Guest Post by Peter Reagan
Your News to Know rounds up the most important stories about precious metals and the overall economy. This week, we’ll cover:
On the tail end of Halloween, we’ve apparently wandered into the Twilight Zone.
On October 30, gold briefly slipped below $3,900 an ounce, reaching a one-year low of $3,869.85.
By November 5, gold was back above $4,100, according to Reuters, having recovered more than $250 from that low.
Quite a turnaround, isn’t it?
But even before the rebound, I was asking myself a simple question: To whom does gold “falling” to $3,900 really make a difference?
Obviously, if you bought gold when it was trading above $5,000 and suddenly needed to sell, the difference would be substantial. And if you were hoping for $5,500 gold today, or $6,000 next week, you were probably disappointed.
But why would you be counting on those prices as someone who owns gold for long-term wealth preservation?
The people most interested in short-term price movements tend to fall into two categories: Traders and dip buyers.
Traders are concerned with what gold will cost tomorrow, next week or (maybe) next month. In the commodities trading world, there are scalpers who hold contracts for seconds to a few minutes. Day traders who hold contracts for minutes to a few hours. Swing traders hold contracts for a couple of days to a few weeks. And position traders who hold contracts up to 26 days, sometimes rolling them over into following months. They seek to profit from fluctuations in metals prices over these periods.
Now, we’re gone to great lengths here at Birch Gold Group to avoid doing business with this category of financial speculators. There are lots of reasons for this – no reason to go into great detail. Suffice to say, they do their thing, we do ours.
Buyers on the other hand have the luxury of viewing lower prices as an opportunity. Like Warren Buffett said about hamburger, if you plan on eating hamburgers every Sunday for a decade, do you want hamburger prices to go up? Or to go down? Down, obviously! When hamburger prices fall, you have a chance to load up the deep freeze with a few months (or a few years) of hamburger. As a long-term gold owner, that’s how I see short-term price fluctuations.
And I’m far from alone… Central banks are a particularly interesting example.
According to the World Gold Council’s November 3 report, central banks purchased another 321 metric tons of gold during the third quarter of 2026. That’s 42% more than the same quarter last year. Year-to-date purchases are about 6% ahead of last year’s pace.
Now, let me remind you of one thing: These institutions chose to buy gold even as prices remained historically elevated. That doesn’t mean central banks rushed to buy during last Friday’s selloff. We don’t have the evidence to say that. (And central bank transactions are generally scheduled months in advance – unlike “scalpers” or “day traders.”)
What tells us: Central banks are thinking about gold differently from speculators trying to make a quick profit.
Their concerns include currency stability, reserve diversification and geopolitical uncertainty. And none of those problems disappeared because gold briefly traded below $3,900.
And that brings us to a Twilight Zone moment: Why did gold fall when inflation concerns were rising?
The explanation, as usual, involves the Federal Reserve. Higher inflation pressures the Fed to maintain higher interest rates or raise them further. Those higher rates increase the appeal of interest-bearing alternatives to gold.
That’s defensible logic. Interest-rate expectations can influence gold price substantially in the short term.
But here’s what bothers me.
The same inflation that can temporarily pressure gold price through higher interest rates also erodes the purchasing power of the dollar.
Higher rates don’t automatically reverse that damage. They certainly don’t make groceries, insurance or medical bills return to their old prices. At best, higher interest rates simply slow the bleeding. They don’t stop it completely.
In other words, while speculators and day traders were watching the Fed, I was watching something else.
Gold had just suffered a substantial decline, yet central banks were continuing to accumulate it.
That seems much more relevant to me than whether one particular Friday was a good day for gold, or a bad one.
And it’s why I believe everyone considering physical gold should – as Phillip Patrick explains – look beyond the daily price chart.
Gold’s recent correction was notable. Silver’s was downright brutal.
On October 30, Reuters reported that silver had fallen below $50 an ounce, reaching $49.34.
Despite the drop, that number deserves some perspective. Remember, silver reached an extraordinary record over $121 on January 29, 2026. In early February, Reuters described how rapidly the metal had reversed course, losing more than a quarter of its value in a single trading session. (For the record, when finance types say the word “volatility,” that’s what they’re talking about: Big price moves, up and down.)
Today, we’re talking about silver around $50 again.
Brief history lesson for perspective: That’s about where silver was during its prior historic peaks in 1980 and 2011.
Think about that for a moment!
After decades of inflation, rising industrial demand and repeated supply deficits, silver is revisiting a price level it first approached nearly half a century ago.
Of course, silver’s January 2026 record proves its price can move dramatically higher. It also proves that those gains can disappear frighteningly quickly.
But there’s another part of the silver story that I find particularly puzzling.
The gold-to-silver ratio. This ratio measures how many ounces of silver it takes to purchase one ounce of gold.
