Outlook for the silver price
Admitting it's almost impossible to tell how high silver might go, independent analyst Alistair Strang turns to an old ratio for clues.
27th January 2026 07:56
by Alistair Strang from Trends and Targets
If you take the price of gold in US dollars and divide it with the price of silver in US dollars, the resultant number can be currently rounded to 46. Or in plain English, gold is 46 times the price of silver which is apparently a little bit dodgy.
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It’s an interesting ratio, one which we’re not sure is entirely meaningful except in a surprise area. When the ratio wandered off in the opposite direction at various points during the 21st Century (so far), a spike was generally the precursor to some sort of market tumble. When the ratio hit 123 in 2020, we were exposed to the Covid-19 drop or, in 2008, it spiked to 85 before the market crash.
While there’s a reasonable attempt to spin some fabric out of this ratio decreasing, we’re not convinced the number provides anything meaningful to keep an eye on. There’s an argument the long-term average ratio stands at almost 70 and, if this has any validity, it assumes we should anticipate silver falling back down to the $73 level, always assuming gold prices stay high. But should silver fall into a sharp decline, it would certainly make some sense to divide the price of gold by 70 to give yourself a target number for any short position.
Silver is a problem for us. We cannot calculate potential high targets as it has spiralled above anything logical. If we apply the current ratio to prior upward spikes, using the logic above, the highest the price of silver should be is $80. Broadly speaking, this matches our own sums, confirming anyone who claims to know “top” for silver is probably talking out of their hat. We don’t have a clue, it’s outperforming, and we shall only be comfortable once some volatility appears.
It is going to be worth remembering bitcoin going higher than any logic allowed. While it has fallen back from above the $120,000 level, it has also failed to slump below the prior low of $74,000.
In other words, it has become probable bitcoin has defined a new trading range in the 74 to 120k area and any expectation of reversal to historical 20k levels is liable to be a disappointment. In the case of silver, reversal back toward a new “bottom” around $73/ounce shall make some sense.
When we throw our arguments at movements in the last week, we suspect movement below $101 for silver risks triggering reversal to an initial $97 with our secondary, if broken, at $90 and potential bounce. In this instance, we can give a third level drop target at $80, marginally above our thoughts of a $73 level and thus, an ideal point for some sort of rebound. This would certainly tie in with an expectation for silver to “do a bitcoin”, defining a new trading range for itself and avoiding a tumble to lows which would be visually sane.
It’s all a bit weird as silver isn’t like gold, far easier to discover. Our own garden waterfall and stream, while being extremely parsimonious with gold production, produces silver with ease. Just not in anything approaching commercial quantities. Perhaps if the price of silver shot up to the price levels achieved by gold, our waterfall would be commercially viable but, to be fair, many more sources of silver would suddenly spring into life.
For now, if silver makes it above $118 per ounce, it will probably keep going up!
Source: Trends and Targets. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.
Alistair Strang has led high-profile and "top secret" software projects since the late 1970s and won the original John Logie Baird Award for inventors and innovators. After the financial crash, he wanted to know "how it worked" with a view to mimicking existing trading formulas and predicting what was coming next. His results speak for themselves as he continually refines the methodology.
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