(and I have no reason to doubt this is happening–it makes sense afterall, up until the point it doesn’t), then shorting gold miners is likely an even better hedge.  The ultimate hedge, at the bottom of the heap of the metals complex, are the lowly silver miners.  Is there any reason to go long silver miners other than as a lottery ticket?

The last couple of days has seen the silver miners (e.g., SIL) crater vs the rest of the complex, just as they were about to establish a bullish footing on these ratio charts.   The daily SIL:SLV chart is an absolute downer.  Going by my conventional Ichimoku cloud analysis, SIL:SLV has until the end of the week to get above the red cloud, otherwise, down she goes.  We need a miracle.

Looking at the weekly chart, it’s possible the silver miners could be basing vs silver until later this year or even into next year.  The drop in the ratio since 2021 has done an incredible amount of technical damage. (Rather than bouncing in a V-shaped manner in 2023, the ratio has settled into a range which now won’t finish basing for a year or more as the 200 week Bollinger bands slowly come in.)   In other words, there is no true bull market in the silver miners (as if you needed me to tell you that).

If silver doubles from here, I’m guessing the silver miners will match that performance, but the odds of an actual sustained relative outperformance in the next year looks highly unlikely.  So why take company specific risk when you can just buy a hunk of metal with literally zero risk?  My guess is after silver pops to $60+ and then corrects into 2026, after that complete cycle, you *might* see the silver miners outperform when silver decides to head to $100+.  The final stage of the bull, IMO.  What an absolute bummer.

I truly hope my negative take is a contrarian sign.  The only people making money off miners are the shyster bankers, as evidenced by the crushing outperformance of financing companies like WPM, who make their money by fleecing desperate miners.