Silver Rises Over 120% YTD 
Silver just crossed $100 an ounce. Gold is pushing $5,000. And if you’re watching traditional finance experts react to this move, you’d think we’re witnessing a speculative blowoff top.
They’re wrong. And here’s why.
In his latest video, precious metals analyst Alan Hibbard breaks down a critical distinction most investors miss — one that explains why silver at $100 isn’t the end of this bull market. It’s just getting started.
The Tweet That Captures Wall Street’s Confusion
A recent post from a CFA summarizes the sentiment perfectly: “Silver’s in the middle of a blowoff top. The people who didn’t buy at $20 are now buying at $93 expecting silver to go to $500 by end of year 2026. Investor psychology is wild.”
It’s a fair observation from someone steeped in traditional finance. But it reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how monetary metals work.
Traditional investors value everything through the lens of equities. They understand productivity, earnings growth, and market caps. But gold and silver don’t follow those rules. They operate on an entirely different logic — one based on trust, not productivity.
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Companies Grow at the Speed of Organization. Metals Reset at the Speed of Trust.
Alan illustrates this with a simple comparison: look at the chart of almost any major company — Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, Johnson & Johnson, Walmart, Berkshire Hathaway — and you’ll see the same pattern.
Big returns early. Smaller returns over time.
That makes intuitive sense. When you’re a small company, it’s easy to triple in size. But once you’re a billion-dollar enterprise, growing 300% in a year becomes nearly impossible. You’re constrained by people, capital, time, and coordination.
Precious metals work the opposite way.
In a bull market, the biggest moves come toward the end. Look at the 1970s gold and silver bull market: returns accelerated as the cycle matured. We’re seeing the same pattern now.
- Gold returned 64% in 2025
- Silver returned 146% in 2025
- And the second half of 2025 was stronger than the first half
That’s acceleration. Not exhaustion.
Three Key Differences Between Companies and Monetary Metals
Alan breaks down the divergence into three components:
1. Valuations
Companies rise with productivity and fall with inefficiency. Monetary metals rise as trust erodes and fall as confidence returns. They’re measuring completely different forces.
2. Limitations
Companies are bounded by real-world constraints: labor, capital, logistics. Metals are bounded by human perception: fear, belief, credibility. This means metals can reprice far more violently.
3. Speed
Companies accrue value at the speed of human organization — slow, methodical, incremental. Metals accrue value at the speed of collective realization — the speed of thought. When trust breaks, repricing happens fast.
Alan puts it this way: “If I don’t believe the dollar has value, and you offer me an ounce of silver or $100, I’m taking the silver. If you offer me $200, I’m still taking the silver. If you offer me $300, I’m still taking the silver — because 300 lies isn’t better than 200 lies.”
What Does History Say About Silver at $500?
So is $500 silver by the end of 2026 really that absurd?
Alan runs the numbers using the only reliable data point we have: the 1979 bull market.
On January 22, 1979, silver was trading at $6 an ounce. By the end of that year, it hit $32.20 — a 409% return.
If 2026 delivers the same percentage gain from yesterday’s close of $96.83, silver would end the year at $492 an ounce.
Not $500. The much more reasonable $492.
History doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes. And right now, we’re hearing echoes of the late 1970s — not a speculative blowoff, but a trust collapse accelerating in real time.
Watch Alan’s full breakdown here
If you’re holding silver or considering it, this is the framework you need to understand what’s really happening — and why this move isn’t over.
Investing in Physical Metals Made Easy
People Also Ask
Why is silver suddenly at $100 an ounce?
Silver crossed $100 because it’s repricing at the speed of trust, not the speed of productivity. Unlike stocks that grow with earnings, monetary metals like silver reset in value when confidence in currencies and institutions erodes. Watch Alan Hibbard’s full breakdown on the GoldSilver YouTube channel to understand why this move is accelerating.
Is silver at $100 a bubble or blowoff top?
No — precious metals bull markets work opposite to stocks. While companies deliver their biggest returns early, silver and gold deliver their biggest moves toward the end of the cycle. The 1970s bull market showed the same acceleration pattern we’re seeing today, and history suggests this move isn’t over.
How high could silver go in 2026?
If 2026 mirrors the 1979 bull market’s 409% return, silver could reach $492 per ounce by year-end. That’s not speculation — it’s what would happen if history repeats the same percentage gains from the last major precious metals bull run. Learn more about silver price projections at GoldSilver.com.
What’s the difference between investing in stocks vs. silver?
Companies accrue value at the speed of human organization (slow and bounded by real-world limits), while monetary metals like silver accrue value at the speed of collective realization — which can reprice violently when trust collapses. Stocks are valued by productivity; precious metals are valued by trust erosion.
Is it too late to buy silver at $100?
Based on historical patterns, no. In the 1970s bull market, silver’s biggest gains came after it had already risen significantly — the final year saw 409% returns. Alan Hibbard explains why precious metals accelerate toward the end of bull cycles, not the beginning, in his latest video on the GoldSilver YouTube channel.
