The Silver Correction
The Silver Bull Who Predicted Its Correction
After an almost vertical move higher, the CME hiked margin requirements on silver futures again, and we got a fast, ugly flush: double-digit intraday drops, headlines about “speculative excess,” and miners getting hit even harder than the metal.(The Economic Times)
That’s the kind of tape that makes late longs puke and tourists swear off commodities for a while. It’s also the kind of tape that tends to create opportunity if the underlying bull case is still intact.
One of the more thoughtful voices on that bull case has been Alexander Campbell of Campbell Ramble, who has been early and loud on this trade. Campbell previously ran commodities at Bridgewater Associates before founding a financial data platform.
His latest post, “10 Silver Days of Christmas”, laid out both why a pullback was likely and why he still thinks silver’s structural setup is extremely bullish.
Why Campbell Expected A Hit–And Still Likes Silver
Campbell’s framework was basically:
Short-term pain is likely. The structure underneath is still powerful.
On the near-term side, he highlighted a cluster of pressures:
Tax selling: After a monster year for silver, anyone sitting on huge gains into year-end has an incentive to wait until January to realize them—creating bullish pressure now and bearish pressure early in the new year.
Dollar / rates risk: A hotter GDP print and less easing priced into the front of the curve means either a stronger dollar or higher short rates, neither great for dollar-denominated shiny rocks in the short term.
Margin hikes: CME raising silver margins again into strength forces undercapitalized leveraged longs to liquidate, just as in 2011—except this time, margin requirements were already much tighter going in.
“Overbought” technicals: After a parabolic run, every technician on the internet is ready to scream “overbought” at the first red candle.
Copper substitution narrative: The idea that solar manufacturers will switch from silver to copper if prices stay high.
That was his bear side.
On the structural bull side, he pointed to things that don’t reverse in a week:
China weaponizing exports: New export licensing on silver starting January 1st. China is a major net exporter of refined silver; now that flow is subject to government permission.
Physical markets screaming: London OTC silver in deep backwardation (spot > forwards), and persistent double-digit physical premiums in Shanghai and Dubai versus COMEX paper—signs of real-world stress and tightness.
Solar demand that doesn’t flinch: Solar manufacturers have already absorbed a huge move in silver prices and kept buying; Campbell’s math suggests demand destruction doesn’t even begin until much higher prices.
Copper substitution is slow: Even if every boardroom in the world decided tomorrow to switch cell lines to copper, you’re looking at a multi-year retooling process. Time, not capital, is the binding constraint.
AI → energy → solar → silver chain: Data centers and AI compute demand more power; a big chunk of incremental electrons come from solar; solar needs silver. That linkage isn’t going away in a quarter.
His bottom line:
Expect short-term hits from tax flows, the dollar, and margin headlines.
But underneath that, the bullish structural story hasn’t broken—if anything, the policy and physical-market developments have strengthened it.
What My AI Dashboard Says About Silver
Separate from Campbell, I’ve got my own AI watching a handful of signals on precious metals, Bitcoin, and Ethereum every day—things like futures positioning, ETF flows, real yields, the dollar, and basic price/technical structure.
On that scorecard, silver looked like this after Monday’s correction:
⚪ Silver — XAG/USD
Bullish signals: 4 / 5
Futures positioning → Bullish
• Spec length elevated, but not yet extreme.ETF flows → Bullish
• Strong investment demand persists.Real yields → Bullish
• Macro backdrop still supportive for precious metals.USD & rates trend → Neutral
• Dollar bounce tempers momentum slightly.Technical momentum → Bullish
• Price well above 20D & 50D; trend intact despite pullback.
Silver score: 4 / 5 Bullish ✅
Summary: Silver remains the strongest asset in your dashboard, even after volatility.
And in the same framework, here’s how the rest of the “metals + crypto” names currently stack up:
🧭 At-a-Glance Dashboard
| Asset | Bullish Signals |
|---|---|
| BTC | 1 / 5 |
| ETH | 1 / 5 |
| Gold | 2 / 5 |
| Silver | 4 / 5 ✅ |
| Platinum | 1 / 5 |
Big Picture Takeaway
Silver is the only asset flashing a “pay attention” signal right now (≥3 bullish).