When gold was around $3,900 and silver was just below $50, the ratio was roughly 80-to-1. At their January 1980 peaks, the ratio was closer to 18-to-1. Around silver’s 2011 peak, it was roughly 38-to-1. Now, over the last 25 years, the ratio has averaged about 65:1.
So, does that mean silver should be worth $100, $200 or even more today?
…well, not necessarily. Here’s why.
Gold and silver have very different sources of demand, different supply dynamics and different roles in the global economy. Silver is more an industrial metal, while gold demand mostly comes from investment and jewelry. Historical ratios provide useful context, not a mathematical rule that determines what either metal must cost.
But I still find the comparison remarkable. Especially when we consider silver’s fundamentals.
According to the Silver Institute, the global silver market was projected to experience its sixth consecutive annual supply deficit in 2026 (estimated at 67 million ounces).
Only 28% of silver mine production comes from silver mines. Most silver is mined along with other metals (lead, zinc, copper and gold), making it incredibly difficult for miners to just ramp up production when silver price goes up.
That’s a genuine supply constraint, and it means that silver’s supply is what economists call “inelastic.” Silver supply doesn’t automatically respond to increased demand the way you’d expect.
Now, that doesn’t mean silver is running out. Recycling delivers 15-25% of annual supply, and silver recycling is much more responsive to high prices. Existing inventories help satisfy demand. Remember, there’s a lot of above-ground silver in the world (over 600,000 metric tons), and it’s everywhere – in my iPhone, in my neighbor’s Tesla and in the spoon I used to eat my granola this morning. When prices get high enough, some portion of that existing silver gets sold to scrappers and refiners, re-entering the economy.
Even so, the apparent disconnect between supply conditions and market prices deserves attention. And yes, we should address price manipulation. (This isn’t a subject invented by people who enjoy conspiracy theories.)
For example: In 2020, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission ordered JPMorgan to pay approximately $920 million for misconduct that included deceptive trading in precious metals markets. That’s a real and documented case. Is it still happening today? A lot of people say so.
But that doesn’t every silver price decline was engineered by scheming bankers.
I’ve also seen claims that Basel III explains why gold has performed better than silver. There are genuine differences in how banking regulations treat these metals. But it doesn’t help us establish a “correct” price for silver.
The precious metals market is more complicated than that. There are very few simple, satisfying stories here. And that’s precisely why I hesitate when I hear anyone describe $50 silver as a “guaranteed bargain.”
After watching silver fall from more than $120, I think we’d all agree that further declines are possible. But are they likely? For people considering long-term diversification, silver’s combination of industrial demand, constrained supply and historical importance remains worth studying and seriously considering.
Gold and silver don’t behave identically. Understanding their differences matters far more than trying to predict the next price spike.
And now, for our final visit to the Twilight Zone… On October 29, Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, suffered a “security breach” involving approximately $6.3 billion in digital assets.
Read that number again: $6.3 billion.
According to Reuters, hackers drained cryptocurrency from Binance-controlled wallets in what became the largest reported cryptocurrency theft in history.
The exchange temporarily suspended withdrawals while investigators worked to contain the damage. By October 31, Binance said it had replenished 90% of the stolen assets using company resources and pledged to cover the remainder. Now, that’s welcome news for customers!
But there’s something about this incident that deserves more attention than the sheer size of the theft. Simply consider what happened…
Billions of dollars in digital assets were hijacked without the authorization of their rightful owners. Binance’s customers had to rely on the exchange itself, law enforcement and other cryptocurrency companies to contain the damage and restore access to their property.
Now, Binance isn’t some obscure operation working out of a crypto influencer’s spare bedroom. This is the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, with sophisticated security systems and truly substantial resources.
If an institution of that size can experience a breach of this magnitude, what should that tell ordinary Americans about the risks associated with digital assets?
Now, I’m not suggesting that all cryptocurrencies are inherently unsafe, or that every digital asset faces identical risks. For example, cryptocurrency stored in an offline wallet has a different risk profile from assets left on an exchange. But even offline storage cannot eliminate every vulnerability.
And that brings me to something I’ve been thinking about for quite some time… Why own digital gold when you can own physical gold?
“Tokenized” gold is an increasingly popular concept. In simple terms, a company issues digital tokens intended to represent ownership of, or a legal claim on, physical gold held somewhere else.
In theory, this combines gold’s historical appeal with the convenience of digital transactions. And I’m sure there are legitimate, well-structured products attempting to do exactly that.
But consider what you’re relying on.
First, the company issuing the token must actually hold the gold it claims to hold.
Second, its custody arrangements and records need to be accurate and trustworthy.
Third, customers must have clearly defined rights to the underlying metal, including what happens if the company encounters financial trouble. (In a precious metals depository, for example, all gold and silver are the property of the customers – not the depository.)
And fourth, the digital infrastructure used to transfer and store those tokens must remain secure.
The World Gold Council has identified these very concerns, including operational vulnerabilities, uncertain redemption rights and risks involving the companies issuing digital gold.
