Silver to 31x to $3,111/oz. Rigged Game; Sorry for Noticing

To my colleagues on Wall Street,

[sighs and gasps] apologies for

noticing, but silver is cheap and it has

been for a long time. Why is that? How

did we get here? What does it mean? And

more importantly, where is it going? My

analysis follows. Very soon, silver

should be 31x to about $3,100 per ounce

and gold should 9x to about $46,667

per ounce. Let's examine why.

Silver just closed over $100 per ounce

today, January 23rd, 2026, up nearly

500% in 24 months, when it was about $20

an ounce in January of 2024 and over

300% in the past 12 months. That's an

even more impressive run than the

liquidity trap that is Bitcoin, but

that's another story for another day.

Good evening and welcome to I banker

news tonight. This is the first in a

series of Wall Street news you can use.

Please subscribe, like, and comment on

how we can improve. This is not a

recommendation to buy. You should

thoroughly do your own research. This is

my own opinion. And now with the uh

boilerplate out of the way, back to

silver. $100 per ounce silver is

indicative of major structural problems

with the financial facade. This is why I

keep hearing about universal basic

income and great resets. Stocks are way

too high. Gold and silver are way too

low. The red flags are everywhere. This

is why fund managers are looking for any

investment that will meet or exceed

inflation. They always have, but the

search is becoming ever more desperate.

Let's look at ratios. Beginning with the

silver to the SPX or the standard and

pores 500 index, the SPX is about $7,000

today. So the SPX to silver ratio is

about 70 to1 or 70 ounces of silver buys

you one SPX. The SPX on January 18th,

1980 was about $109.

This is a very important date. We will

go into why very soon. Silver closed

that day, January 18th, 1980, at $48.70

per ounce. It was its all-time high. It

took nearly 40 plus years for it to

return to that nominal amount. So, in

other words, on that day,

2.24 ounces of silver bought you one

SPX. Let that sink in. The same ratio

would impute a true silver value of

$3,111

per ounce today at the same 15:1 gold to

silver ratio that was on January 18th,

1980. Gold should therefore be at

$46,667

per ounce relative to the SPX today.

Let's dig in. For thousands of years,

governments had minted coins. The most

valuable ones were made of gold. The

second most ones were silver. Silver has

always been a denominator in ratio

equations. The famous historic gold to

silver ratio has been around since the

ancient world. Think back to like Moses

in ancient times in Egypt. Back then,

the ratio had been about 10 to 13:1,

meaning it took between 10 and 13 ounces

of silver to buy 1 ounce of gold. This

ratio barely moved for thousands of

years. In medieval times, meaning the

thousand years between 500 AD and the

1500s, the ratio was between 12 and 15

to1. In the 1500s to the 1800s,

considered the early modern period,

silver was still 16:1, increased by

Spain's New World silver fines, pushing

the silver supply higher relative to its

gold counterpart. Then something crazy

happened in the 1800s. The ratio widened

to about 40 to1. Central banks stepped

in. The central banks came to control

many of the industrialized world's money

supplies. And famously here in the US,

there were gold and silver certificate

paper notes redeemable into the real

thing. The money supply was capped by

both gold and silver reserves. The

ratios were locked.

As recently as the 1930s, here in the

US, a 1oz gold St. God's double eagle

coin reflected a face value of $20. the

1 ounce peace dollar silver coin

counterpart $1. This represented a 20

to1 ratio of gold's value relative to

silvers. World War II is on the horizon

and in 1933 FDR outlawed citizen

possession of gold. The US stopped

minting gold coins after 1933. Silver

peace dollars stopped being minted in

1935.

Silver disappeared from US coinage

altogether after 1964. In other words,

the gold to silver ratio became

marketdriven. In the early 1900s, the

gold to silver ratio doubled to about 40

to1. By the end of the 20th century, it

was as high as 80:1. However, one needs

to note that from 1979 to 1980, the

ratio experienced a very brief return to

the 15 to1 ratio that had been so

prevalent in millennia past. The Hunt

brothers, concerned about inflation

under policies passed during Jimmy

Carter's presidency, famously attempted

to corner the silver market as a hedge

against the rapid decrease in the

dollar's purchasing power. They

accomplished this by acquiring massive

amounts of the gold, the global silver

supply, physical supply of silver, and

the futures contracts that called for

settlement in physical silver. On

January 18th, 1980, two days before

Ronald Reagan would ascend to the

presidency, silver closed at an all-time

high of $48.70 per ounce. As previously

mentioned, there were intraday spikes of

over $50 per ounce. It would take over

40 years to eventually return to and

surpass the $48.70

January 18, 1980 close.

Why did silver crash after January 18th,

1980? Wall Street rigged the game as

usual and the House won. The rules were

changed. Comx changed their margin

requirements and the Hunt brothers could

not meet the calls, the margin calls

once no bank would lend. It came to a

head on March 27th, 1980. The Hunt

brothers were forced to sell their

silver supply. Silver prices plummeted

over 50% in a single day, ultimately

infamously known as Silver Thursday. The

sudden price drop threatened to collapse

several well-connected commodity firms,

banks, and investment firms. To prevent

spread of the financial chaos, a bailout

was syndicated by several banks who

joined together to issue the Hunt

brothers a $ 1.1 billion line of credit,

proving that when somebody owes that

much, it's the bank's problem, not your

problem.

Banks have a long memory though, and the

aftermath of the Hunt Brothers story is

bittersweet. In August of 1988, the Hunt

brothers were ordered to pay $130

million in damages for conspiring to

legally corner the silver market. A

month later, two of the three brothers

filed for bankruptcy in order to avoid

posting a $225 million bond required to

appeal. By December 1989, they reached a

settlement with the Commodity Futures

Trading Commission. Nelson Hunt died

with no major fortune in 2014. His

brother William, however, recovered the

bulk of his fortune and the Forbes

magazine estimated his net worth to be

at about $2.6 billion in 2019. He died

in 2024 at 95. So, what do we learn from

this and how can it help us today? to

always look at ratios

which have been rumored to have been

artificially suppressed by many of these

firms, the very same ones acting against

the Hunt brothers for the very better

part of a century. Bonus points to

whoever puts in the comments who we all

know are the largest trading desks

manipulating silver prices downwards.

They still attempt to do so today.

Back to the ratios, how do they tell us?

What do they tell us? and how can we use

them? Gold today is trading at nearly

$5,000 per ounce. Silver is at about

$100 per ounce. That ratio is 50 to1.

Still very high when compared to against

historical norms. Assuming a moving

historical average of approximately 15

to1, this imputes a $330.33

per ounce silver price. If using the

more conservative 20 to1 gold to silver

ratio in line with the US's 20th century

corresponding coin mintage ratio, the

imputed value of silver should be about

$250 per ounce when compared against the

price of gold today. Here's an even more

interesting one. Silver to the SPX. The

standard and pores 500 index. The SPX is

about $7,000 today. So the spx to silver

ratio is about 70 to1 or 70 ounces of

silver buys you one spx. You may wonder

what was the spx to silver ratio at the

peak of the Hunt brothers run on January

18th 1980 when the gold to silver ratio

returned to the historic normal of 15

to1. The spx on January 18th 1980 was

about $109. Silver closed that day at

$48.70. In other words, 2.24 24 ounces

of silver bought you one spx. Let that

sink in. The same ratio today would

impute a true silver value of $3,111

per ounce at the same 15 to1 gold to

silver ratio that was on January 18th,

1980. Gold today should be at $46,667

per ounce. Conclusion:

stocks are too high, gold and silver way

too low. The red flags are everywhere

and you should prepare accordingly. So,

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