Silver Just Hit a Two-Month High, and It's Still Down Nearly Half From January

Silver opened this week at its highest level since June, trading above $62 an ounce and holding near $58 through early August as tensions around the Strait of Hormuz stayed on pause rather than escalating further. That's a genuinely strong move. It's also a fraction of where the metal stood in January, when it peaked near $116 an ounce after a 190% run from roughly $40 the previous September. Gold tells a similar story, having topped $5,500 an ounce in late January before settling into the $4,100 to $4,600 range for most of the year since.

Both metals are still up dramatically on a year-to-date basis, with silver alone posting gains of more than 100% even after giving back a large chunk of its January peak. The lesson in that gap between "still up huge for the year" and "down nearly half from the high" is one investors in this sector relearn every cycle: parabolic moves in precious metals rarely hold their peak level, and the pullback afterward can feel dramatic even when the longer-term trend is still intact.

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Why Hormuz keeps showing up in the price

The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world's most important oil chokepoints, and any escalation risk there feeds directly into oil prices, inflation expectations, and safe-haven demand all at once. When tension eases, as it has recently, some of that safe-haven premium unwinds and metals give back part of their gain. When headlines turn tense again, the same mechanism runs in reverse. That's part of why silver's recent bounce got explicitly tied to "Hormuz optimism" in market commentary rather than to any change in industrial demand or mine supply.

This is a useful distinction for understanding precious metals right now. A meaningful share of the recent price action isn't about gold and silver's traditional roles as inflation hedges or currency alternatives. It's a geopolitical risk gauge, moving in near real time with how investors read the odds of a supply disruption in one of the world's most sensitive shipping corridors.

Silver has actually outpaced gold through this entire cycle, both on the way up in January and on this recent bounce. Part of that comes down to silver's smaller, less liquid market, which tends to amplify percentage moves in both directions compared to gold. Part of it also reflects silver's dual role as both a monetary metal and an industrial input, tied to solar panel and electronics demand, which gives it a demand story gold doesn't fully share.

Whitmore's Watchlist:
SLV (iShares Silver Trust): The most direct, liquid way to track silver's rebound off its recent lows toward the $62 level.
GDX (VanEck Gold Miners ETF): Gold mining equities tend to amplify moves in the underlying metal, in both directions.
IAU (iShares Gold Trust): A straightforward way to hold gold exposure while watching how it behaves relative to its January peak.

The pullback itself is informative

A metal that corrects 40% to 50% from a parabolic high and still holds a triple-digit year-to-date gain is telling you two different things at once. The correction says the earlier move ran ahead of any reasonable near-term fundamental case, whether that was Fed policy uncertainty, currency concerns, or geopolitical risk pricing. The fact that gains are still this large after that correction says the underlying demand for a hedge against currency and policy uncertainty hasn't gone away, it's just recalibrated to a level the market finds more sustainable.

Experts weighing in on where prices head next through the rest of August remain split, largely because the answer depends heavily on how the Hormuz situation and broader Middle East risk evolve, a variable no one can forecast with confidence. That uncertainty itself is part of the reason metals have stayed volatile even after the initial parabolic move faded.

Mining equities add another layer worth understanding separately from the metal itself. Gold and silver miners carry operating leverage to the underlying commodity price, which is why they tend to fall harder than bullion during a correction and rally harder during a bounce. That leverage cuts both ways, and it's part of why a miner-focused fund can post a very different return profile than simply holding the physical metal or a bullion-backed ETF over the same stretch.

Whitmore's Take: Silver near $62 after peaking near $116 isn't a failed trade, it's a normal, if painful, unwind of a move that ran too far too fast. Worth checking whether any metals exposure in a portfolio was sized for this kind of volatility before treating the next headline swing as a surprise.

Written by Daniel Whitmore
Millionaire Insiders