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Hi~ 这个2026年的1月份，可以说是贵金属历史上最疯狂的一个月，达到了有史以来最高的波动率。你就看这白银的走势图，真的可以说是个过山车的设计图。
先是持续攀升，大涨了68%，涨到超过120美元。紧接着两天跌回解放前。你如果把时间轴拉长一点，就能看出来这个月有多疯狂。黄金呢，虽然没有白银“那么”疯狂，一个月就“只”涨了将近30%，突破了5,500美元，之后也是暴跌。
太多朋友留言说想让我聊聊了，所以咱们今天就来看看哈，这个贵金属市场的巨震，它到底是怎么回事。
哦对了，我这插一嘴哈，最近有朋友留言说，小Lin这频道怎么变成英语的了？哎，这个不是我设置的哈，是因为YouTube最近有一个新的功能，有些朋友默认自动就会放那个AI英语。所以大家可以在设置里头，有一个Audio Track，就是音轨，把它改成中文，就可以听到小Lin的原声了。
今天呢，我想采取的方式跟平时不太一样。我想呢，带着大家一起来分析，不是说我直接给你个答案，而是咱们一层一层地来剖析这个问题。所以这段视频的逻辑链条可能会有点多，大家呢，跟得上就跟。你要是懒得动脑子，反正听个大概意思也行。
我主要想聊的呢，就这么三个问题。首先，之前为什么黄金白银会暴涨？第二个问题，为什么白银涨得会比黄金猛这么多？还有，就之后为什么暴跌？怎么样，都感兴趣吧？
首先，之前为什么暴涨？其实呢，你看清楚它之前为什么涨，之后为什么跌，就顺理成章多了。咱来看看啊，其实分析这种价格波动，最最基本的一个切入点，咱得明确一个事，就是咱是在说一个长期的逻辑，还是短期的逻辑。诶，这个时间框架，我们得先明确。
If we are to analyze why gold jumped in the last five minutes, we naturally need to look at what happened in those five minutes. For example, did a major client increase their holdings, or was there some news in the market? If you say that the five-minute gold price increase is due to a lack of market confidence in the US dollar, that's a bit far-fetched. That's definitely not the main reason.
But on the contrary, if you analyze why gold has risen in the past two years, you have to look at longer-term, more fundamental narratives. For example, as you often hear, market distrust of the US dollar, distrust of US debt, gold and silver as a store of value, central bank acquisitions, etc. I think I analyzed this quite clearly in the previous video about gold.
And what we want to talk about today is why it surged and plunged within the timeframe of this month. This is still a very short-term phenomenon, so we will mainly look for short-term reasons. For precious metals, why did they surge so much in the short term? You can always explain it with two reasons: one is hedging, and the other is speculation. The key is what kind of risk are they hedging against, who is hedging, and who is speculating?
First, what kind of risk are they hedging against? I summarize that there are mainly two factors that coincided. The more important one is the market's concern about the new Federal Reserve chairman. Note that a new chairman had not yet been appointed at this time. Because the term of the previous Federal Reserve chairman, Powell, was about to expire, and the new chairman would be nominated by Trump. And Trump had been scolding Powell for a year, wanting him to cut interest rates quickly. Now that he finally had a chance to change people, the market speculated that, given Trump's style of doing things, wouldn't he find a very obedient, very dovish, very dovish chairman?
Think about it, the Federal Reserve is the de facto helmsman of the US dollar, how important is it? And this chairman will serve for at least four years. This is serious! This would be a huge blow to the value of the US dollar, the independence of the Federal Reserve, and the credibility of the US dollar. So many fund managers said, "Hey, let's quickly buy some gold and silver to hedge."
And there is another reason, which is the concern about geopolitical risks. Look at the beginning of 2026, Trump was very active. Besides arresting Maduro, there were a series of potential actions around Iran, Cuba, and Greenland. Think about so many keywords appearing frequently within this month. Although some were just verbal expressions without actual actions, they inevitably caused market concerns.
So, these two reasons coincided and became the underlying support for the previous surge. But it's far from over. This can only be said to be the initial driving force for the previous surge. What truly caused it to be so crazy and to drive prices up like this is still speculation.
