The Short Answer
Silver is not dropping because something broke. It is dropping because it rose faster than any asset its size can sustain. Between the end of August 2025 and 29 January 2026 the London fix went from $38.80 to $118.45, a tripling in five months. Since then it has given back 44%, fixing at $66.84 on 4 September 2026. That is a brutal drawdown from the peak and, at the same time, a price 63% higher than a year ago ($40.97 on 4 September 2025). Both facts are true, and which one matters depends on when you bought.
Prices are the LBMA silver fix. The figures and table on this page are regenerated from the LBMA series after every fix, so they are current as of 4 September 2026; the live chart is on the silver price page.
The Path: Month by Month
| Date | Silver (LBMA) | Gold (LBMA PM) | Gold/silver ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 2025 | $38.80 | $3,429 | 88 |
| Sep 2025 | $46.18 | $3,825 | 83 |
| Oct 2025 | $48.96 | $4,012 | 82 |
| Nov 2025 | $53.91 | $4,191 | 78 |
| Dec 2025 | $71.99 | — | — |
| 29 January 2026 (peak) | $118.45 | $5,405 | 46 |
| Jan 2026 | $103.19 | $4,982 | 48 |
| Feb 2026 | $89.98 | $5,222 | 58 |
| Mar 2026 | $72.69 | $4,608 | 63 |
| Apr 2026 | $73.55 | $4,611 | 63 |
| May 2026 | $75.79 | $4,546 | 60 |
| Jun 2026 | $58.80 | $4,026 | 68 |
| 17 July 2026 (low) | $55.29 | $3,995 | 72 |
| Jul 2026 | $57.73 | $4,027 | 70 |
| Aug 2026 | $70.26 | $4,563 | 65 |
| 4 September 2026 | $66.84 | $4,415 | 66 |
Three things stand out. The peak was a single spike: silver closed above $100 for only a handful of sessions and was back under $90 within a month. The low so far came on 17 July 2026 at $55.29, a 53% peak-to-trough fall, and the price has not made a new low in the 7 weeks since. And the gold-silver ratio, which had spent most of 2025 between 80 and 100, compressed to 46 at the peak and now sits at 66, roughly where it was before the 2025 rally accelerated.
Why It Rose That Fast
Silver had every fundamental reason to rise in 2025. The industrial demand story is real: solar, electronics and data-centre build-out consume more silver every year, and the market ran its sixth consecutive supply deficit. Gold’s own run to $5,405 pulled silver along, as it always does, and a ratio near 100 made silver look absurdly cheap against gold to anyone watching the gold-silver ratio.
But fundamentals explain a move from $30 to $50. They do not explain $118. The last leg, from roughly $72 at the end of December to $118.45 four weeks later, was momentum: investors chasing a chart, leveraged futures positioning, and a retail buying wave that emptied dealer shelves of Silver Eagles. Our own premium tracker recorded dealer premiums on coins widening sharply during those weeks, the classic sign that physical buyers were arriving late and paying up. Silver’s market is small enough that this kind of flow moves the price far more than it moves gold, in both directions.
Why It Fell
Parabolic moves end the same way every time. Once the price stops making new highs, the leveraged buyers who drove the final leg become forced sellers, and silver’s thin market amplifies the exit exactly as it amplified the entry. Gold turning down from $5,405 removed the tailwind: gold fell 26% to its 16 July 2026 low, and silver, with its higher beta, fell roughly twice as far. Industrial buyers who had stocked up ahead of the rise stopped buying at $100-plus prices and ran down inventory, which is the normal response of fabricators to a price spike. None of this required a change in the long-term supply picture.
The 1980 and 2011 episodes tell the same story. Silver’s 1980 peak of $49.45 (18 January 1980, about $210 in today’s dollars) was followed by a fall of more than 80%. The 2011 peak of $48.70 (28 April 2011) was followed by a four-year, 70% decline. Against those, a 53% drawdown that found support within six months is a mild correction.
What the Ratio Says Now
At 66, the ratio is neither cheap nor expensive by the standards of the last decade, which ran from 65 to 125. It is far below the 89 of January 2025, so silver has kept most of its relative gain against gold even after the crash. Investors who use the ratio to allocate between the metals have less of a signal here than they had a year ago; the easy trade, silver at a ratio near 100, is gone.
Should You Buy Silver Now?
Nobody knows where the bottom is, and this site does not make price predictions. What the data does support:
- Silver is still in a structural deficit, and the industrial demand that drove the 2025 rally has not gone away. The silver industrial demand and data-centre demand pieces cover the numbers.
- The speculative excess has been wrung out. A 53% fall from the peak followed by 7 weeks without a new low is what the end of a blow-off usually looks like, though a retest of $55 would not be unusual.
- Dealer premiums have normalised. The premium over spot on a Silver Eagle is back in its typical range, which means buyers are no longer paying a panic surcharge on top of spot. Check the live figure before you buy.
- Dollar-cost averaging beats timing for a metal this volatile. The DCA calculator shows how a fixed monthly purchase would have fared through this cycle.
If you own silver bought above $100, the honest answer is that you bought the top of a parabola, and the metal’s fundamentals suggest patience rather than capitulation. If you are buying now, buy the physical product with the lowest premium you can find, store it properly, and size the position for volatility of this magnitude, because silver will do this again.
Related
- Silver price chart, live LBMA data back to 1968
- Silver supply deficit
- Gold-silver ratio: history and strategy
- Why is gold falling?
- Best silver bars and best silver coins for the lowest premiums