble of all
| time - and it lasted nearly 6 years. The Nifty 50 was a 7 year
| bubble, nowhere near this big. So, we might be in a bubble -
| but if we are - it's getting close to being the biggest,
| longest one ever.
| beeflet wrote:
| dogecoin has tail emission vs bitcoin which has a finite
| emission. that is also something to consider. Maybe better to
| compare market caps? Dunno. Also, over time we have seen the
| development of more non-doge memecoins.
| neals wrote:
| But shouldn't everybody have equal access to these markets?
| jmyeet wrote:
| This isn't a simple correction. I've been following this for a
| couple of months and there's a lot going on. I suspect this isn't
| over. It's noteworthy that the year 1980 because that was when
| the Hunt brothers tried to corner the silver market. It's often
| used as an example of the market correcting itself. It's actually
| a better example of how the exchanges broke the Hunt brothers to
| bail out the banks.
|
| The key event that caused the collapse is sometimes called Silver
| Thursday [1]. The exchange changed the liquidity rules, forcing a
| margin call the Hunt brothers couldn't make, forcing a selloff.
| This was arguably to bail out banks with large short positions in
| silver.
|
| Well, pretty much the exact same thing happened this week when
| COMEX massively increased the margin requirements [2]. It's worth
| noting that the market is in a state called "backwardation" where
| the spot prices are higher than future prices. Refiners aren't
| buying silver, even at the inflated spot price, because of price
| risk. But also, the COMEX spot price is increasingly being viewed
| as "fake" because foreign exchanges are paying significantly more
| for physical silver thna the paper COMEX price [3].
|
| Basically, this whole thing looks like another GameStop ie a
| short squeeze. There's not enouugh physical silver to meet
| contract demands. There's like 300oz of futures silver contracts
| per 1oz of physical silver.
|
| If you followed the original GameStop short squeeze, the price
| tumbled there too but didn't solve the short squeeze. You even
| have exchanges closing people's options positions (eg RobinHood)
| despite them being in the money.
|
| Banks still need to cover their significant short positions and
| it really looks like the exchanges are trying to crash the silver
| market to do it.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Thursday
|
| [2]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-28/cme-
| raise...
|
| [3]: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4861917-why-silver-
| prices-i...
| alunchbox wrote:
| This is the answer; Diamond hands baby
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I think that a real bubble requires margin. It's not just that
| people are buying because the price is going up, it's that
| people are buying _with borrowed money_ because the price is
| going up.
|
| That ends badly. It ends badly for the lenders. So when it
| starts to look like that's what's happening, a perfectly
| reasonable response is to change the margin requirements. When
| the circumstances are normal, use the normal margin
| requirements. But when the circumstances are abnormal, of
| course they should adjust.
| dsolo777 wrote:
| so how long do you think will this play out? asking as a
| concerned silver and gold holder lol
| pmnerd wrote:
| Do me a favor and look at how many CME Notices were issued
| raising margin requirements for precious metals in the past
| year. Hint: They do this all the time to account for market
| volatility and the contract value. If a contract increases by
| 10% margin is not static. CME raised margin requirements
| several times in the last month to little market effect.
|
| Silver crashed because China halted trading on the only public
| silver and gold ETFs Friday. There are videos of HK police
| arresting guys freaking out because they couldn't cash out
| beforehand: Apparently the fund had been operating as some kind
| of pyramid scheme and was not solvent at those prices.
|
| Also on Friday, China urged investors to "invest responsibly"
| or some such (source: FT) and froze a bunch of suspicious
| accounts. I believe those accounts were behind the pump and
| dump social media ("AI Asian Guy" videos on Youtube, investment
| subreddit spam) with the help of plenty of useful idiots.
|
| There's a ton of good coverage of the precious metals run up in
| FT this past week.
| jmyeet wrote:
| So I found a chart showing silver prices vs margin
| requirements on Linkedin of all places [1]. Yes, margin
| requirements change and the exchange tries to protect the
| market in times of high volatility but increasing the margin
| requirements significantly means _everybody_ has to put up
| more collateral even if you 're significantly in the black.
