You really should not have been surprised by the selloff that battered silver and gold prices on January 30, given technical warning signals were flashing from indicators like the relative strength index. The bigger question is what happens next.
Silver was hammered 31% ending the day at $78.531 per troy ounce. That was the biggest decline since the 1980 bubble broke. (The price is for the March contract, currently the most active in futures markets.)
Gold for April delivery tumbled 11.4% to $4,745 on Jan. 30. Gold had topped $5,000 for the first time on Jan. 27 and peaked at nearly $5,267 on Jan. 29.
Related stocks like Hecla Mining (HL) and Newmont Corp (NEM) slumped in response, and stocks overall slid as well. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq all declined for a third week in a row.
What happens next depends on whom you talk to. Gold and silver analysts believe the Jan. 30 plunges were related to President Trump’s choice of Kevin Warsh as the next chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.
Warsh’s reputation has been something of an inflation hawk and would protect the dollar, in theory, with higher rates. Stock, bond and commodity traders used that ammunition to sell on Jan. 30.
But Warsh has argued recently that interest rates should be lower. The Fed’s key federal funds rate was held this week at 3.5% to 3.75%, which President Trump panned because he wants rates pushed sharply lower.
His nomination must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate, and current-Chairman Jerome Powell‘s 4-year year term doesn’t expire until May 15.
What one heard on all this past week and especially on Jan. 30 was that gold-and-silver prices were too high and needed to come down.
Andrew Rocco, writing on Zacks, said the price of silver is more than 100% above its 200-day moving average in the last week, adding, “Historically, such a wide distance from the 200-day has been unsustainable.” (The gap between price and 200-day was 137.4% on Jan. 29.)
Gold’s relative strength index, a measure of whether an asset is overbought, hit 84.50 on Jan. 29, according to Bloomberg data, which means gold was very, very overbought.
Silver’s RSI hit 91.13 the same day. It was so extremely overbought that an abrupt selloff was all but guaranteed.
The selloff came on Jan. 30.
Not only did the commodities tumble, but so did — not surprisingly — ETFs based on those commodities. The iShares Silver Trust (SLV) fell 28.6% to $75.44. The SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD) fell 10.3% to $444.45.
The slump in gold and, for lack of a better word, crash in silver battered precious-metals miners.
But the gold-and-silver mining were still worth buying, analysts were saying on Jan. 30.
More Gold:
Silver miners, in particular, should do well because their production costs are low compared with market prices for the metal.
“The margin expansion and the amount of free cash flow is unprecedented,” TD Cowen precious metals analyst Wayne Lam told Barrons on Jan. 30.
That said, here’s how hard they were hit on Jan. 30.
Newmont, the world’s largest gold producer, fell 14.4%. Hecla Mining dropped 14.4%. Coeur Mining (CDE), whose mines are mostly in Mexico and the Western United States, fell 16.8%.
An outlier appears to be Freeport-McMoRan (FCX), whose Grasberg mine in Indonesia is one of the world’s largest copper producers, with gold as a byproduct. Its shares fell 7.5% to $60.23.
Underground mining in 1800s Nevada. Silver and gold prices tumbled after an overbought signal on January 30, 2026.Getty Images ·Getty Images
There are some macroeconomic forces that may weigh on gold and silver.
The big tax breaks enacted in 2025 may let companies continue their expansion plans in 2026 and 2027.
Demand for gold, silver and other metals (expecially copper) is thought to be too big to be pulled back, a support for prices.
Whatever one thinks about Kevin Warsh’s past thoughts about interest rates and the Fed, rates may come down. It may take longer, however, than many people expect. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield, a proxy for the long-term interest rates, finished Jan. 30 at 4.238%, up 1.6% so far this year. It is also up nearly 6% after falling to as low as 3.999% on Nov. 26, 2025.
Bringing rates down may face a big headwind:
Fortune magazine’s Shawn Tully noted on Jan. 31 that interest payments devour “one in every five dollars collected in taxes.” The Congressional Budget Office predicts that by 2035, those carrying costs will become the biggest line item of all, exceeding expenditures on Medicare.
There’s talk, from financial economist Ed Yardeni and others, that gold will top $10,000 an ounce in the next year or so because government debt levels around the world show no signs of leveling off or even falling.
I vividly remember what happened to metals prices after they peaked in 1980. No one can forget the real-estate bust that erupted in 2007.
The Jan. 30 selloffs in gold and, especially, silver may require more time to recover than many people expect.
One argument is to look at Bitcoin, which fell 7% on Saturday, dropping under $80,000 for the first time since April. It was down 11% in January, its fourth monthly loss in a row. The crypto currency is down nearly 37% since its October all-time high of $126,273.
True, gold and silver demand has exploded in at least the last 10 years in part because central banks have been buying silver and, especially, gold bullion to hedge against currency debasement. Plus, silver and gold are used in developing computers and related electronics, solar panels and other products.
While mining companies are confidently laying in plans to open new mines or expanding existing mines, price can’t be sneezed at. If their price assumptions are held back, the companies may hold back on the development pace.
Lastly, some investors — maybe sophisticated but almost certainly many who are total neophytes — were burned on Jan. 30. They may have borrowed large sums to speculate in the mania for gold and, especially, the mania for silver. Banks or other financial services firms or brokers will want they money back. That happened after 1980. It happened after a mini-bubble in 2011.
We’ll start to see what happens when markets reopen on Feb. 2. Expect some drama in the coming months.
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