Silver Price in the 2010s

The decade opened with silver as the star of the QE trade. The 2010 average jumped 37.6 percent to $20.19 as the Fed launched its second round of easing, and 2011 went vertical: silver hit $49.51 on April 28, within cents of the 1980 record, before a series of exchange margin hikes triggered a flash crash days later. Even with the reversal, 2011 averaged $35.12, the decade's high-water mark by far.

What followed was one long fade. The 2013 taper tantrum crushed the average 23.6 percent to $23.79, and the slide continued through $19.08 and a decade-low $15.68 in 2015 as the Fed tightened and the dollar strengthened. The Brexit year of 2016 brought a bounce to $17.14, but silver spent the rest of the decade drifting: $17.05, $15.71 during the 2018 trade war, and $16.21 in 2019. The gold-silver ratio stretched to historic extremes as gold recovered and silver did not.

Three things stopped it. First, mechanics: as silver approached $50, the CME raised futures margin requirements repeatedly, forcing leveraged longs to post more collateral or sell, and the market chose selling. Second, memory: $50 was the Hunt brothers' level, and an enormous amount of physical metal and old positions sat ready to sell into it. Third, the macro bid faded just as fast, since 2011's dollar-collapse fears never materialized and real yields began rising into 2013.

The $50 barrier that turned the market away in both 1980 and 2011 finally fell on October 9, 2025, a story told on the silver all-time high page and in the 2020s decade review. In real terms, even the 2011 average of $35.12 equals only about $50 in today's dollars, far below 1980, as shown on the inflation-adjusted silver price page.