|
| That's my point: they're intentionally trying to crash the
| market. The analsysi that they're defending the banks from a
| short squeeze seems to fit the available data [2].
|
| As for China, the government is ensuring their local
| industries have sufficient silver supply, which is
| particularly important for solar.
|
| The US government has a lot of power to do similar to this
| but refuse to use it because it would hurt profits. I'm
| thinking specifically of the Defense Production Act, which
| could've been used to lower oil and gas prices in 2020-2022.
| Instead we passed on the costs to consumers, let oil
| companies export to the world and let them make record
| profits.
|
| [1]: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ryanlemand_this-chart-is-
| wort...
|
| [2]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/everything-investors-
| know-his...
| daedrdev wrote:
| Silver has plenty of industrial uses. Very little has changed in
| industry to cause demand or supply shifts to match the massive
| price swings. Thus a lot of this is probably meme investors
| gambling
| fdr wrote:
| Fun fact about silver, besides its heavy industrial footprint,
| which you mentioned: the supply is dominated by Mexico. There
| have been some, uh, erratic words about Mexico from the people
| in the position to affect trade policy and foreign policy.
| xingped wrote:
| China decided to subject silver to export controls similar to
| rare earth metals. That's one of the big reasons for the silver
| growth.
| anabab wrote:
| But why is silver with export restrictions (Shanghai) trading
| above silver without said restrictions?
| chaostheory wrote:
| Market manipulation? Why else would paper silver be much
| cheaper than buying the commodity for real?
| chaostheory wrote:
| The price of paper silver doesn't match the price of buying the
| actual commodity, so it's more likely that it's being
| manipulated by "market makers"
| the_fall wrote:
| > Silver has plenty of industrial uses.
|
| About one third of this demand (photographic film and paper)
| more or less evaporated in the 2000s. You don't see that on the
| price chart, so I don't think you can seriously argue that the
| price is dictated by industrial uses.
| tim333 wrote:
| It still up an awful lot from the start of 2025. From about 30 up
| to 115 and down to 85.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Yep, I expect a bunch of people to buy at this price, hoping
| it's the bottom, but it still has plenty of room to fall.
| thrawa8387336 wrote:
| *Paper silver. The gap widens
| kleiba wrote:
| Sure, but compare the price of silver to a year ago...
| vr46 wrote:
| What goes up quickly comes down quickly?
|
| At least we can afford nice things again
| oytis wrote:
| Is there any good explanation for what is happening with gold
| prices long-term? If you look at 5-10 year charts it was pretty
| stable and started to look like NVIDIA stocks since 2023.
| andrewpedelty wrote:
| This article does a reasonable job of laying out some of the
| drivers:
|
| https://markets.financialcontent.com/stocks/article/marketmi...
| g-mork wrote:
| https://robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/everything-you-need-to-k...
| hahahahhaah wrote:
| > Gold is now up 50 percent since August 2
|
| SP500 with reinvestment for comparison is 72%
|
| NVidia without reinvestment 900%
| sjs7007 wrote:
| 50% since August 22 2025, not the year 2022. I'm assuming
| your SP500/Nvidia returns mentioned are from 2022.
| sparrish wrote:
| It'll recover that 30%+ within a week or two.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| At least there's still money in the speculative Pokemon card
| market!
|
| /s
| deadbabe wrote:
| A friend had taken out a second mortgage to buy a ton of silver
| at the highs, they are not doing good. His wife doesn't know.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Top is in if true.
| rvz wrote:
| Exactly.
| rationalist wrote:
| I think it was in the news when a family did that to buy
| Bitcoin many, many years ago.
|
| Not telling the spouse is pretty bad though.
| hd4 wrote:
| Fair to assume trillions of the physical metal weren't
| simultaneously dumped onto the market in the past day; this is
| entirely ETF driven therefore it's also safe to assume there is
| manipulation taking place to drive the price down.
|
| What I don't understand is why, when there appear to be signs of
| a supply shortage, market forces appear to want to drive the
| price down and cause any remaining inventory to flow towards
| China where there is a $30~/oz arbitrage to be made.
| sharadov wrote:
| Trump announces Warsh and this happens. Can't be a coincidence.
|
| Incidentally Warsh's father in law is billionaire Ronald Lauder
| who is trying to get Trump to capture Greenland. Sounds like
| father-in-law got him the role.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/15/ronald-laude...
