Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
So glad my 2 Costco’s were out of gold and silver this week. Checked Friday night and they had gold at 8% premium over spot and silver at 29% premium over spot. Usually Costco has 2% premium on gold and 7-10% on silver. Supposedly Costco doesn’t usually reprice on weekends because major global markets are closed. May reprice lower on Monday unless Cuba or Iran news.
Barron's features at least 3 stories on the precious metals in their Feb. 2 edition. I haven't had time to read, but wouldn't attempt to characterize the content even if I had. Steven Sears writes almost exclusively about hedging risky assets with options trades. So, likely what that one is about.
Gold Is Soaring and Wall Street Calls It 'Debasement! Is It? By Jack Hough
Silver Is Paying for Its Excesses. Silver Miner Stocks May Be a Buy By Andrew Bary
Can Silver Go Higher Still? How to Play It Safer. By Steven M. Sears
I think it's important to recognize that @rono and @Old_Joe did not enter the market Thursday and incur the total loss Friday. Both have played the market for a while and have handsome profits to this point.
I'm mostly a bottom feeder - grubbing out what I perceive as lower risk opportunities. So haven played in the metals for at least 2 years. My real assets fund, RAPAX, has a bit of exposure and fell 2% Friday. For contrast, T.Rowe's real asset fund PRAFX fell 4% and PRPFX was off -6.26% - and was late in reporting Friday for whatever reason. The closest one-day experience I can relate to here is when I bought a slim chunk of CZR last fall and it dropped 15% the very next day. I sold on the way down so probably ate a 10% loss. No longer own.
I've got an article and FB post by a long time friend of mine, Pat Heller. He founded Liberty Coin here in Lansing and I've been dealing with him for over 30 years. In all honesty, I would classify him as a coin dealer, gold bug, civil libertarian. Here is the FB post from the Liberty Coin Service page.
"Today we have seen the greatest percentage one-day decline in silver's price and among the largest percentage one-day declines in gold, platinum, and palladium prices. At the low points today, gold dropped to $4,690.25, silver fell to $75.14, platinum to $2,011.00, and palladium to $1,600.00 If this truly represented a genuine financial market shift, you would be seeing confirmations of similar declines in other commodities, stocks, and the like. As of a couple minutes ago copper was only down -3.9% from yesterday while Brent crude oil and natural gas prices were actually higher. Major US stock indices are down, but less than 2%. By the way, the Shanghai Gold Exchange weighted average silver price today as $129.35 on a volume of 17.1 million ounces. This was a decline of about $4 from yesterday. On the Shanghai Futures Exchange the closing price for the February 2026 silver contract was at $126.16 per ounce. Obviously there are major buyers for physical silver for immediate delivery at prices much higher than they are at the moment. What can be surmised from today's changes only in precious metals is that this was not a standard correction move, since it wasn't confirmed in other financial markets. Instead, it is a pretty blatant coordinated action to manipulate downward only precious metals prices. Naturally, none of the COMEX precious metals prices are reporting closing markets yet today, just as they were extremely delayed yesterday. This by itself is suspicious about market manipulation going on behind the scenes. As of a few minutes ago, here were the ask spot prices at which Liberty Coin Service was calculating its selling prices for physical precious metals products: Gold: $4,930.00 Silver: $87.16 Platinum: $2,193.00 Palladium: $1,741.00 Already today Liberty Coin Service has experienced our highest daily retail sales in more than a decade. Expect precious metals prices to recover even more, though it may take a few days or a week or two for gold to again top $5,000 and silver to reach $100. One question to ask is why engage in such aggressive price suppression tactics today. Today is the final trading day of the month, which is used by technical chart traders in making investment decisions. Today's price declines were magnified as falling prices heavily impacted recent buyers who made leveraged investments. The declines were so great that probably a high percentage of the were forced to liquidate positions, which added to downward prices. Now that these "weak hands" buyers are out of the market, it is almost certain that continuing downward pressure is pretty much over. When there's no one left to sell other than a handful of panicking small-time investors, prices are almost certain to go back up from now going forward."
