If you’ve looked at the price of silver now, you know things are getting a little weird. Honestly, "weird" might be an understatement. We are currently sitting in a market where silver is trading around $90 per ounce, a level that would have sounded like a fever dream just two years ago.
It’s January 18, 2026.
👉 See also: 2000 AUD to USD: What You’re Actually Getting After the Fees
The white metal has been on an absolute tear, and if you're wondering why your local coin shop is suddenly looking like a high-security vault, it’s because silver has effectively outperformed almost every other major asset class over the last twelve months. In 2025 alone, silver surged nearly 150%. Now, in the first few weeks of 2026, it’s already tacked on another 25%. We’re not just talking about a "rally" anymore; we’re talking about a structural shift in how the world values this stuff.
What is Driving the Price of Silver Now?
Basically, it’s a perfect storm. You’ve got the Federal Reserve cutting rates, a weakening dollar, and a geopolitical map that looks like a game of Risk played by people who haven't slept in a week. But that’s only half the story.
The real kicker is the physical supply. Or rather, the lack of it.
For the fifth year in a row, the world is in a silver deficit. We are literally using more silver than we are pulling out of the ground. While gold gets all the headlines as a "safe haven," silver is the quiet workhorse of the green energy revolution. You can’t build a solar panel without silver. You can't build an electric vehicle (EV) without it. You certainly can’t run the massive AI data centers everyone is obsessed with without high-conductivity silver components.
The $100 Psychological Barrier
Is $100 silver actually going to happen?
Earlier this week, spot silver kissed $93.52 before pulling back slightly. Some experts, like Ned Naylor-Leyland from Jupiter Asset Management, have been vocal about the fact that $100 isn't just a possibility—it's likely. When the price of silver now hovers in the $90 range, that triple-digit milestone acts like a giant magnet.
But silver is famously volatile.
It doesn't go up in a straight line. It’s more like a caffeinated squirrel. Just look at the trading session today, January 18. We saw some sharp profit-taking, with prices dipping toward the $89.94 mark. For some, that’s a "crash." For others who bought in when it was $30, it’s just a Tuesday.
The Industrial Squeeze You Didn't See Coming
Most people forget that silver is a "by-product" metal. About 75% of the silver produced globally is a side effect of mining for copper, lead, and zinc. This means even if the price of silver now doubles again, miners can't just "turn on the tap." They have to want more copper or lead first.
Then there's China.
Recently, China started restricting silver exports, similar to what they did with rare earth metals. They know what's up. They need the metal for their own massive solar and EV industries. This has created a massive premium in the Shanghai market—sometimes as much as $10 over the London or New York price. When you see that kind of arbitrage opportunity, you know the "official" spot price is struggling to keep up with reality.
Why the Gold-to-Silver Ratio Matters
Investors love the gold-to-silver ratio. It’s basically a measure of how many ounces of silver it takes to buy one ounce of gold. Historically, this ratio averaged around 15:1 for centuries. In early 2025, it was bloated, way over 80:1.
Today? It’s crashed down to nearly 51:1.
Silver is moving way faster than gold. While gold is hitting its own records (flirting with $5,000 in some forecasts), silver is the one doing the heavy lifting in terms of percentage gains. It’s the "poor man's gold" no more; it’s becoming the "smart man's industrial play."
The Risks: What Could Kill the Rally?
Let's be real—nothing goes up forever without a fight. If the Fed suddenly decides to hike rates again (unlikely, but hey, it’s 2026), silver would take a hit. High interest rates make non-yielding assets like silver less attractive compared to a high-yield savings account or bonds.
There's also the "substitution" risk. If silver stays at $90 or $100, engineers will try to find ways to use less of it in solar panels or electronics. They’ve tried this before, though. Silver is the most conductive metal on the periodic table. You can try to use copper, but you lose efficiency. In the world of high-speed AI and efficient green energy, "good enough" usually isn't.
How to Navigate the Current Market
If you're looking at the price of silver now and thinking about jumping in, you've got to be okay with the swings. Silver is not for the faint of heart. It’s a small market compared to gold, which means when the "big money" moves in, the price can skyrocket. But when they leave? It’s a fast elevator down.
- Watch the Premiums: Don't just look at the "spot" price. If you’re buying physical coins like American Silver Eagles, you might be paying $10 or $15 over spot. That means silver has to go up significantly just for you to break even.
- Consider the Miners: Silver mining stocks act like silver on steroids. If the metal goes up 10%, the miners might go up 30%. But the reverse is also true.
- The Industrial Pulse: Keep an eye on global manufacturing data. If solar installations slow down in India or China, the floor for silver could get soft.
The reality of the price of silver now is that we are in uncharted territory. Whether it hits $100 tomorrow or next month, the underlying story of a world that is running out of a metal it desperately needs hasn't changed.
If you're holding physical metal, the current volatility is just noise. But if you're trading on margin, be careful. This market has a habit of flushing out the over-leveraged right before the next big move. Stay informed by monitoring the Shanghai Gold Exchange premiums and the COMEX inventory levels, as these are currently the most reliable indicators of where the physical metal is actually flowing.