Silver is making a major run higher amid tightening export controls in China and meme-stock-style buying by Main Street investors hoping to squeeze bearish bets.

The precious metal is up an eye-popping 249% over the past year, including a 47% year-to-date jump, but not everyone thinks Silver prices are destined to keep climbing.

Silver returns (past 5 years):

  • 2025: 148.14%
  • 2024: 21.36%
  • 2023: -0.72%
  • 2022: 2.64%
  • 2021: -11.55%
    Source: Macrotrends.

Former JP Morgan strategist Marko Kolanovic and famous Wall Street trader Peter Brandt both sounded alarms on silver in separate posts on X this week.

The stakes are high for investors, given that silver has gone parabolic, surging in a straight line, sparking animal spirits among those hoping to reap even bigger gains. New buyers, however, should remember that precious metals are notorious for boom-and-bust moves, making new positions riskier now than they were months ago.

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Ex-JPMorgan strategist Kolanovic warns silver reckoning looms

On Jan. 1, China designated silver as a strategic resource, alongside rare earth minerals. The move restricts silver exports, requiring licenses that have become harder to get. Only 44 companies qualified for silver export licenses as China seeks to guarantee supply for next-gen solar, EVs, and electronics technologies.

The move accelerated a rally that emerged last year, driven by bullishness over industrial demand for high-tech applications and, more generally, by rising interest among investors eager to diversify portfolios by owning silver ETFs, such as the iShares Silver Trust (SLV), or physical silver, such as coins and bars.

The numbers are truly massive. Silver’s move has lifted the market’s size above $6 trillion. Putting that figure into perspective, Nvidia, Apple, and Alphabet boast market caps of $4.5 trillion, $3.75 trillion, and $4 trillion, respectively.

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Everyone wants in on the action.

On January 26, the iShares Silver Trust exchange-traded fund saw turnover of nearly $40 billion, according to Bloomberg, a figure similar to that of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), the go-to ETF for the 500 most influential publicly traded companies. That’s nearly 20x higher than it had been averaging for most of last year.

Moves like this aren’t common, and they’re often warning shots that investors ought to pay attention to. I’ve been tracking markets for over thirty years, and I’ve seen more than my fair share of jaw-dropping pops that eventually turned into drops.

I’m not alone in worrying that the recent move is setting up a reversal.

Former JPMorgan strategist Marko Kolanovic, whose career stretches back over 20 years and includes roles at Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns before a 16-year run at JPMorgan that helped him get inducted into the Institutional Investor Hall of Fame, delivered a blunt silver forecast on X:

Kolanovic says the rally faces existential risks that will eventually lead to a bubble burst.

“Unlike purely fictitious assets like NFTs, bubble in commodity can’t last long – industry demand dries up, supply e.g. recycling increases, and new production is hedged,” wrote Kolanovic.

Veteran trader Peter Brandt, perhaps best known for being featured in Jack Schwager’s “Unknown Market Wizards: The best traders you’ve never heard of”, was also raising alarms.

Brandt began trading commodities back in 1976 with ContiCommodity Services, a division of Continental Grain Company, where he handled institutional accounts for major consumer goods companies, including Campbell Soup. He founded his prop trading firm, Factor Trading Co., in 1980, wrote “Trading Commodity Futures with Classical Chart Patterns” in 1990, and then, “Diary of a Professional Commodity Trader” in 2011. Needless to say, he knows a bit about commodities, including silver.

On X, Brandt offered a series of warnings, including one noting that recent silver trading mirrors the action at the peak of the last silver boom in 2011.

“Today, nearly 2 years of world production traded on world exchanges. More than 1.5 billion ounces. The last time such a proportion traded was April 25, the day of the 2011 top,” wrote Brandt.

Brandt previously correctly called for silver prices to drop on Apr 24, 2011.

What happens to silver prices next?

Manias are hard to get right in the moment because surges and plunges tend to go far further than most expect. Many silver bulls argue that the game changed in January when China restricted exports and the U.S. government added silver to its critical minerals list.

I’ve learned over my decades in the markets that some of the most dangerous words in the English language when it comes to investing are “this time is different.”

Related: Silver surge masks quiet risk

Kolanovic and Brandt appear to agree. Nobody knows when silver’s rally fades, but history may offer clues. For instance, the Hunt Brothers tried to corner the silver market in 1980, driving prices from about $6 per ounce to nearly $50.

That ended very badly for the Hunts and those who followed them into silver. The silver market collapsed after the COMEX implemented “Silver Rule 7,” restricting the buying of silver on margin, triggering massive margin calls and forced selling that erased 90% of silver’s value within two years.

In 2011, when Brandt was warning of risks to silver, prices were similarly near $50 as a weak dollar caused buying to surge. Again, exchanges implemented margin changes, hiking requirements until the bubble burst.

History doesn’t repeat, as Twain opined, but it often rhymes. As Kolanovic pointed out, more supply, including holders of physical silver selling, margin requirement changes, or even silver miners selling future production, could derail Silver’s epic run.

Related: Robert Kiyosaki teases outlandlish new gold price target