Okay, let's analyze further. Actually, if you want to analyze speculation, you mainly look at two things: who is buying and how are they buying? Who is buying? According to the World Gold Council, buyers of gold are nothing more than a few categories: central banks of various countries, industrial and technological uses, jewelry consumers, and investors. For silver, perhaps central banks of various countries don't buy much, and the others are similar.
So, who caused the gold and silver rollercoaster? First of all, it's definitely not jewelry and technological industrial needs. Their reaction to price changes is relatively slow, so it's unlikely to cause such a surge and plunge in gold and silver prices. Don't underestimate this part. The annual output of gold is 5,000 tons, and about half of it is for these purposes.
And then there are the central banks of various countries. We can also rule them out. In the past two years, their purchase volume has indeed doubled compared to before, to hedge against the risk of de-dollarization. They buy about 1,000 tons a year. Although I can't see their January data, it's highly likely that they won't chase rising prices and sell falling prices. Instead, they will buy counter-cyclically. The more it rises, the less they buy.
Why did the purchase volume of central banks of various countries decrease in 2025, which was the riskiest and hottest time for gold? One reason is that central banks felt that gold prices were too high at that time, so they reduced their purchases. In short, central banks are unlikely to cause this rollercoaster.
So the answer is very obvious, isn't it? It's the remaining investors, about 2,000 tons. But the scope of "investors" is too broad, right? Let's break it down further. The main buyers here are long-term funds like mutual funds and insurance funds. They are huge in volume and consider long-term capital allocation. Didn't we just analyze what kind of risk they were hedging against? These long-term funds are actually mainly for hedging, driving the funds for hedging. But they are not for speculation.
Ah, we finally get to the point. Who are the people who truly speculated and pushed this surge to its peak? After screening and evaluation, I have come up with about three groups. "First and foremost" are hedge funds, and their purpose of buying frantically is short squeezing.
Actually, let me tell you, as long as you see a price chart like this, and especially if it's followed by a big drop, especially if it's connected to the futures market, your first major guess should be short squeezing. What is short squeezing? Simply put, it's by holding a large number of long positions in silver futures that are not closed upon expiration, which is more than the deliverable physical silver, attempting to squeeze the shorts to death. When the shorts are desperate, they can only frantically raise prices to close their positions, causing prices to surge.
Ah, if you don't understand it very well, it's okay. In short, when is short squeezing likely to occur? It's when physical supply is very tight. For example, the silver market actually experienced a round of short squeezing in October last year. At that time, Indians bought a large amount of physical silver, and China, one of the main silver-producing countries, was on its Golden Week holiday. There was a major shortage in the market. The interest rate for borrowing silver in London soared from almost zero to 30%, and it even required airlifting thousands of tons of silver from the United States to London.
Do you know what 1,000 tons means? The total inventory of the Shanghai Gold Exchange is less than 1,000 tons. Such a large amount of airfreight is unimaginable in the past. So you can see how scarce silver was at that time. In January of this year, it was not as exaggerated as last year's silver shortage, but global geopolitical tensions tightened. China began to implement strict controls on silver exports in January. There were also more and more rumors in the US about imposing tariffs on silver, leading to extremely smooth international silver flows. The silver inventory in the Shanghai Gold Exchange dropped to a historical low. The silver inventory in COMEX in the United States could only satisfy 14% of the open positions, leading to a very high risk of bank runs on silver.
In short, these hedge funds rushed into the silver market and bought or went long on silver frantically, with the main purpose of short squeezing.
And the second group is retail investors. What do retail investors like? Chasing rising prices and selling falling prices. Just look at yourself. When you want to hoard gold or buy silver, isn't it that everyone has already spread the word, saying, "Have you heard? Gold and silver have been rising a lot recently! Everyone is rushing to buy!" And then Douyin starts pushing videos saying, "Silver has gone crazy!" When you see such popular videos, don't you feel a little tempted? Retail investors are indeed one of the main driving forces behind this surge. And this part of the demand mainly comes from...
