What caught my eye this week.
Where were you for the Great Crash of 2026? Cowering behind the sofa? Or toasting your short positions in the back of an Uber on the way to snag a Lambo?
[Lamb-OH, dear. It’s a car, not a quadruped. Eh? Yes I know we usually have roast dinner on a Sunday.]
Not a crash in the stock market. Don’t panic! Equities continue to chug along in a Schrödinger Bubble.
No, I’m talking about the Great Silver Crash of Friday, 30 January 2026:
Down over 30% at one point. That’s almost the entire Covid crash in the stock market in just one day for the ‘other’ precious metal.
Silver surfer
Gold and silver had been on a tear for months, of course – silver had pretty much gone parabolic. (See the second graph in my links below.)
So to see a blow-up is hardly unexpected, even if – as usual – there seems no certain reason why it crashed from a ludicrously overbought position today as opposed to a week ago.
[Yes dear, I know the man on CNBC said he knows. Why’s he on the telly then and not on his private island? And no I didn’t sell grannie’s silver spoons like you told me to.]
Clearly Trump choosing a non-crazy for the next Federal Reserve chair must have been the catalyst for lesser paranoiacs to start dumping their precious metals and bunker down payments.
But you don’t need to be George Soros to suspect a lot of leverage was involved to create carnage on this scale – and that the ferocity suggests a big squeeze.
Maybe the crazy run-up to this plunge was all due to a handful of hedge knights funds jousting with each other? The Benighted of the Seven Kingdoms having at it?
Paging Michael Lewis!
[No, MICHAEL Lewis dear, not John Lewis. Yes, him who wrote the film about Christian Bale.]
Have a great weekend.
From Monevator
Our updated guide to help you find the best broker – Monevator
Don’t tell me your opinion, show me your portfolio – Monevator [Mogul members]
From the archive-ator: All about the annual ISA allowance – Monevator
News
Ground rent to be capped in England and Wales at £250 a year – Guardian
The UK cities where living standards are rising fastest – Centre for Cities
India, EU agree ‘mother of all trade deals’ – AFP via Yahoo Finance
Household water bills to rise by 5.4% in England and Wales – Guardian
Gold topped $5,000 for the first time ever this week, but now it’s falling – BBC
London’s high land prices need ‘market adjustment’, says housing minister [Paywall] – FT
Mortgage shock for borrowers as nearly 1m five-year deals end soon – Standard
Record number in UK living in ‘very deep poverty’, analysis shows- Guardian
Prime London prices to bottom out this year – This is Money
Millions to get £150 off energy bills for a further five years – BBC
Robinhood CEO says tokenised stocks could prevent another GameStop freeze – CoinDesk
Tether will become ‘gold central bank’ in post-dollar world, says CEO – The Block
Indonesian stock exchange CEO resigns after $84bn market rout – CNBC
Debasement fear – not central bank buying – is driving precious metals – Robin Brooks
Products and services
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More on how leasehold rent (ground rent) will be capped at £250… – Which
…what is changing and when will it happen? – This Is Money
Get up to £1,500 cashback when you transfer your cash and/or investments to Charles Stanley Direct through this affiliate link. Terms apply – Charles Stanley
Santander switch offer: £200 + £25 Amazon gift card – Be Clever With Your Cash
The best fixed-rate cash ISAs – This Is Money
Government confirms you can still open and save into a LISA, pending changes – GOV.UK
Get up to £3,000 cashback when you open or switch to an Interactive Investor SIPP. Terms and fees apply, affiliate link – Interactive Investor
Six ways to find great travel insurance without overpaying – Which
How to get cheap filler seats for theatres and other shows – Be Clever With Your Cash
Homes for sale with air source heat pumps or solar panels, in pictures – Guardian
Scammers mini-special
How scammers tried to steal one man’s Coinbase wallet – CNBC
Scammers got this ‘tech-savvy zillennial’ to click on a dodgy link – Guardian
China executes 11 people linked to Myanmar scam operation – Guardian
Comment and opinion
Don’t be overly fearful of all-time highs – Chart Kid Matt
Do you need to earn £71,000 to match a jobless household on benefits? [Podcast] – BBC
The midlife (spending) crisis – A Wealth of Common Sense
Should artists get a basic income like they do in Ireland? – BBC
Leasehold reforms could have unintended consequences – This Is Money
Top tips to protect your pension in turbulent times – Guardian
When it’s worth paying up for funds [US/niche but interesting] – Morningstar
Renters’ Rights Act brings an accidental tax headache for 150,000+ tenants – T.P.A.