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Warsh played a substantive role in addressing the financial
| crisis in 2008 and has a lot of relationships and respect
| across financial markets.
|
| How independent will he be? Who knows. But folks believe he is
| at least knowledgeable and competent. Which is not widely
| believed of all the president's appointees.
| MetricT wrote:
| Gold has merely mean-reverted, not "crashed". Some profit-taking
| since gold got a bit ahead of itself.
|
| If gold continues growing at the same rate as the last 6 months,
| it will take gold all of a month and a half to get back to where
| it was.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/bRAy1FB.png
|
| Now, gold might not continue growing, but D.C. hasn't fixed its
| problems that are causing gold to rise, so I do have a degree of
| confidence that it will recover quickly.
| stego-tech wrote:
| Everyone is focused on commodities and ignoring basically the
| entire global market got shook today. Bonds, indices,
| commodities, and securities all got tanked. Nothing in my
| portfolio was in the green today, and I generally invest
| conservatively since it's my (maybe, hopefully, someday) house
| down payment at stake.
|
| That said, I agree with you that this feels like a bunch of
| prominent exits to convert paper profits into actual ones. The
| underlying problems remain and will become increasingly
| exacerbated as the year drags on.
|
| I figure I'll recover losses by this time next year if I just
| refrain from panic selling.
| etrautmann wrote:
| The market went down less than half a percent today? That's
| not a great day but certainly not losses that are even
| notable
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| I'm not sure a 6 month window with a squished Y axis to make
| the graph a perfect 45 degree angle line means much. How it
| compares to currencies and other assets would be more
| interesting.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| Same with silver: It jus went back to its 20SMMA
| hahahahhaah wrote:
| How do people feel about gold? To me it is purely speculative vs.
| index funds. If I were rich mabe have a bit of gold for the
| bunker next to the long life tinned gourmet meals. Better than
| fiat but not as good as company investments.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| I think gold will keep going up over the next few years,
| because many central banks are converting from dollar reserves
| to gold. That means very large demand which is mostly price-
| insensitive.
| ilamont wrote:
| Coincidentally, late this morning I went to one of those
| traveling roadshows where they purchase precious metals, bringing
| along a childhood coin collection that I wanted to turn into
| cash.
|
| I started with a single 1 ounce silver medallion and was given a
| quote for $80. When I had checked the silver price earlier this
| morning it was above $115.
|
| I questioned the buyer about the spread and he said the spot
| price was down, and the smelters were backed up so that was their
| best offer.
|
| I brought out some other silver coins, specifically liberty head
| and Morgan dollars. He looked at the app on his phone and said
| "hold on I gave you the wrong price," and then said "I'll give
| you $35 for each of them," including the pure 1 oz silver
| medallion.
|
| I said no thank you and left, miffed, thinking he was jerking me
| around.
|
| I didn't realize the price of silver was collapsing.
| nlh wrote:
| Chances are, he was indeed jerking you around. Nearly every one
| of these traveling road show style buyers pay very very very
| very little for coins. They have no reputation to uphold and
| are the literal definition of "fly by night" - and by the time
| you realize how little they paid you, they're gone.
|
| Source: Am full-time professional coin dealer (who is NOT fly
| by night!) and have to deal with the repercussions of people
| getting hosed by these roadshows all the time :(
| culi wrote:
| tbh, I never knew the value of coins was tied to the worth of
| the metal itself
|
| Do these coins get smelted down or something?
| nlh wrote:
| A very excellent question and totally reasonable thing not
| to know (congrats on being one of today's lucky 10,000!)
