After the Christmas holiday, both the crypto market and overseas stock markets have entered a period of weak consolidation. BTC is fluctuating between 87-90, and ETH is bouncing between 29-30. This state has persisted for more than ten days. Last night, the four major Western stock indices all declined simultaneously, with a clear pattern of low volume. There is no need to over-interpret these short-term fluctuations.

However, the most noteworthy development is actually in the precious metals market—especially silver.

Silver experienced a significant pullback yesterday, with a rather fierce decline. It briefly touched 84, then dropped more than 8% in a single day, approaching a 10% decline intraday, which had a strong impact on speculative funds chasing the rally. But it’s important to note that just last week, silver’s weekly increase was nearly 18%, the largest weekly gain since February 1998, and the best performance since 2020. Looking at the entire year, with only a few trading days left in 2025, silver is expected to set its best annual performance since 1979. That year, a combination of factors such as the Iranian Revolution, the second oil crisis, dollar devaluation, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Hunter brothers incident caused extreme volatility in the precious metals market.

One point to watch is that silver has a stronger industrial attribute. If prices continue to rise, it will inevitably push up costs in industries such as solar energy, batteries, electric vehicles, and electronics. From a policy perspective, China plans to implement an export licensing system for silver starting in 2026, which could exacerbate phase-specific supply tensions.

In the short term, the direction of silver and gold is difficult to predict. They are mainly influenced by liquidity, capital shifts, and timing, and the market structure is very chaotic. For example, a certain futures exchange yesterday increased the initial margin for silver futures by 25%, which might force highly leveraged funds to deleverage and increase selling pressure. Coupled with year-end portfolio adjustments and index rebalancing, the market could become even more “irrational” from now until mid-January.

However, my long-term view on precious metals is clear: as long as fiat currencies continue to expand faster than the economy and the devaluation trend remains unchanged, precious metals will have support. But in terms of asset allocation, I prefer gold over silver and plan to wait until 2026 for a correction in gold before gradually entering the market.

Finally, two risk warnings must be kept in mind:

First, stay far away from precious metals futures and all kinds of high-leverage derivatives. In extreme cases, delivery risks may occur, and the market can quickly reprice, potentially wiping out your account entirely. This is not alarmist.

Second, the best phase for shorting “monster coins” in the crypto space has already passed. Currently, mainstream coins lack market momentum, while “monster coins” have no upper limit on their rise and fall. They are mainly used for pinning and liquidating contracts, which is very risky with low returns and not worth participating in.