Meet the top-secret NS&I agent who tells people they’ve won £1m – This Is Money
Hargreaves Lansdown’s private equity masters come for a bite – Simple Living in Somerset
“We lived in a van in South London to save up to move to Portugal” – Standard
Elon Musk is wrong. People still need to save – Bloomberg via FA Mag
Naughty corner: Active antics
Zoom’s ‘hidden gem’ stake in Anthropic could be worth $2bn – CNBC
Which UK investment trusts own SpaceX shares? – Morningstar
Megacap tech’s relative valuation near 2022 lows – Sherwood
Termites are feasting on the foundations of dollar dominance [Paywall] – FT
Business Breakdowns: Games Workshop [Podcast] – via Apple
Appreciation for depreciation – Permanent Equity
You probably shouldn’t trade based on insider buying – SSRN
Kindle book bargains
The Book of Money by Monzo – £0.99 on Kindle
The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy – £0.99 on Kindle
80/20 Daily by Richard Koch – £0.99 on Kindle
Feel Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal – £0.99 on Kindle
Or pick up one of the all-time great investing classics – Monevator shop
Environmental factors
How to apply for solar panel funding schemes – The Independent
Australians finding out what happens to human bodies at 49C – Guardian
Plans to power London landmarks with river Thames heat – BBC
Repurposing AI data centre heat to warm homes – CNBC
How humans are making the world’s wildlife dangerously samey – The Conversation
Let the Chinese electric vehicles in – Noahpinion
Robot overlord roundup
The adolescence of technology – Dario Amodei
Wall Street thinks the next bottleneck in AI is chip equipment – Sherwood
AI is hitting the UK harder than other big economies, study finds – Guardian
Why AI won’t wipe out white collar jobs [Paywall] – The Economist
Machine learning in investing – Larry Swedroe
Moltbot is taking over Silicon Valley – Wired
TSMC risk – Stratechery
Not at the dinner table
This is why you have to care – Ryan Holiday
Danger for ‘middle powers’ as the world inches back to pre-WW2 order – BBC
World files for economic divorce from America – Paul Krugman
Centrist ideas no longer wanted in the Tory party, says Badenoch – Guardian
The ICE shootings are a tipping point – Strength in Numbers
The end of panda diplomacy as Japan returns bears to China – Guardian
Francis Fukuyama: after Davos – Persuasion
The great entertainment – Kyla Scanlon
Brainy mini-special
Neuroplasticity: how the brain can change – The Conversation
UK man given Musk’s Neuralink brain chip says it ‘feels magical’ – Sky
Scientists find helping to raise grandchildren is good for the brain – USA Today
Terry Pratchett’s novels may have held clues to his dementia – The Conversation
Off our beat
Where breakthrough ideas actually come from – Next Big Idea Club
Polygamous working: why some people hold down two jobs or more – Guardian
A mental model that could change your life – Darius Foroux
Career advice for young people from top VC Bill Gurley – via Tim Ferriss
How Europe is planning to build its own sovereign tech stack – Sherwood
In defence of pop-ups – Seth Godin
And finally…
“The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan. Stick to the good plan.”
– Jack Bogle, The Little Book of Common Sense Investing
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On Thursday I said to my wife, I did, “I think we’d better sell some gold and silver next week”. Timing’s a bugger, isn’t it?
Oh well, now we’ll just have to buy more.
Parabolic run ups always pull back hard and fast. Markets rise much further than you expect, and then fall faster than you’d imagined. Rinse and repeat.
5% in SILG, GDX, GDXJ miner/ junior and GLDE gold + income ETFs and ETP. Even on SILG, this puts me all the ways back to…the beginning of January.
No biggie. Provided, of course, that this isn’t a long term trend reversal.
Currently though, I’m not too worried given that:
– physical silver is trading $50-$80 troy ounce over spot (acting as a magnet for prices in the paper market);
– demand is driven fundamentally by Chinese derisking out of (easy to seize/freeze) US Treasuries (and Xi just purged the top honcho on the PRC Central Military Commission opposed to a Taiwan blockade);
– retail are only just waking up to the trade (miners now make up just 1% of US equity market cap, whereas in the fifties it was 12%, and, before the surge of the past year, ‘badged’ public market silver miners barely topped $50 bn in their combined market cap);
– silver (and copper) demand is exploding off of the back of the energy transition (especially for solar), the accelerating electrification in EMs, and the unprecedented data centres buildout; and,
– there is a structural production shortfall (for silver, copper, lithium and rare earths – it’s actually worse for copper, but silver’s also undersupplied for the foreseeable future given; as with gold, platinum, copper and rare earths; chronic underinvestment by the miners over many years).
As always, time will tell. In the meantime, buckle up. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
Ain’t that the truth. Did sell some at peak but wish I’d had the nerve to sell more. Still, the portfolio did look very nice a couple of days ago!