Silver is down about 54% from its January record while gold lost about 26%.
BloFin Academy breaks down what actually drove each leg lower
Key takeaway
Every silver selloff this year got a one-line explanation, usually "the Fed" or "the dollar." BloFin Academy's new explainer goes date by date instead, and the picture is messier and more useful than the headlines. The image is the article's cover art from BloFin, a 3D bank building with a couple of floating coins. It's illustration, not a chart.
The scale of the drop
On BloFin's silver perpetual, the daily close topped out at $117.72 on January 28 and sat at $54.57 on October 27, a 53.6% fall. Gold's perpetual dropped 26.2% across the same dates, so silver lost roughly twice as much.
Why it keeps falling, per the article
- Rates are going up, not down. The Fed hiked to 3.75% to 4.00% in September and held on October 28, with two members voting for another hike. Silver pays nothing, so every expected hike makes holding it cost more versus cash
- A simple way to see it: $10,000 in T-bills at 4% earns about $400 a year, and each extra quarter point adds roughly $25 the silver holder gives up
- Oil-driven inflation keeps those hikes on the table
- About 58% of demand is industrial, so growth worries hit silver in a way they don't hit gold
- Much of the market is leveraged futures, so a bad headline turns into forced selling and a big single day
October came in two steps
A hot September CPI print on October 14 (3.7% year on year) knocked spot silver down about 6%. Then on October 22 an oil spike revived hike fears and spot fell 5.9%, even though the 10-year yield dropped that day and the dollar barely moved. That's the lesson: the "usual suspects" didn't explain that move.
The two crash days
January 30 closed down 26.8% and February 5 down 24.9% on BloFin's perp. The triggers were a Fed chair nomination and a dollar bounce, but the size came from crowded positioning. Exchange margin increases were announced around those days and kicked in after them, which is how forced selling feeds on itself.
The deficit puzzle
Silver has run a supply deficit for five years, about 40 million ounces in 2025. That sounds bullish, but it's under 5% of what sits in London vaults alone, so short-term price is set by what traders do with existing metal.
The gold/silver ratio
Gold divided by silver was 74.6 on October 27, up from 46.9 at the January peak. The long-run median since 1971 is 62.9, so silver looks cheap against gold. The article is clear that this says nothing about when it changes; the ratio stayed above 85 for months in 2025.
If you trade the silver perp, the practical takeaway is that its average daily move in October (about 1.24%) was roughly double gold's, so size it like the more volatile asset it is.
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