Silver just plunged from $91 to $85, erasing nearly 7% in a matter of hours.
To retail traders, it looked like panic.
To algorithms, it looked like volatility.
But to anyone watching the system structure — it looked engineered.
Because nothing in physical supply changed.
Nothing in industrial demand collapsed.
Nothing in macro liquidity flipped.
So what actually happened?
Let’s break down the three structural forces behind this move — and why this may be the last controlled reset before $100.
1. THE END-OF-MONTH “CURSE” — A PERFECT THREE-MONTH PATTERN
Three consecutive months.
Three violent drops.
All clustered around futures expiration.
December 2025
Silver fell from $83 to $70 in 48 hours.
Then fully recovered.
January 2026
After printing $121, silver collapsed 42% back to $70 — again in the final 48 hours of the month.
February opened… and price surged back to $91.
February 2026 (Now)
Another sharp drop. Another expiration window.
Random? Hardly.
The biggest beneficiaries of these collapses are:
• Short sellers
• Institutions with delivery obligations
• Market makers managing contract exposure
Lower prices reduce their liability.
But here’s what matters more:
Each drop is getting smaller.
From a $51 collapse…
To $13…
To now just $6.
That’s not weakness.
That’s diminishing downside control.
The sellers are running out of ammunition.
Buyers are stepping in earlier — and higher.
2. THE CME “TECHNICAL HALT” — OR A FORCED COOLING MECHANISM?
During the selloff, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) suddenly halted trading across metals — citing “technical issues.”
Timing?
Right before First Notice Day for March delivery — one of the largest physical delivery months of the year.
Open interest was elevated.
Warehouse inventories were declining.
Delivery pressure was building.
Then something even more revealing happened:
Gold reopened and surged $20.
Silver reopened… and was immediately sold down another $2.
Normally, gold and silver move in tight correlation.
This divergence was targeted.
And here’s the deeper issue:
COMEX silver inventories dropped 15 million ounces in 14 days — from 102M to 87M.
When more buyers demand physical metal than the vaults comfortably hold, the risk isn’t volatility.
The risk is delivery stress.
Halting trading creates breathing room.
It allows brokers to pressure long holders to roll contracts forward instead of demanding metal.
It slows velocity.
It buys time.
3. THE JP MORGAN SIGNAL — AND THE PHYSICAL MARKET DISCONNECT
While paper markets convulsed, the physical market did not blink.
A rare research projection from JP Morgan modeled gold equilibrium between $5,900 and $9,300 per ounce.
Using historical gold-silver ratios, that implicitly anchors silver’s strategic floor around $70–$75.
Silver at $85 is not breakdown territory.
It’s trading above the modeled institutional floor.
Meanwhile:
Shanghai silver $XAG pricing continues holding above $100 equivalent, with significant premiums over Western spot pricing.
That is not collapse.
That is physical scarcity.
When paper drops and physical premiums stay elevated, the system is revealing strain.
WHAT THIS REALLY IS: VELOCITY MANAGEMENT
The 50-day moving average has been rising for nine consecutive months.
The trend has not been broken.
What we are witnessing is not trend destruction.
It is trend containment.
Market makers are not trying to kill the bull market.
They are trying to manage its speed.
An uncontrolled vertical breakout risks triggering cascading delivery failures.
So instead:
They reset momentum.
They shake leverage.
They engineer controlled drops.
But the floor keeps rising.
WHAT COMES NEXT?
Short term expectation:
A reclaim of $90 within the first half of March.
Key resistance:
$92 is the final structural wall.
Once that level breaks decisively, the path to $100 becomes psychologically and technically open.
And $100 is not just a number.
It is a media trigger.
A retail trigger.
A FOMO ignition point.
When that happens, the velocity will no longer be manageable.
FINAL THESIS
This $6 drop does not reflect silver weakness.
It reflects stress inside a paper-based pricing system attempting to suppress a rising physical demand wave.
Each month, the suppression window gets smaller.
Each month, the rebounds get faster.
The question is no longer if silver reaches $100.
The question is how many more “controlled detonations” the system can execute before control is lost.
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*This is personal insight, not financial advice.
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