Nelson Bunker Hunt and William Herbert Hunt, scions of a Texas oil dynasty, leveraged their inheritance and influence to purchase and hoard massive quantities of silver, both physical and paper. The result? An unprecedented spike in silver prices from under $2 per ounce to nearly $50. The collapse that followed was swift, brutal, and legendary, wiping out billions in value, prompting regulatory intervention, and etching “Silver Thursday” into Wall Street lore.
Fast forward to 2026, and silver is once again making headlines. Prices have surged, industrial demand is at all-time highs, and physical markets around the globe are diverging sharply from paper futures prices. This begs the inevitable question: Are we witnessing a replay of the Hunt brothers’ silver squeeze, or is this time fundamentally different?
To understand whether a modern-day silver squeeze similar to the Hunt brothers’ episode could occur again, it’s important to grasp the mechanics that underpinned their strategy. The Hunt brothers employed massive leverage to secure a dominant position in the futures market, thereby exerting significant control. Additionally, they demanded physical delivery of silver, a practice that was relatively rare at the time, as a means of applying pressure on Comex warehouses. This aggressive approach prompted regulators to implement sweeping emergency measures, including “liquidation-only” trading rules and escalations in margin calls, which ultimately broke the price rally.
In contrast, the current surge in silver prices is not the result of a concentrated market corner. Instead, it arises from a combination of structural deficits, industrial expansion, political control over supply chains, and growing investor distrust in fiat currency. While the result, rising silver prices and limited physical availability, might visually echo the events of 1980, the underlying catalysts are fundamentally different.
One critical aspect that highlights the difference lies in the dynamics of supply and demand. The Achilles’ heel of the Hunt brothers’ plan was that, despite their dominance in the futures market, there remained ample physical silver available in the form of vaults, jewelry, silverware, and industrial stockpiles. When margins were increased and rules were altered, silver flooded back into the market, causing prices to crash. This situation arose because, although the supply had been temporarily squeezed, it was not genuinely scarce.
Today, that dynamic has dramatically shifted. For several consecutive years, the silver market has faced real, structural supply deficits. Industrial demand driven heavily by solar panel production, electric vehicles, 5G, AI chips, and portable electronics has surged. Silver, unlike gold, is consumed in many of these applications and not easily recovered through recycling.
Fast-growing demand is not matched by mine production, which peaked in 2016 and has since declined. Adding fuel to this fire, 72% of silver is mined as a byproduct of other metals like copper, lead, and zinc. That means even rising silver prices don’t necessarily prompt meaningful increases in new supply, what economists call “inelastic supply.” This is not speculative hoarding; it’s real, recurring consumption. As such, the threat isn’t the possibility of a market corner but an overstressed market system teetering under its own supply-demand imbalance.
In 1980, silver pricing and flows were largely dictated by Western financial systems. Today, nations such as China and Russia are reshaping the chessboard. In early 2026, China reclassified silver as a strategic commodity, requiring centralized licensing for exports. Forty-four state-approved companies now determine who gets silver and who doesn’t. This gives Beijing quasi-monopolistic control over a substantial share of global supply. As veteran trader Francis Hunt aptly noted, “Beijing knows every single ounce and who’s doing it.” Such central oversight introduces a geopolitical layer that didn’t exist in the Hunt brothers’ era. Silver is no longer a simple commodity; it’s a lever of statecraft.
One of the most telling clues of today’s unique market dynamic is the widening spread between futures prices and physical availability. In early 2026, the COMEX March 2026 contract closed around $72 per ounce. Yet, in bullion-heavy Dubai, the cheapest one-ounce silver coin sold for nearly $100.
That isn’t a typical fabrication premium. It’s a systemic divergence, a signal that COMEX paper silver is increasingly disconnected from physical reality. This echoes trader concerns from the 2021 Reddit-fueled Silver Squeeze, but has since escalated to a global scale. “The Great Divorce,” as some analysts now call it, suggests futures markets are struggling to reflect true physical scarcity.
In 1980, futures and spot prices were temporarily distorted by manipulation. Today, distortion is driven by deep fundamentals: widening deficits, global central bank hoarding, and insatiable tech-driven consumption.
Indeed, the COMEX has again raised silver margins from $20,000 to $32,500 per 5,000-oz contract, a 62.5% increase. In 1980, such actions burst the speculative bubble engineered by the Hunts. In 2026, however, that same policy merely thins participation and trims speculative froth. It doesn’t create new ounces. Shorts also face much higher risks: acquiring physical metal to settle positions has become exponentially harder, especially bar-sized bullion. Margin policy still influences short-term volatility, but it’s no longer decisive in a structural market bound by physical limitations.
The Hunt Brothers-style silver squeeze cannot happen again in its original form. Modern regulation, position limits, and transparency measures greatly reduce the likelihood that a single entity can corner the market to the extent that it previously could. But we are witnessing something potentially even more seismic: a sustained, global, fundamentals-based squeeze driven by real scarcity, strategic hoarding, and explosive industrial use. This isn’t a speculative boom, it’s a structural repricing.
The 1980 silver bubble popped because it was built on leverage, secrecy, and regulatory gaps. The 2026 silver surge is powered by geopolitics, green energy, distrust in fiat systems, and quantifiable under-supply. One was a bubble inflated by billionaires, the other is a slow-moving storm fed by nations, industries, and systemic constraints. Will silver reach $200? Possibly. The global physical market is limited to approximately $100–150 billion, whereas sovereigns, family offices, and institutions managing trillions are beginning to enter. As many analysts note, “You can’t force $2.5 trillion of demand through a $100 billion straw.”So, no, there will never be another Hunt Brothers squeeze.
But the silver market may be in the early stages of something even bigger: an “infinite squeeze” powered not by manipulation, but by irreversible reality.