|
| I'm speaking from the perspective of US coins because
| that's what I specialize in but this generally applies to
| coins all over the world as well:
|
| Prior to (and including) 1964, US 10c, 25c, 50c, (and when
| they were made, $1) coins were made of 90% silver. We made
| A LOT of these, so in terms of outright rarity, most are
| not rare. Today they're referred to as "junk silver"
| because in terms of collectibility, they're junk, but the
| 90% silver content means there's some inherent precious
| metal value (as of this moment on Jan 30, 2026, they have
| ~approximately~ 60x their face value in silver content, eg
| $6, $15, $30, and $60 in silver respectively.)
|
| So that's their basal value that fluctuates with the silver
| market. But the next layer is actual rarity /
| collectibility -- if a given coin is desirable enough that
| it surpasses its metal content, you get a different set of
| values.
|
| Now to your actual question: Do they get smelted/melted
| down? The answer is...sometimes. They trade somewhat like
| financial instruments, based on the assumption that you
| _could_ melt them down (and there 's a cost to doing so),
| so that's how people value the various silver coins. In
| reality, there's usually enough demand from people who want
| to hold physical silver in various forms that they don't
| actually need to be melted down.
|
| There's obviously a lot more to it, but that's the 5c
| version ;)
| adastra22 wrote:
| Is that more or less than the spot price? I would have
| assumed that they trade higher, though maybe the non
| collectibles trade are only a little bit higher.
| nlh wrote:
| Also a very good question and the answer is also...it
| depends. The "premium" (delta to spot) on 90% silver (aka
| "90%") varies with supply and demand. At this very moment
| with the meteoric rise of base silver, 90% is selling for
| less than spot. But there have been times when it trades
| above spot.
|
| The reason is that silver itself is traded on the various
| international commodity exchanges and those traders are
| not the same supply & demand sources as the little guy(s)
| who likes keeping some old silver coins in their garage.
| So as those supply/demand curves shift, the premium
| over/under spot price changes as well.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Thanks, that makes sense.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Also I heard that refineries that is companies that take
| 90% silver or even less in and processes it to something
| that can be sold on commodity markets that is purer
| silver are now focusing on well purer silver as that is
| easier to process. Thus there is less demand on less pure
| silver. And recycled silver ending with industrial use
| goes through these companies.
| seszett wrote:
| My experience, I sometimes buy gold coins to make
| jewelry. I do that because at least here in Belgium,
| there's no VAT on coins but there is VAT on the other
| forms of gold that are more commonly used for that. For
| professionals it's not a problem because they pass VAT
| but for an individual it's a 20% difference. Also I'm in
| Antwerp so it's really easy to just bike to a place that
| sells gold if I want to.
|
| In my case I buy old French 20 francs coins as they are
| quite "cheap": 1% above spot price of their gold content
| (they are 90% gold).
|
| Other more recent coins, like Chinese or Canadian ones,
| sell at a much higher premium (17%, 20%) so I always
| wonder a bit who they are for. It's unlikely they can be
| resold for that much of a premium. At least the shops I
| use just buy them for their price in gold.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Isn't smelting a coin for the metal a crime?
| fragmede wrote:
| So is speeding. There might be some crazy radiation
| related super science way to determine if a lump of
| silver came from a specific collection of coins, but once
| it's melted down, and the impurities driven out, silver
| is silver and you can't really tell that it came from
| coins.
| voxic11 wrote:
| No, not in general anyways. There are specific
| regulations on smelting pennies and nickels (and it's
| specifically nickels, not half dimes).
|
| So you can smelt any silver coins minted by the US except
| for the WW2 silver nickel.
| culi wrote:
| I appreciate you sharing your knowledge! Your layers
| concept makes sense but I guess I'm just surprised at how
| large of a layer the market price of precious metals can
| be--even for "junk silver" coins
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| Collectible coins _usually_ get melted as a last resort, if
| they stay on the shelf forever. The value of the metal is
| still in the coin though. Think about it: you could buy a
| very common coin with the same metal, or a slightly rare
| one. Which costs more? Now take the rare one and put a huge
| dent in it. Is it worth less than the metal content then?
