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Sold out in India, panic in London: How the silver market broke
By Sybilla Gross, Preeti Soni, Jack Ryan, Yvonne Yue Li, and Jack Farchy
Bloomberg News
via NDTV, Mumbai, India
Saturday, October 18, 2025
For months, Vipin Raina had been bracing for a stampede of buying from Indian customers loading up on silver to honor the Hindu goddess of wealth.
But when it came, he was still blown away. At the start of last week, his company, India's largest precious metals refinery, ran out of silver stock for the first time in its history.
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"Most people who are dealing silver and silver coins, they're literally out of stock because silver is not there," said Raina, who is head of trading at MMTC-Pamp India Pvt. "This kind of crazy market -- where people are buying at these levels -- I have not seen in my 27-year career."
Within days, the shortages were being felt not just in India, but around the world. India's festival buyers were joined by international investors and hedge funds piling into precious metals as a bet on the fragility of the US dollar -- or simply to follow the market's irrepressible surge higher.
By the end of last week, the frenzy had rippled across to the London silver market, where global prices are set and where the world's biggest banks buy and sell in huge quantities. Now, it had run out of available metal. Traders describe a market that was all but broken, where even large banks stepped back from quoting prices as they fielded repeated calls from clients yelling down the line in frustration and exhaustion.
Prices ratcheted higher over the following week, on Friday reaching never-before-seen highs above $54 an ounce, before suddenly tumbling as much as 6.7%. For weary traders, the plunge was just the latest indication of the extreme stress being felt across the silver market -- the worst crisis it has faced since the Hunt brothers attempted to corner the market 45 years ago.
This account of how the silver market broke is based on conversations with more than two dozen traders, bankers, refiners, investors and other market participants, many of whom spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren't authorized to speak publicly. ...
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