Look at the silver price in Shanghai. Most of the time, it's lower than the global price. But at the beginning of this year, there was a premium of 6%-8%. This indicates a severe shortage of silver in mainland China. Let me tell you, whether it's the gold market or the silver market, if you look at the global picture, you will find a very interesting phenomenon. Its two major consumption battlegrounds are China and India. But they have different preferences. Chinese people like to hoard gold and silver at home, while Indians like to wear gold and silver. In terms of data, the sales of gold bars and silver bars in China are overwhelmingly the highest globally, while the sales of jewelry, whether gold or silver, are the highest in India, accounting for almost half of the market.
So, if you just use your smart little brain and think carefully about the timing of these two surges, you will discover a surprising fact. Look, in October last year, silver was extremely scarce and there was short squeezing. When was that? It was just before Diwali in India, which is their craziest time to buy gold and silver. And in January of this year, gold and silver surged. When was that? It was before the Chinese New Year, which is also the main time for Chinese people to buy gold and silver. This is not a coincidence. The market generally believes that the demand from retail investors in China and India is the main reason for the surge in precious metal prices in October last year and January this year.
And the third group that caused the surge is a bit unusual, and it's an emerging driving force that has grown rapidly in the past year: cryptocurrency capital. Although this force is not large in volume at present, it is highly active and likely to grow exponentially in the future. So let's talk about it. You know, what we're talking about today is quite diverse. Many platforms are launching tokens backed by silver on the blockchain. The issuing companies actually buy silver bars physically and issue such tokens on the blockchain for trading, which is somewhat similar to a silver ETF on the blockchain. This market is growing rapidly but is not large in volume, with a total scale of only about 400 million US dollars.
What is the truly active market? It's the derivatives market for silver on the blockchain. You can think of it as an everlasting futures contract for silver on the blockchain, called perpetual contracts. People don't physically settle silver; it's purely a bet on prices. Of course, platforms have mechanisms to ensure that the price is linked to physical silver. The leverage of these contracts can reach 20 times, and some platforms can even reach 200 times. I guess friends who are not familiar with cryptocurrencies might find this a bit confusing, but it's okay, just get the general idea. In short, silver has both spot and futures in the crypto world. This silver contract, the so-called "futures," although it has existed for a long time, only started to become popular at the beginning of this year.
Why? Think about it, many people in the crypto world have investment goals that are completely different from traditional funds. They want higher volatility. To put it bluntly, they play for excitement, they play for surges and plunges within a short period. And Bitcoin has been very weak in recent months, with much less volatility than silver. Look at how much silver surged last year, and its contracts can have 20 times leverage. So, after discussions in the crypto community, players immediately rushed in collectively, very wildly. The daily trading volume can reach billions of US dollars, which is quite significant for the silver market.
And this market, although it's crypto and derivatives, seems to have little to do with physical silver, but in fact, it is connected through arbitrageurs. Just as silver futures affect the price of spot silver, silver tokens affect the price of spot silver, and these silver token derivatives also affect the price of spot silver. The entire market is interconnected. These crypto players formed the third driving force for the short-term surge in silver.
Let me mention it in passing. In the crypto world, there is a larger category of buyers who have become a force that cannot be ignored in the market: stablecoin issuers, like Tether. On the one hand, the stablecoin market is growing larger and larger. At the same time, they issue gold tokens and silver tokens, which leads these issuers to continuously hoard gold. For example, Tether is estimated to have bought 140 tons of gold in a year and is still buying at a rate of about one ton every three to four days. This has surpassed the purchase speed of most central banks, including China and the United States. Of course, it's not that they are betting on gold. It's indeed that the stablecoin market is developing too fast, and they are continuously buying long-term treasury bonds, short-term treasury bonds, and gold. I estimate that in the next few years, they may become an increasingly influential force in the global financial market.
Having said that, we have basically analyzed the reasons for the surge in gold and silver. Let me summarize. Two short-term hedging factors: the Federal Reserve chairman and geopolitical risks, plus a rush of speculators, including hedge funds, retail investors, and cryptocurrency capital chasing rising prices, led to the epic surge in gold and silver.
Okay, let's move on to the next question. Why did silver surge more than gold and plunge more severely than gold? In fact, it's not just recently. If we look at the historical price movements of gold and silver, they are highly correlated, but silver's volatility is significantly higher. In fact, I've roughly calculated that silver's volatility in recent years is about twice that of gold. So, this month is not special. Its surge is twice that of gold, and its plunge is twice that of gold. Ah, it perfectly fits the historical pattern.