| pseudohadamard wrote:
| They're incredibly sleazy scumbags. They buy silver coins at
| bullion-value or below, which is the lowest grade you can get
| for a coin, making a small profit on everything they buy and
| massive profits on the ones that are actually worth something
| as coins rather than bullion. And it's typically elderly
| people they rip off, who are thrilled to get the price of a
| cup of coffee for their 1884S Morgan dollar. Never, ever deal
| with these predators.
| nlh wrote:
| amen!
| jmyeet wrote:
| There's a lot going on here and it's not just the price going
| up and then going down (see my other comments). Basically, the
| entirely silver market is dysfunctional at the moment. And it's
| all about bailing out banks who are getting wiped out by the
| silver rally.
|
| So when you sell silver at a pawn shop or to a retail dealer,
| here's what happens in a normal market. You get an instant
| price, 5-10% off spot hopefully. That dealer then takes that
| silver and sells it to a refiner in higher volume with a lower
| margin (to spot). That's their profit. Refiners will convert
| that silver into bars and sell it to wholesalers and
| institutional buyers.
|
| But instead what's happening is the refiner needs to hold onto
| the silver for 7-14 days before it gets smelted and processed.
| With high volatility, they're not paying out the dealers until
| it's processed and sold. That's a huge cash flow problem.
| Instead of instant money, it's money in 2 weeks and you have no
| idea how much money.
|
| So the retail dealer has to wait and it could be 20% lower or
| 20% higher in the current market so instead of 5-10% they
| eitehr have to offer 30%+ less than spot price _if they buy it
| at all_. That money tied up has an opportunity cost.
|
| Combine this with a shortage of physical silver to deliver on
| futures contracts and the refiners aren't really getting the
| silver they need to satisfy that demand.
|
| So the spot price is fake. Nobody's buying anyway. Low
| wholesale supply means the prices continue to go up. Banks are
| haemorrhaging money because they have huge short positions.
| They have to borrow silver to meet their obligations and the
| silver lease rate (the price to borrow silver for a money has
| like 10x'ed) and this is where we are.
| blindriver wrote:
| The banks are not getting wiped out by the silver rally. JP
| Morgan has not been engaged in shorting the silver markets
| for years. This is a baseless conspiracy theory, and JPM has
| also been accused of shorting BTC as well.
|
| The entire narrative is made up and this is really just
| supply vs demand in terms of silver contracts and shares. I
| have been actively trading silver since last year and made
| over $100k and in precious metals (mostly gold) for 30+ years
| since I first graduated from college so I'm not just an idle
| spectator.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| If the banks had massive short positions, why didn't they
| report huge losses in Q4?
| pseudohadamard wrote:
| Thanks for that, that's a really good backgrounder on what's
| happening.
| nradov wrote:
| No, it's a low-effort mix of facts, irrelevancies,
| misunderstandings, and BS conspiracy theory. Don't believe
| 90% of the financial information you see on HN.
| baq wrote:
| Sir banks (at least the sane ones, like JPM) are both long
| and short on behalf of their clients and simply because
| they're dealers and prime brokers all the time and just
| settle physical, which they also own (because they're sane).
| Apofis wrote:
| He does have to turn a profit on what he's buying. You want
| spot price? Oddly enough, in California and maybe other states,
| a pawn shop will give you spot price.
| iwontberude wrote:
| I've gotten them to sell under spot once bc they mispriced
| their inventory.
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| Why California? Most pawn shops suck (see Pawn Stars where
| they offer like 1/3 of the value on most stuff), but you
| might find a few pawn shops that want to deal with metals and
| coins. The best thing to do is to shop around a bit when
| trying to sell anything.
| nradov wrote:
| Pawn Stars is semi-scripted entertainment, not necessarily
| representative of how real pawn shops operate. The actual
| prices were were negotiated before the episode was
| recorded.
|
| But of course there will be a large bid / ask spread on
| collectibles and small quantities of precious metals.
