Gold "emotional amplifier" out of control! Silver prices higher than oil, market value exceeds Google. Is the final chapter of "Silver Rhapsody" $100?

As of Friday's closing of the US stock market, the spot silver trading price has hit a new historical high again, with silver soaring by an incredible 135% since the beginning of the year. What is even more astonishing is that the price of one ounce of silver is now significantly higher than the price of a barrel of crude oilexcluding the unprecedented chaos of the "negative oil price" period in April 2020, this has never happened before. With the silver trading price holding steady above $66, the total market value of silver has surpassed the current hottest AI tech stock in the US stock marketAlphabet, the parent company of Google, rising to become the fourth largest asset in the world. Undoubtedly, the long-silent "poor cousin of gold," silver, is now enjoying its own shining moment. The silver price surge this year has far exceeded that of gold, leaving commodity traders who were more bullish on gold and bearish on silver feeling incredibly shocked. The market's fervent investment sentiment towards silver clearly highlights the continued surge in demand for silver as an important industrial metal, as well as its increasing weight in the normal asset allocation portfolios of global investors. According to some analysts who hold a positive view on silver, silver, as the "emotional amplifier" of gold, is expected to continue to enjoy a much stronger influx of funds and a larger uptrend than gold. They are betting that silver breaking $100 in the future is not out of the question, and the probability of this super bull market reaching three digits is constantly expanding. Breaking down silver: Why the recent price surge? In summary, the core logic behind the recent fierce surge in the price of silver is the expectation of a decline in the Federal Reserve's benchmark interest rates at the macro level, structural supply shortages, strengthening industrial growth narratives, and the combined forces of momentum funds, speculative forces, and FOMO (fear of missing out) sentiment, which have collectively pushed the price of silver into an unparalleled "explosive phase" for precious metals. Breaking it down, recent weak data in the US market undoubtedly greatly reinforced the market's strong bet on further Fed rate cuts in 2026, presenting downward expectations for real interest rates as the most direct valuation uplift factor for non-yielding assets (such as gold, silver, etc.). Structural tightness caused by supply shortages and tension in "deliverable/lendable" positions is also an important logic affecting silver pricing, as noted in a research report by Deutsche Bank. The scarcity of "available silver" on the industrial side has pushed leasing costs to multi-year highs, reinforcing the characteristics of "tight spot, easy squeezing in financial markets." The repricing of industrial demand narratives is a novel logic behind the recent surge in silver prices. As noted in the latest research report from the World Silver Association, the booming construction of AI data centers, the trend of electrification/renewable energy (including photovoltaics), and the global shift to electric vehicles, combined with continued supply-demand gaps, have made silver not just "following gold." The World Silver Association states that the 17% compound annual growth rate of the photovoltaic industry, the 13% compound annual growth rate of the electric vehicle industry, and the explosive expansion of global AI data centers together form the three pillars of silver demand growth. The World Silver Association forecasts in this report that these industries will continue to drive demand for silver in the industrial sector before 2030. The association emphasizes that the global data center IT power capacity has grown from 0.93 gigawatts in 2000 to nearly 50 gigawatts in 2025, representing a 53-fold increase. This exponential growth means larger scale servers, switches, and cooling systems globally, all of which require silver as a core component. The World Silver Association emphasizes that the large-scale penetration and application of silver in data centers is based on three key characteristics: the highest electrical conductivity ensures minimal energy loss in power transmission in servers, crucial for data centers that require 99.999% uptime; excellent thermal conductivity helps equipment maintain safe temperature ranges, reducing cooling energy consumption (cooling systems account for 7-30% of total data center energy consumption); high corrosion resistance protects components in high electrical load and temperature fluctuation environments. Furthermore, whether it's NVIDIA-led AI GPU computing technology, Google-led TPU AI computing clusters, or NPUs focusing on AI at the edge, these core AI computing infrastructures all rely on high-performance semiconductor components using silver in internal connections and packaging. Industrial silver demand reached a record 680.5 million ounces in 2024, according to the World Silver Association, mainly driven by strong demand for artificial intelligence training and AI-related applications such as ChatGPT in consumer electronics and other hardware. A recent research report from Wall Street financial giant Bank of America Merrill Lynch shows that the global AI arms race is still in the "early to mid-stage"; one of the world's largest asset managers, Vanguard, recently pointed out in a research report that the AI investment cycle may have only completed 30%-40% of its peak. In the views of Wall Street giants such as Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Loop Capital, and Wedbush, the global AI infrastructure investment wave focusing on AI chip computing power hardware is far from over, still in its infancy. Driven by an unprecedented "AI inference endpoint computing power demand storm," this round of AI infrastructure investment wave is expected to reach a scale of $3 trillion to $4 trillion until 2030. Momentum/speculative capital and FOMO are key forces that are driving the surge. Some Wall Street analysts consider "speculative momentum buying" as the most important driver of the recent silver surge, as the size of the silver market is relatively smaller and less "deep" compared to other precious metal markets, making it more prone to typical cycles of "acceleration-overheat-retraction." Is silver breaking $100 just a dream? The recent "parabolic" surge in silver prices is very exaggerated on the charts, with FOMO and momentum buying significantly enhanced. However, strictly speaking, it has not reached the level of a "real parabola" seen in 1980 (e.g., doubling in price within 1-2 months). Generally speaking, silver has historically served as an amplifier of gold investment sentiment in financial markets, with a market size much smaller than that of gold, often showing higher elasticity in times of a gold bull market. In the views of some senior analysts and traders focusing on commodities, the recent surge in silver lays an important foundation for silver to break through the super key level of $100. However, they also generally believe that the goal of silver "hitting/reaching $100 per ounce" belongs to the category of "extreme bull market targets." Philippe Gijsels, a senior strategist at BNP Paribas, believes that with the Fed's interest rate cuts and the strong market frenzy, the silver uptrend will continue until 2026, and he expects gold to reach $100 per ounce by the end of 2026. Keith Neumeyer, CEO of First Majestic, has publicly expressed his long-term belief in silver reaching three digits ($100 per ounce or above) multiple times in interviews since the beginning of this year. Paul Williams, Managing Director of Solomon Global, states that the dual nature of silver as an industrial metal and a store of value continues to attract global capital inflows, and the supporting factors for a long-term bull market remain strong. Williams had predicted silver to surpass $100 by the end of 2026 when silver was close to $50 in October. "The imbalance of supply and demand in silver continues to push up trading prices. The fundamental support for this so-called 'devil's metal' and 'poor cousin of gold' will only get stronger. Any pullback may be a temporary pause rather than a change in bullish direction, considering the structurally tight market. The future of silver in 2026 looks very bright," Williams wrote in a recent report.