Here is Pat's article for Numismatic News, which along with Coin World is one of the leading papers on coin collecting. Pat's a regular contributor.
Right now are starting to remind me of Nixon's gas price controls. All of a sudden, all the stations were out of gas.
The current spot [read: paper] price is $85.91. An American Silver Eagle at Apmex is $106.87 with a credit card. Now, that is a serious premium. Overseas, silver for delivery is going for upwards of $120.
Hoo-boy. My own timing in not throwing money at the metals very recently was perfect.
I also think that I would have gotten crushed had I jumped on the momentum. I am happy to see others making money off this trade though.
There are three areas that I have little to no exposure that are looking interesting to me this year: INTL, SMIDs & PMs. I can see a case for exposure, but fear engaging right before a period of correction. I assume many others are feeling the same.
Let's keep this in perspective... so far I'm doing OK with this, but I don't consider this so much as an "investment", but rather simply gambling money. Rono's been actually investing in precious metals for years, and knows his way around the block.
From the 2nd link provided my rono, re: gold: “I think that the low turmoil rallies are done,” Button said. “The path is still higher, but it's a lot more volatile.”
I'm working on my story to tell you guys what a really smart move I made just before whatever happens next happens next. But I gotta wait until it happens until I can tell you what I did before it happened.
I'm working on my story to tell you guys what a really smart move I made just before whatever happens next happens next. But I gotta wait until it happens until I can tell you what I did before it happened. [snip]
I know someone who may be able to assist with the narrative. They have extensive experience in this area.
E Gads! Typical Bloomberg overhype. First time I've ever heard the word "crash" used to depict an asset (GLD) that's ahead +243% over one year and positive by +10% over the past month
(Symbol corrected. Sorry)
Look at SLV +165% over 1 year and +17% in the past month. What crash?
These are volatile investments. Generally, the miners more volatile than the metals. But that wasn't the case Friday. I've seen 3-year stretches when the miners lost near 70% of their value. I don't have the dates, but Oppenheimer liquidated its commodities fund QRAAX in 2016 following a disastrous period for commodities in general. So likely the last precious metals carnage occurred somewhere around the same time or a bit prior.
Silver bullion definitely had a crash on Friday (1/30/26).
In general, a rapid decline of over 20% from whatever level qualifies as crash.
Flash-crash is a decline of over 10% in a very short period.
There was a flash crash in precious metals on Thursday morning (1/29/26), but as they recovered later, that didn't make much news. IMO, a big seller was testing the waters/ice on Thursday.
Silver-miners showed good relative strength on Friday, SIL -14.78% vs SLV -28.58% or futures SI=F -31.37%. (Yahoo Finance data).
Old_Joe said : I'm working on my story to tell you guys what a really smart move I made just before whatever happens next happens next. But I gotta wait until it happens until I can tell you what I did before it happened.
That is called b***shitting rather than being skillful or luckily made those moves.
I know next to nothing on precious metals so i invest in small %. In my opinion, this volatile asset class is good for trading in and out. Warren Buffet does not invested in gold because gold (unlike stocks) does not pay a dividend.
Few managers such as First Eagle invest 5-10% so to manage the stock market volatility with the tradeoff with the fund performance over the long term.
I have owned Gold and miners with a little silver for a long time, influenced by all the "Fiat currency" noise now worse. The guy managing a chunk of our money sold half our Gold miners on Weds. He is not Chinese but maybe he suspected something was up, although more likely we had a great run and he wanted to take money off the table and put it into something less overbought.
I think there is a good case to be made for all commodities with a declining dollar and inflation likely increasing.
I would not get in in a big way now, but if you do not own any their are several decent MF to look at
A natural resource fund like GRHAX which includes PM is another option as it will include PM, energy and maybe even Uranium
AVLAX owns mostly energy and Gold now but can go anywhere.
First Eagle Overseas and Global also have significant exposure to gold in a "value fund" wrapper
@Observant1 posted Jean-Marie Eveillard earned his reputation managing the SoGen International Fund¹ from 1979 until 2004. Mr. Eveillard was named Morningstar’s International Manager of the Year in 2001 and received its first Fund Manager Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. Wealthtrack interviewed Eveillard in 2015.