| Dealers have to make a profit. Anyone who doesn't like the
| price is free to sell on eBay or at a local coin show or
| something.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| I've also found a few in various states that buy Eagles for
| spot - of course then they'll sell them forwards at spot +
| 15% or something
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > I didn't realize the price of silver was collapsing.
|
| Wait. It "collapsed" to the price it was on the 9th of january
| 2026. Which back then was it's all-time high.
|
| FWIW I hold SLV (a BlackRock/iShares ETF on silver, the biggest
| and most liquid silver ETF in the world) since $26. I noticed
| the recent craze. So I bought PUTs when it was at $102,
| protecting me at a strike of $96. These PUTs were pricey but,
| so far, worth it. But here comes the kicker: I'm financing
| those PUTs by selling CALLs on SLV (that simple options
| strategy is called a "collar").
|
| And as I'm a silverbug, I own silver coins too. But these
| aren't liquid as you noticed.
|
| When you trade paper silver (like the ETF SLV), the price of
| the market is the price of the market. SLV is not 100%
| following an ounce of silver's price, but SLV's market price is
| SLV's market price. It was $105 at close yesterday and $75 at
| close today and that's just the price of SLV.
|
| I do like that: not getting ripped off by some side-of-the-road
| hustler.
|
| That dude giving you $80 then giving you $35 is taking a more
| than 50% cut compared to the nearest low of day. That's quite a
| rip off.
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| When the price moves violently up or down, dealers get scared.
| They need to keep it for an unspecified amount of time to get
| paid. Maybe the guy was jerking you around, or maybe he was
| short on cash. $35 for an oz is a terrible price when spot is
| $90 or something. It hit $120 during this past week and only
| crashed today, back to the record high from like 2 weeks ago.
| blitzar wrote:
| If you pulled out more product when offered $80, the price was
| only going to go down from there.
| slashdev wrote:
| This sounds awful, silver down 30%, gold down 11%, but it just
| brings them back to the 50 day moving average. It doesn't even
| break the bull trend.
|
| Next week we'll find out if this was a buy on dip opportunity or
| if it marks a multi-year top in precious metals and the start of
| a deeper correction and real technical damage.
|
| One day that will happen and the trend will reverse, but it's
| always more probable that a trend continues.
| jongjong wrote:
| The headline is incorrect. It's Silver ETFs that tumbled, not
| silver.
|
| The event I'm betting on is Silver shortage and the removal of
| ETFs from chart price calculations. Though this price drop may be
| a delay... Or maybe lower prices could hasten demand, leading to
| that scenario.
|
| Precious metals is a weird market I guess as price rises can
| drive demand just as well as price drops.
| chaostheory wrote:
| IMO this is temporary. Why?
|
| 1. Geopolitics. Globalization is dying. See 3.
|
| 2. Debt. Countries refuse to tax or do austerity. The only thing
| left is to destroy their currency by printing away their debt.
|
| 3. Preparation for a new global war which requires massive
| spending.
|
| 4. Basel III which made gold tier one. Unallocated gold does not
| qualify as a tier 1 asset
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| Thanks for Nr. 4 - wasnt aware of!
| sakopov wrote:
| $SLV is still up 125% in the past 6 months after this "collapse"
| which is absolutely bananas.
| mikewarot wrote:
| Earlier today, it occurred to me that the "spot" price could go
| to zero if the physical metal isn't available for delivery. I
| missed the dip down into the 70s.
| almosthere wrote:
| yeah but its up 125% in 6 months, so this doesn't hurt anyone
| except the crazies that saw the price already high a week ago and
| bought
| blindriver wrote:
| As someone who has been actively trading silver for the past
| year, the real reason that silver plummeted is because:
|
| 1) the market was looking for an excuse and the new Fed chain
| nominee was as good a reason as anything.
|
| 2) The margin requirements on metal futures changed THIS MONTH.
| Instead of having daily limits, they changed the margin
| requirements for futures contracts in real-time throughout this
| move. Futures brokerages calculate margin requirements every
| second, so what happened was as silver dropped today, the margin
| requirements got more strict and then people were being
| liquidated out of their positions immediately. This caused the
| markets to crash the way we did all day.
