Silver resumes its slide, plunging 13%, after short-lived rebound

Silver resumes its slide, plunging 12%, after short-lived rebound

Published Wed, Feb 4 2026

11:51 PM EST

Key Points

• Silver prices slid as much as 16% on Thursday, snapping a two-day rebound.
• The metal had been on a record-breaking spree before crashing almost 30% last Friday.
• Analysts point to speculative flows, leveraged positioning and options-driven trading as key drivers of the price swings.

In this article

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Silver bars are pictured in a display area at the plant of refiner and bar manufacturer Argor-Heraeus in Mendrisio, Switzerland, July 13, 2022.

Denis Balibouse | Reuters

Silver prices slid as much as 16% on Thursday, snapping a two-day rebound, as the white metal continues to reel from excessive volatility.

Spot silver prices are were last down 13% at $76.97 per ounce, while futures in New York were over 8% lower at $77.28 per ounce.

Silver had been on a record-breaking spree before crashing almost 30% last Friday. In 2025, it gained about 146%, data from LSEG showed.

Analysts point to speculative flows, leveraged positioning and options-driven trading, rather than physical demand, as key drivers of the recent price swings.

"As prices fell, dealer hedging flipped from buying into strength to selling into weakness, investor stop-outs were triggered, and losses cascaded through the system," Goldman Sachs said in a note on Wednesday. 

Silver's correction has been larger than gold's due to tighter liquidity conditions in the London market, which magnified price swings.

Goldman added that the timing of the volatility suggested Western flows, rather than Chinese speculation, are behind much of the build-up and unwind, noting that most of the more violent moves occurred while Chinese futures markets were closed.

The volatility in silver prices has drawn growing comparisons to meme stocks such as GameStop, the video-game retailer that became a global phenomenon in 2021 after retail traders on Reddit piled in en masse, sending its shares soaring far beyond what traditional valuation models could justify.

Rhona O'Connell, head of market Intelligence at StoneX, warned that prices had detached from sustainable levels.

"Silver was massively over-valued and in a self-fulfilling frenzy; it is however notoriously fickle and its history is littered with examples of price crashes," she said. "At present it is behaving like Icarus and to extend the analogy there is a strong risk of other buyers getting burned."

Spot gold and futures declined a little over 1% to $4,887.03 and $4,887.40 per ounce, respectively.

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