¹ renamed to First Eagle SoGen Global Fund in 2000.
First Eagle fund holds about 5-10% in gold. Matthew McClennan the current manager, often featured in WealthTrack. Just like hot sauce, a little will add flavor, but a bottle full may set you on fire.
MFO search doesn't pull up anything on active ETFs GDE or GDMN.
GDE is LC stocks and gold. AUM $642.4 million, ER 0.20% (low for active ETF).
GDMN is gold-miners and gold with leverage 1.8x (effective 90% in gold-miners, 90% in gold-bullion). AUM $232.4 million, ER 0.45% (seems low for leveraged and active fund).
there has never been any asset\commodity\stock where a single 30% drop would not be considered a crash. and nothing such, if considered normal, could survive long.
if one looks at the highest 10yr volatility 'asset' , it is currently bitcoin at ~70%. but if you attempt to find another crypto where 20-30% is\was expected daily volatility, they rapidly cease to exist.
Sorry. I screwed up with the ticker for gold etf. It should be GLD. what I had earlier was GDL (Gabelli Great Deal Fund). I owned it (GDL) until it started going up so fast I feared people were buying it thinking they were investing in a gold fund.
Silver bullion definitely had a crash on Friday (1/30/26).
In general, a rapid decline of over 20% from whatever level qualifies as crash.Flash-crash is a decline of over 10% in a very short period.
I beg to differ. Nothing in stone that I know of regarding crash, correction, hard correction, dip,downturn or swoon. A 20% dip in the overall market would probably be regarded as a crash. But in one narrow sector like precious metals?
Has oil crashed? It's down more than 50% from its 2007 high of $147.
If still being up +140-170% in a year (GLD / SLV) qualifies as a "crash" I'd like to own more things that crash.
Commonly applied definitions for various market declines are listed below. Some market commentators, journalists, and investment professionals may use other definitions. The description for market crash is somewhat ambiguous.
Pullback/dip: Decline of 5%-9% from a recent peak in a major index (e.g., S&P 500). Correction: Decline of more than 10% but less than 20% from a recent peak. Bear market: Decline of more than 20% from a recent peak—usually measured peak‑to‑trough. Market crash (informal): A very rapid decline—often more than 20%—which occurs in just days or weeks. Distinguished by speed rather than just the percentage alone.
Thanks @Observant1 / Those conform to common usage. I'm saying there's nothing "common" about the precious metals. They have a history of erratic performance.
FWIW: Here's an interactive chart of gold's performance from 1978-2025. The spikes higher in price stand out. But if you add up the declines / duration it appears that 30% or greater declines over just a few years are quite common.
The big years? In '1979 gold gained about 130% (followed by nearly a decade of losses)
Nothing later approached the '79 year performance. However, the run up over the past 3 or 4 years appears greater in aggrigate than '79. Looks like over the next 8 years (after '79) it gave back quite a bit.
Comments
Usually Costco has 2% premium on gold and 7-10% on silver. Supposedly Costco doesn’t usually reprice on weekends because major global markets are closed. May reprice lower on Monday unless Cuba or Iran news.
Gold Is Soaring and Wall Street Calls It 'Debasement! Is It?
By Jack Hough
Silver Is Paying for Its Excesses.
Silver Miner Stocks May Be a Buy
By Andrew Bary
Can Silver Go Higher Still? How to Play It Safer.
By Steven M. Sears
I think it's important to recognize that @rono and @Old_Joe did not enter the market Thursday and incur the total loss Friday. Both have played the market for a while and have handsome profits to this point.
I'm mostly a bottom feeder - grubbing out what I perceive as lower risk opportunities. So haven played in the metals for at least 2 years. My real assets fund, RAPAX, has a bit of exposure and fell 2% Friday. For contrast, T.Rowe's real asset fund PRAFX fell 4% and PRPFX was off -6.26% - and was late in reporting Friday for whatever reason. The closest one-day experience I can relate to here is when I bought a slim chunk of CZR last fall and it dropped 15% the very next day. I sold on the way down so probably ate a 10% loss. No longer own.