BTC & ETH are in a post-deleveraging, pre-trend phase — exactly the zone where bottoms form, but not yet where signals fire.
Gold is strong but consolidating, not accelerating.
So even after this week’s volatility—and despite the scary candle—silver still screens as the strongest asset in that dashboard.
Silver Miners Have Lagged – And Why That May Be An Opportunity
Despite silver’s explosive move this year, silver miners have lagged the metal, largely because equity investors haven’t been convinced that today’s high silver prices are sustainable. They’ve been slow to bake structurally higher silver into their models, treating the move more like a spike than a new regime.
Historically, though, when a metals bull market proves it’s not just a blip, the equities tend to catch up in a hurry:
Silver mining stocks have typically shown higher volatility than the metal itself—functioning as a leveraged way to express a bullish view on silver. In past bull cycles, silver miner indices and ETFs have often delivered much larger percentage moves than the underlying metal once investors became convinced the higher range was real.
What I’d like to see now is something like this:
We got the kind of pullback Campbell was talking about—maybe we get a little more next week with tax gain selling.
Silver then bases sideways for a few months instead of immediately round-tripping the whole rally.
As backwardation, Chinese export controls, and solar demand refuse to go away, the market slowly accepts that the higher range is real.
The miners, which have lagged, finally get re-rated upward as investors assign higher, stickier silver prices to their future cash flows.
That’s the scenario I’m positioning for.
A Silver Miner Shows Up In Portfolio Armor’s Top Names
Against that backdrop, something else happened on Monday night:
When Portfolio Armor ran its daily rankings, a silver miner popped into the top ten.
For newer readers: Portfolio Armor’s universe is every security with options traded on it in the U.S. Each day, my system uses historical prices and options-market sentiment to rank them by its estimate of their potential returns over the next six months. Since I started sharing these weekly Top Names cohorts on the Portfolio Armor Substack at the end of 2022, they’ve averaged returns of 20.46% over the next six months, versus about 10.22% for SPY over the same periods.(Portfolio Armor)
A silver miner appearing in our top ten after silver’s correction is another bullish indicator.
Even more important to me: this isn’t some broken, oversold “lottery ticket” that just happens to be sensitive to the silver price.
This particular miner:
Has a relative strength index (RSI) of around 57—not oversold, not wildly overbought—just in that “healthy uptrend with room” zone.
Scores a 7 out of 10 on Chartmill’s setup rating, indicating a constructive consolidation rather than a falling knife.
Shows very strong technical and fundamental scores on Chartmill overall:
Technical: 10 / 10
Profitability: 8 / 10
Health (balance sheet): 7 / 10
Growth: 7 / 10
Valuation: 9 / 10
Those are the kinds of numbers you want to see when you’re trying to avoid getting seduced by a low-quality name just because it’s “a way to play silver.”
In other words:
We’ve got a solid business,
In a sector that’s lagged a structurally strong metal,
That Portfolio Armor’s ranking system has now pushed into its top ten names.
How We’re Playing It
If silver spends the next few months proving that the higher range is sustainable rather than a blow-off top, I want to be holding the right kind of leverage on the miners when the market finally starts to believe it.
We have an options trade teed up for later today on our solid silver miner designed to:
Give us uncapped upside if we get that sideways grind and eventual re-rating,
Keep our maximum loss to less than $700 per combo,
Finance part of the upside exposure by selling premium below the stock with a defined put floor.
If you'd like a heads up when we place it, you can subscribe to our trading Substack/occasional email list below.
And if you think Campbell is wrong, and silver is going to keep sliding, you can hedge against that with our website or iPhone app.
Afternoon Update
Our trade alert has gone out:
❄️Betting On Silver After Yesterday's Correction❄️
— Portfolio Armor (@PortfolioArmor) December 30, 2025
A bullish options trade on the silver miner that appeared in our system's top ten names last night. https://t.co/HsqKJdJzXG