|
| Previously, what you would see are circuit breakers kick in and
| the contracts would stop trading for a certain amount of time.
| You never used to see down 30% days ever, because circuit
| breakers would limit is. You would see limit down days, and the
| contracts would stop trading for the rest of the day and then
| reopen the next day. In the 70s and 80s I think there was a time
| when some contracts would open at limit down for 15+ days in a
| row and wouldn't trade for the entire day and people were
| financially ruined because they couldn't get out of a position
| for weeks on end.
|
| So finding an excuse to sell on top of forced liquidation is what
| you saw today. It's a classic volcano top and I think silver is
| going to drift lower for the rest of the year.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| I don't see how world risk changed overnight. To me, that means
| these market bubbles are financialization Ponzi schemes unmoored
| from fundamentals.
| hckrnrd wrote:
| Energy and Materials were among the most notionally net sold US
| sectors this week, GS Prime Book: US Long/Short Ratio (MV) driven
| by both short and long sales. Collectively, this week's $ net
| selling across the two sectors was the *largest since April '25*
| and ranks in the 96th percentile vs. the past five years.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I am super confused about the markets stance on gold, silver and
| the dollar.
|
| Did the market consider Powell the cause of a weak dollar and not
| Trump? I thought Powell was what was standing between the dollar
| and complete recklessness.
| KellyCriterion wrote:
| Rise your hand if you have been holding a leveraged positions
| which is now vaporised :-D
| alecco wrote:
| "The last full, comprehensive audit of Fort Knox's gold reserves
| was in 1953". This was one of Trump's broken promises.
|
| Unless you have physical metal you are just gambling on a
| videogame playing against the dev studio.
| hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm wrote:
| I didn't invest and generally avoid anything other than s&p500,
| ftse 100 and just letting money compound over time (because if I
| wanted to really gamble I would go Las Vegas) but I wonder how
| many 'ordinary' people are silently getting burned out there by
| how much hype there is now online.
| gadflyinyoureye wrote:
| I think it will still go up. Banking regulations changed, US
| dollar dropping. Industrial use going through the roof.
|
| This is a mid term investment. Probably see $70 and a slow
| build to $200 a once in two years.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| You are probably right, but for the wrong reasons =3
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_bounce
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| The stock market is not a place most amateurs make money. In
| some cases Vegas would give you better odds. lol =3
| qnleigh wrote:
| Unless you are talking about owning a casino, I can't think
| of any interpretation of what you are saying that is true.
| Index funds have a long history of steady growth. Las Vegas
| businesses make their profits off of the reliable losses of
| their customers.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| What people say they do, and what they actually do... are
| very different events. =3
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| I don't like your non-genuine engagement with this
| conversation. You've made outrageous claims, backed up
| with no data, and then seemingly pre-emptively linked to
| a page about trolling by asking for evidence. Well I'll
| ask you for evidence anyways lol. And I'll also give some
| that points against your outrageous claims: Retail
| investment in the stock market is at all time highs [1],
| and the percentage of investment in passive indices is
| also at an all time high [2]. It is _possible_ that
| retail investors are perversely fighting the trends and
| increasing their investments primarily by engaging in
| day-trade-esque behavior, but that would surprise me.
| Especially given that retirement accounts strongly
| encourage funds. I'd love to see some data pointing
| definitively either way though.
|
| [1] https://www.jpmorganchase.com/institute/all-
| topics/financial...
|
| [2] https://www.morningstar.com/funds/8-charts-us-fund-
| flows-202...
| goldfinger26 wrote:
| If you look at the history of related funds, you'll see that
| there is volatility when the price gets sufficiently high as
| people early exit, and that historically it has gone up higher,
| then once the market is milked dry, it goes way down again for
| some years.
|
| This has happened multiple times. You may not be able to
| guarantee it, but I strongly suspect precious metals are a
| repeating pump-and-dump scheme. It could be money waiting to be
| made by those that see the pattern, or maybe it won't happen, who
| knows?
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