By Dan Denning - December 27, 2025

Silver’s historic rise today – which all of us long-suffering silver bulls should celebrate – is also a warning that something is breaking in the [financial] system of the world.

We interrupt this regularly scheduled holiday vacation to say…wow. What was that all about?

In case you missed it, silver was up by more than 10% today. Under normal conditions, this kind of event is statistically rare….and extreme. It just doesn’t happen very often. And when it does, it typically means something dramatic, destructive, or shocking has happened in markets (technically, this was a 4-5 sigma event for silver today).

I turned on the TV after the market closed and did not see anything blowing up (unless you count precious metals). It started last night in China when the futures price approached US$80/ounce. When the futures opened in the US, they were at $72.73/ounce. Last I checked, they were $79.60/ounce.

You don’t see that everyday. Even accounting for thin holiday trading volumes and small open interest in the paper markets, it’s a historical move. So what now?

If only we knew! But let’s look at a few ‘big picture’ charts as we head into the weekend. And then a final comment about food.

Silver is now a $4.4 trillion asset. It sits just behind gold and Nvidia and just ahead of the rest of the Mag 7 and Bitcoin. But the market value of the known investable silver market doesn’t tell the whole story.

You’d think the miners would be throwing off wads of free cash flow at these prices. Energy prices are low. Metals prices are high. Setting aside the fact that most silver is a by-product of mining for other metals, we haven’t seen a correspondingly large move in the mining stocks.

Yet.

That tells me that silver is still ‘underowned’ by professional and retail investors. They just don’t believe the story. Or they’d never heard of it or taken it seriously. Until this week…and until today. It’s impossible to miss now.

This kind of price action is going to . . .

[SNIP]