So why is silver's volatility higher? Simply put, its pool is smaller. Look at the global scale. In terms of mining output, silver is an order of magnitude larger than gold, about 26,000 tons per year. But because it's cheaper, for the same quality, gold prices are 50-100 times silver prices. So, in terms of the overall market size, silver is an order of magnitude smaller than gold.
And if we look separately, whether it's gold or silver, what determines its short-term fluctuations is mainly the part used for investment. And look at silver, the part used for investable purposes is even less. 60% of its uses are in industry, and in the past two years, the demand for photovoltaic has exploded. For five consecutive years, the total output of silver has been less than the total demand. If you remove jewelry, silverware, and other general investment uses, it's only about 1/5, about 5,000 tons. The silver market is much smaller, which leads to what? Ah, higher volatility. It's like being in the ocean. Gold is like an aircraft carrier. When big winds and waves hit it, it just shakes a little. But silver is like a small boat. Although it rises and falls with the aircraft carrier, the fluctuations shown when the waves hit it are much larger.
Let's take a closer look at why silver surged more in January. Actually, if you look at the three types of people we just analyzed who fanned the flames, you'll know. Hedge funds want to short squeeze. The gold market is clearly too big for them to squeeze. Ah, silver is much easier. For retail investors, many people feel that gold is too expensive, right? Silver is more attractive, it rises sharply and is cheap. Why not try it? And for cryptocurrency capital, wherever there is volatility, that's where they go. Silver is definitely more exciting than gold. These three types of people can be said to be more inclined towards silver. This leads to the fact that although major institutions, central banks, etc., basically don't pay attention to silver, the silver market is small, and speculators are pouring in, so prices rise more sharply.
Next, let's look at why precious metals plunged. It's very logical. The plunge began on January 30th. Two things happened that day. One was a major event in the financial market, and the other was a minor event that ordinary people might consider insignificant. The major event was the news about the new Federal Reserve chairman. Trump unexpectedly announced the nomination of Kevin Warsh as the next Federal Reserve chairman. Didn't we just say that the market originally expected Trump to find a very obedient, very dovish chairman who advocated printing money and cutting interest rates? And this Kevin Warsh, fortunately, has an unusual relationship with Trump. His father-in-law is the heir to the Estée Lauder Group. This person has been a good friend of Trump for decades.
But, at least from his previous policy stances, this guy is very hawkish, meaning he strongly advocates for contractionary monetary policy. He previously opposed quantitative easing and forward guidance. It feels like he opposed everything the Federal Reserve has been doing for the past 20 years. Now that he's elected, he has to balance the relationship between Trump and the market. Ah, let me tell you, this guy is quite cunning. He proposed something called "cutting interest rates and shrinking the balance sheet." He cuts interest rates to satisfy Trump and stimulate the economy, and at the same time, he wants to "aggressively shrink the balance sheet," meaning reducing the assets the Fed bought with printed money. It's like taking back the money that was printed.
Why do I say he's cunning? It's like this: a normal car is stuck in the mud. At this time, people in the car need to step on the accelerator, and people outside need to help push. Now, the car is almost out of the mud. Trump still wants it to accelerate. What to do? Kevin Warsh said, "How about this? We'll keep pushing the car from the outside. We'll find a few more strong men to push together. But the people inside the car, ah, you step on the brake. I'll give you a move of left hand pushing and right hand braking. Left hand cuts interest rates, right hand shrinks the balance sheet." Heh heh. As for what speed the car should go, you guess. Of course, in reality, it's not just as simple as braking and pushing the car with both hands. There's yield curve control, balance sheet structure adjustment, etc. But the general idea is that the market discovered that this guy is not as obedient to Trump's words as expected. He is still trying to balance the US government and the market. Ah, the US dollar surged, and gold and silver fell. This is an initial reason, the "major event."
