Business & Economics
Silver Smashes $79/Oz as CME Slaps $25k Margin Hike in Year-End Metals Super-Spike
Between Dec 26-28 2025, spot silver vaulted to an unprecedented US$79 an ounce while CME Group abruptly raised initial margin on March 2026 contracts to US$25,000 and cut position limits, trying to cool the most explosive precious-metals rally since 1979.
Focusing Facts
- CME announced on 26 Dec 2025 a US$25,000 initial margin requirement for March 2026 silver futures, effective the next trading day, with non-compliant positions forcibly liquidated.
- Spot silver gained more than 150 % in 2025 and crossed US$77 on 27 Dec before touching ~US$79 on 28 Dec, its highest price ever recorded.
- China will impose export licences on silver from 1 Jan 2026, potentially removing a large share of world supply from open markets.
Context
Flashbacks to the January 1980 ‘Silver Thursday’ crash—when COMEX margin hikes after the Hunt brothers’ squeeze halved prices overnight—loom large: then silver collapsed from US$50 to US$10 in weeks once credit was tightened. Today’s margin shock echoes that 45-year-old playbook, but the backdrop is different. The 2020s energy transition, de-globalisation and fiscal overreach have pushed investors toward hard assets while industrial demand (solar, EVs) creates a structural deficit unseen in the late 1970s. Long-dated memories of 1971’s abandonment of the gold standard and repeated bouts of currency debasement feed the “store-of-value” trade now amplified by ETF and algorithmic flows. Whether the 2025 spike is a blow-off top or the start of a new bullion regime will shape capital allocation for decades: a true shortage in an energy-critical metal could reset pricing power for miners and manufacturers much as oil shocks rewired the world economy in 1973; if instead leverage unwinds, history may rhyme with 2011’s 30 % plunge after five rapid CME hikes. Either path will inform how 21st-century markets police speculation, manage strategic minerals, and balance monetary experiments over the coming century.
Perspectives
Global financial wire services
Bloomberg Business, Investors King — Frame the metals rally chiefly as a classic flight-to-safety powered by weaker U.S. dollar, looming Fed rate cuts and fresh geopolitical flashpoints from Venezuela to Nigeria. By focusing on big-picture macro stories that resonate with portfolio managers, they risk glossing over structural supply issues that don’t fit the fast-moving narrative their audiences trade on.
Indian and Asian commodity business outlets
Economic Times, The Times of India, Yahoo Finance, Pragativadi — Portray silver’s surge as the inevitable result of years-long physical supply deficits, rising industrial use in EVs/solar and looming Chinese export curbs, implying prices could vault toward US$100. Sensational forecasts and repeated scarcity references cater to retail enthusiasm and page-view economics, so they tend to underplay the role of speculative momentum and the risk of a swift reversal.
Skeptical/contrarian commentators and market-structure watchers
Businessline, Coingape, some ET analysts — Warn that the run-up echoes past ‘Silver Thursday’ bubbles, with CME margin hikes, option squeezes and overbought RSI signalling a potential violent crash that could even spill into assets like Bitcoin. Highlighting dramatic downside scenarios and invoking high-profile pundits like Peter Schiff can exaggerate fear to attract clicks, while lumping diverse factors under ‘manipulation’ without equal weight on legitimate demand drivers.