I've got an article and FB post by a long time friend of mine, Pat Heller. He founded Liberty Coin here in Lansing and I've been dealing with him for over 30 years. In all honesty, I would classify him as a coin dealer, gold bug, civil libertarian. Here is the FB post from the Liberty Coin Service page.
"Today we have seen the greatest percentage one-day decline in silver's price and among the largest percentage one-day declines in gold, platinum, and palladium prices.
At the low points today, gold dropped to $4,690.25, silver fell to $75.14, platinum to $2,011.00, and palladium to $1,600.00
If this truly represented a genuine financial market shift, you would be seeing confirmations of similar declines in other commodities, stocks, and the like. As of a couple minutes ago copper was only down -3.9% from yesterday while Brent crude oil and natural gas prices were actually higher. Major US stock indices are down, but less than 2%.
By the way, the Shanghai Gold Exchange weighted average silver price today as $129.35 on a volume of 17.1 million ounces. This was a decline of about $4 from yesterday. On the Shanghai Futures Exchange the closing price for the February 2026 silver contract was at $126.16 per ounce. Obviously there are major buyers for physical silver for immediate delivery at prices much higher than they are at the moment.
What can be surmised from today's changes only in precious metals is that this was not a standard correction move, since it wasn't confirmed in other financial markets. Instead, it is a pretty blatant coordinated action to manipulate downward only precious metals prices.
Naturally, none of the COMEX precious metals prices are reporting closing markets yet today, just as they were extremely delayed yesterday. This by itself is suspicious about market manipulation going on behind the scenes.
As of a few minutes ago, here were the ask spot prices at which Liberty Coin Service was calculating its selling prices for physical precious metals products:
Gold: $4,930.00
Silver: $87.16
Platinum: $2,193.00
Palladium: $1,741.00
Already today Liberty Coin Service has experienced our highest daily retail sales in more than a decade. Expect precious metals prices to recover even more, though it may take a few days or a week or two for gold to again top $5,000 and silver to reach $100.
One question to ask is why engage in such aggressive price suppression tactics today. Today is the final trading day of the month, which is used by technical chart traders in making investment decisions.
Today's price declines were magnified as falling prices heavily impacted recent buyers who made leveraged investments. The declines were so great that probably a high percentage of the were forced to liquidate positions, which added to downward prices. Now that these "weak hands" buyers are out of the market, it is almost certain that continuing downward pressure is pretty much over. When there's no one left to sell other than a handful of panicking small-time investors, prices are almost certain to go back up from now going forward."
Here is Pat's article for Numismatic News, which along with Coin World is one of the leading papers on coin collecting. Pat's a regular contributor.
https://www.numismaticnews.net/increasing-capacity-problems-in-the-physical-silver-market?fbclid=IwY2xjawPrI7VleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFJNW5ybWt3YzY5ZENuWHJlc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHii_13KIqUewP3aStgMm7xIh0HMD8PEQJsDbjmm-UbsA6V64_Ev3TCP08c07_aem_e3tGkTxbUzgMTBucc2BXZg
Right now are starting to remind me of Nixon's gas price controls. All of a sudden, all the stations were out of gas.
The current spot [read: paper] price is $85.91. An American Silver Eagle at Apmex is $106.87 with a credit card. Now, that is a serious premium. Overseas, silver for delivery is going for upwards of $120.
Here's a nice article from Kitco.
and so it goes,
peace,
rono
Jonathan Krinsky believes silver will head back to ~$55, after a bump up following the big decline.
Obviously the prediction business is a tough one. There are polarized opinions involved. I also think that I would have gotten crushed had I jumped on the momentum. I am happy to see others making money off this trade though.
There are three areas that I have little to no exposure that are looking interesting to me this year: INTL, SMIDs & PMs. I can see a case for exposure, but fear engaging right before a period of correction. I assume many others are feeling the same.
Hey, OJ, it's ALL casino money and gambling against the house.
Sorry, Mark, here's a couple.
https://www.kitco.com/news/article/2026-01-30/gold-silver-selloff-was-inevitable-after-januarys-explosive-rally-broader
https://www.kitco.com/news/article/2026-01-30/wall-street-entertains-every-possibility-after-golds-wild-ride-main-street
and so it goes,
peace,
rono
Or something.