There was also a "minor event," which coincidentally happened on January 30th. The world's largest futures exchange, CME, announced that it would increase the margin requirements for gold and silver trading. The margin for gold was raised from 6% to 8%, and the margin for silver was raised from 11% to 15%. Simply put, it made it more expensive to leverage when going long or short on gold and silver. If you go long on 100 yuan of silver, you used to only need to pay 11 yuan in margin, but now you need to pay 15 yuan. Don't think it's just 4 yuan. This is equivalent to a 36% increase in margin. Let me give you a more realistic example. Perhaps you used to spend 11 million yuan to go long on 100 million yuan of silver. After this margin policy change, they suddenly ask you for an additional 4 million yuan. If many people can't afford this additional 4 million yuan, what happens? They have to sell. This triggered the decline in gold and silver.
By the way, some people might think that CME deliberately timed the increase in margin requirements, thinking that the "market maker" couldn't afford to lose, that the "market maker" was doing this or that, and it might even escalate to Sino-US confrontation. I don't have any inside information. First of all, CME's increase in margin requirements is reasonable. The more volatile the silver price, the higher the margin should be. This is indeed a reasonable operation for an exchange for risk control. It's not just that they increased it on the 30th. Since December 2025, as the silver price volatility increased, they have increased it four or five times in a row. And it's not just CME that's increasing it; the Shanghai Futures Exchange is also increasing it. Of course, it's possible that they were instructed by someone, we don't know.
Okay, let's get back to it. The two events just mentioned, the new chairman and the margin requirements, were just an initial push for the market decline. Then who came? Ah, it was the three forces we mentioned earlier that pushed the market up. Among them, hedge funds and cryptocurrency capital have a common characteristic: they both used very high leverage. So, it's very simple, they both got liquidated. With high leverage, once the market starts to fall, many people are forced to liquidate their positions due to insufficient margin, leading to further selling of silver, and the silver price further declines, forming a chain reaction. It's the same old story, we've told this too many times. Just look at the liquidated products in the crypto world for those two days. The main ones were not Bitcoin or Ethereum, but silver token derivatives. You know, the market size of these is not even a fraction of Bitcoin's. Yet, they were the most liquidated. In three days, silver fell by more than 1/3, from nearly $120 per ounce to below $80. Gold and all metals were dragged down together during those two days, but they quickly stabilized.
And cryptocurrencies were quite miserable. You can see that the decline in Bitcoin and Ethereum was half a beat slower than silver. As the market sought safety and liquidity dried up, they continued to fall, while the US dollar, on the other hand, rose. Just look at the past month. The US dollar and gold and silver have completely reversed. This is very consistent with what we learned in textbooks. So, who is the risk asset, and who is the safe-haven asset? It's all relative. When the US dollar is risky, gold and silver become safe-haven assets. When gold and silver are risky, the US dollar becomes a safe-haven asset. Einstein said more than 100 years ago that everything is relative, only the speed of light is constant. Ah, I'm joking. Einstein didn't say that.
You see, on the surface, it looks like a rollercoaster for precious metals, but digging into it is quite interesting. Basically, we've connected a lot of current hot topics, such as cryptocurrencies, the Federal Reserve, geopolitical issues, etc. At the same time, we have leverage, short squeezing, and liquidations in the capital markets. It's quite a spectacle. In the previous video about gold, we summarized that gold prices have huge noise in the short term due to love and speculation. To me, in the long run, we may indeed be in a period of upheaval and change in the monetary system and trust system, with various major trends. But the surge and plunge within this month are mainly caused by speculation. Capital markets are either about struggle or they collapse. The logic is roughly like this. Everyone just watches the show. This is just a short-term fluctuation. I personally don't think it will affect the long-term fundamentals of gold and silver. I've also put the tips for gold investment that I summarized in the previous video about gold on the screen. You can refer to them. It's also applicable to silver.
Haven't you noticed? This surge and plunge in precious metals happened just before the Spring Festival. If you remember the snowball product liquidation two years ago, it also happened before the Spring Festival. It makes me seem like a party pooper. Everyone is celebrating the New Year happily, and I'm talking about collapses and liquidations. Right? I'm also helpless. It might be because it's before the Spring Festival, when liquidity in institutions and banks is tightened, and people are restless before the holiday, so the market is prone to fluctuations. So, everyone be careful. Be cautious before holidays in the future.
Okay, that's all for today. Finally, I wish you all a happy Year of the Horse and happiness in the horse year. Bye-bye.