YProfit

It's astonishing how quickly market sentiment changes, and with it, all this media offal.

Where are all those stories about growing demand for precious metals, supply shortages, spreads with China, depleting reserves, inflation, debt, dollar devaluation, the huge overhang of free cash, the search for safe haven amidst rising geopolitical risks and global instability, and dozens of other reasons used to justify the record pump in the precious metals market?

Did it all somehow get forgotten in a single day? Where are all those forecasts that silver would reach 150-200 by summer? Hey, where did you all disappear to?

Everything that had been hyping up the public over the last six months, and in a particularly perverse and frenzied form over the last 1.5-2 months, turned out to be a dud.

This shows what has long been known – the core reason for the pump was frenzied speculative demand against the backdrop of capital rotation from the AI bubble, massive dumbing down, and retail access to precious metals trading clusters. It's like letting a goat into the vegetable garden. They are bound to break the market, and that's exactly what happened to an initially extremely conservative market segment.

A brief recap of what happened:

• Gold: +29.7% at the peak from the start of the year and +31% from the December 31 low, crashed 16.4% from this week's high to the January 30 low. The scale of the crash (liquidation level) amounts to 71.5% of the accumulated pump compared to the year-end closing (following the specified sequence). 100% liquidation means falling from highs back to the 2025 closing level.

• Silver: +69.9% and +73.5% respectively, crashed 38.8%, liquidation 94.4%, i.e., almost back to the 2025 close.

• Platinum: +42.5% and +52.2%, crashed 31.7% (peak January 26), liquidation 106.3%, i.e., back to the 2025 closing level and then lower.

• Palladium: +35% and +44.3%, crashed 25.4%, liquidation 98.1%, i.e., nearly the entire accumulated 2026 pump has been liquidated.

There's nothing surprising here. What's strange is not the crash, but the pump over a month that was absolutely groundless, achieving what used to take almost a decade. The crash is a consequence of the insane pump, based on:

· Mindless folly (hysterical, convulsive pump without reason or sound macro factors, neglect of risks, escalation of margin trading),
· Hallucinations (inadequate assessment of reality),
· Rampant cash, largely redistributed from the stock market bubble, plus new money attracted by escalating media coverage, where growth caught interest in precious metals, and interest provoked new growth, and so on in a chain reaction.

Given the extreme and utterly inadequate level of overbought conditions and involvement of mindless speculative capital (the only moments stronger than the current one were a few days in January 1980), the outcome was predetermined.

Such idiocy in the precious metals market always ends the same way – a hard dump and a trend change for several months or even years.

From a technical standpoint, after a crushing collapse, there is usually always an attempt to return to at least half of the decline's magnitude and several weeks of consolidation.

🔘 This was the case in early 1980, when it ranged for about 6-7 weeks before starting a new phase of decline from March.
🔘 This was the case in 2011, when silver crashed by a third in 4 days (by May 6, 2011), then ranged within 20% until July. From July, there was an attempt to return to the April highs with a 33% rise, and only from September 2011 did the 10-year bear market begin.

It happened according to a similar pattern almost always under conditions of a strong pump.

Usually, after such strong emotional involvement, there is a return to an area of heavy consolidation (last week was a record for silver trading volume across all global markets).

This means it's logical to expect a consolidation phase in a wide range with high volatility over the next couple of months, with attempts to reach 5300-5400 for gold and 100-105 for silver, in order to resume the decline in spring towards fundamentally justified levels (closer to 3500-3700 for gold and 40-45 for silver).

Come si sono comportati i mercati sviluppati nel 2025?
Il mercato americano, misurato dall'S&P 500, è cresciuto del 16,4% nel 2025. Tuttavia, rispetto ad altri mercati sviluppati, questo è stato un aumento relativamente modesto, poiché c'era una vera frenesia su un ampio fronte: Europa – 16,7%, Giappone – 26,2%, Canada – 28,2%, Taiwan – 25,7%, Corea – 92,6% (!), Australia – 6,2%, Singapore – 22,7%, e Israele – 51% di crescita annuale.
Rally di Recupero e Performance Triennale
In larga misura, questa dinamica aggressiva è stata plasmata da una performance in ritardo (rispetto al mercato statunitense) nel 2023-2024. Il rally è iniziato a gennaio 2023, quindi la crescita cumulativa dei mercati in valuta locale nel corso di tre anni è stata la seguente: USA – 78,3%, Europa – 39,4%, Giappone – 92,9%, Canada – 63,6%, Taiwan – 104,9%, Corea – 110,5%, Australia – 24%, Israele – 102,1%, e Singapore – 42,9%.

💎 Cosa è successo nel mercato dei metalli preziosi questa settimana? Oro, argento e platino hanno raggiunto massimi storici, mentre il paladio ha raggiunto il suo livello più alto dal dicembre 2022.

Rallentamenti settimanali senza precedenti:
•Argento 📈: +18,1% — la migliore settimana da febbraio 1998.
•Platino 🔥: +23,6% — la migliore settimana da gennaio 1980.

Performance in un giorno:
•Argento ⚡ — il miglior giorno da settembre 2008.
•Platino e paladio 🚀 — il miglior giorno da marzo 2020.

Per l'argento e il platino, ieri ha segnato un record storico — la prestazione più forte mai registrata durante un breakout di prezzo.