They have extensive experience in this area.
“How Chinese speculators set the stage for gold and silver crash”.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinese-speculators-set-stage-gold-120029836.html
(Symbol corrected. Sorry)
Look at SLV +165% over 1 year and +17% in the past month. What crash?
These are volatile investments. Generally, the miners more volatile than the metals. But that wasn't the case Friday. I've seen 3-year stretches when the miners lost near 70% of their value. I don't have the dates, but Oppenheimer liquidated its commodities fund QRAAX in 2016 following a disastrous period for commodities in general. So likely the last precious metals carnage occurred somewhere around the same time or a bit prior.
In general, a rapid decline of over 20% from whatever level qualifies as crash.
Flash-crash is a decline of over 10% in a very short period.
There was a flash crash in precious metals on Thursday morning (1/29/26), but as they recovered later, that didn't make much news. IMO, a big seller was testing the waters/ice on Thursday.
Silver-miners showed good relative strength on Friday, SIL -14.78% vs SLV -28.58% or futures SI=F -31.37%. (Yahoo Finance data).
Edit/Add. iShares is showing that ETF SLV was at -19.33% discount at Friday close. Some fund valuations may be stale.
https://www.ishares.com/us/products/239855/ishares-silver-trust-fund
I know next to nothing on precious metals so i invest in small %. In my opinion, this volatile asset class is good for trading in and out. Warren Buffet does not invested in gold because gold (unlike stocks) does not pay a dividend.
Few managers such as First Eagle invest 5-10% so to manage the stock market volatility with the tradeoff with the fund performance over the long term.
I think there is a good case to be made for all commodities with a declining dollar and inflation likely increasing.
I would not get in in a big way now, but if you do not own any their are several decent MF to look at
A natural resource fund like GRHAX which includes PM is another option as it will include PM, energy and maybe even Uranium
AVLAX owns mostly energy and Gold now but can go anywhere.
First Eagle Overseas and Global also have significant exposure to gold in a "value fund" wrapper
GDE is LC stocks and gold. AUM $642.4 million, ER 0.20% (low for active ETF).
GDMN is gold-miners and gold with leverage 1.8x (effective 90% in gold-miners, 90% in gold-bullion). AUM $232.4 million, ER 0.45% (seems low for leveraged and active fund).
Both from WisdomTree.
if one looks at the highest 10yr volatility 'asset' , it is currently bitcoin at ~70%.
but if you attempt to find another crypto where 20-30% is\was expected daily volatility, they rapidly cease to exist.
Has oil crashed? It's down more than 50% from its 2007 high of $147.
If still being up +140-170% in a year (GLD / SLV) qualifies as a "crash" I'd like to own more things that crash.
Some market commentators, journalists, and investment professionals may use other definitions.
The description for market crash is somewhat ambiguous.
Pullback/dip: Decline of 5%-9% from a recent peak in a major index (e.g., S&P 500).
Correction: Decline of more than 10% but less than 20% from a recent peak.
Bear market: Decline of more than 20% from a recent peak—usually measured peak‑to‑trough.
Market crash (informal): A very rapid decline—often more than 20%—which occurs in just days or weeks.
Distinguished by speed rather than just the percentage alone.
FWIW: Here's an interactive chart of gold's performance from 1978-2025. The spikes higher in price stand out. But if you add up the declines / duration it appears that 30% or greater declines over just a few years are quite common.
https://curvo.eu/backtest/en/market-index/gold-bullion?currency=eur
(Scroll down to the green & red bar chart.)
From 1981 thru 1984 gold fell over 50%.
From 1988-1992 gold fell about 35%.
From 1994-2000 gold fell about 30%.
From 2013 thru 2015 gold fell about 40%.
The big years? In '1979 gold gained about 130% (followed by nearly a decade of losses)
Nothing later approached the '79 year performance. However, the run up over the past 3 or 4 years appears greater in aggrigate than '79. Looks like over the next 8 years (after '79) it gave back quite a bit.