None of this means tokenized gold cannot work. It means that owning a digital representation of gold introduces an entirely different set of questions from owning physical gold itself.
The Binance incident illustrates something important: Digital ownership arrangements can carry technological and institutional risks that reach far beyond changes in the underlying asset’s price.
Physical gold has risks of its own, of course. Prices fluctuate. Storage costs money. Physical metals can be stolen, at least theoretically (as far as I know, this has only ever happened in the movies though). Reputable custody arrangements matter.
For customers owning physical precious metals in an IRA, the assets are stored at a qualified depository, with 24/7 physical security, monitoring and insurance coverage subject to the facility’s terms.
The important distinction is that physical gold cannot simply be transferred out of a vault through a compromised digital wallet, or hacked credentials.
Stealing from a depository requires gaining physical access. And while vault security isn’t utterly infallible, it’s an entirely different challenge from remotely hacking digital accounts from a cube farm in Pyongyang.
Which brings me back to our first story.
We talked about gold and silver prices, and how some people worried about those recent dips. Now, those prices matter, but only to people who need to buy or sell.
The Binance incident reminds us that price volatility isn’t the only risk worth thinking about.
There’s also the question of what you actually own, where it’s held and whom you must depend on to access it.
That’s one of the reasons I believe physical precious metals deserve consideration as part of a diversified approach to long-term savings.
Not because gold or silver prices can’t fall. But because physical ownership offers something fundamentally different from a digital promise.
And in an increasingly complicated financial world, that distinction is worth understanding!
The dollar buys less today than it did a year ago, a decade ago, a generation ago. That slide is the predictable result of endless printing and borrowing. Dr. Ron Paul believes the FED has the answer. But they’re keeping it to themselves. Fortunately, a new financial chart has publicly exposed their secret moves. See it for yourself: https://freekit.birchgold.com/lf/ro...D_v02a_article&placement=article&cid=rp_media
To learn more about how physical gold could help protect your retirement portfolio, click here to get your FREE info kit on Gold IRAs from Birch Gold Group. And now introducing a Crypto IRA to capitalize on the fastest growing market in the world.
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Continue reading...
[ H/T The Burning Platform ]
Your News to Know rounds up the most important stories about precious metals and the overall economy. This week, we’ll cover:
- Gold slipped below $3,900 – then came roaring back
- Silver “fell” toward the historic peaks of 1980 and 2011
- And why silver’s price remains one of the great puzzles in the precious metals sector
- The $6.3 billion Binance hack – and what it tells us about physical gold
$3,900 gold: I forgot, is that bull or bear territory?
On the tail end of Halloween, we’ve apparently wandered into the Twilight Zone.
On October 30, gold briefly slipped below $3,900 an ounce, reaching a one-year low of $3,869.85.
By November 5, gold was back above $4,100, according to Reuters, having recovered more than $250 from that low.
Quite a turnaround, isn’t it?
But even before the rebound, I was asking myself a simple question: To whom does gold “falling” to $3,900 really make a difference?
Obviously, if you bought gold when it was trading above $5,000 and suddenly needed to sell, the difference would be substantial. And if you were hoping for $5,500 gold today, or $6,000 next week, you were probably disappointed.
But why would you be counting on those prices as someone who owns gold for long-term wealth preservation?
The people most interested in short-term price movements tend to fall into two categories: Traders and dip buyers.
Traders are concerned with what gold will cost tomorrow, next week or (maybe) next month. In the commodities trading world, there are scalpers who hold contracts for seconds to a few minutes. Day traders who hold contracts for minutes to a few hours. Swing traders hold contracts for a couple of days to a few weeks. And position traders who hold contracts up to 26 days, sometimes rolling them over into following months. They seek to profit from fluctuations in metals prices over these periods.
Now, we’re gone to great lengths here at Birch Gold Group to avoid doing business with this category of financial speculators. There are lots of reasons for this – no reason to go into great detail. Suffice to say, they do their thing, we do ours.
Buyers on the other hand have the luxury of viewing lower prices as an opportunity. Like Warren Buffett said about hamburger, if you plan on eating hamburgers every Sunday for a decade, do you want hamburger prices to go up? Or to go down? Down, obviously! When hamburger prices fall, you have a chance to load up the deep freeze with a few months (or a few years) of hamburger. As a long-term gold owner, that’s how I see short-term price fluctuations.
And I’m far from alone… Central banks are a particularly interesting example.
According to the World Gold Council’s November 3 report, central banks purchased another 321 metric tons of gold during the third quarter of 2026. That’s 42% more than the same quarter last year. Year-to-date purchases are about 6% ahead of last year’s pace.
Now, let me remind you of one thing: These institutions chose to buy gold even as prices remained historically elevated. That doesn’t mean central banks rushed to buy during last Friday’s selloff. We don’t have the evidence to say that. (And central bank transactions are generally scheduled months in advance – unlike “scalpers” or “day traders.”)
What tells us: Central banks are thinking about gold differently from speculators trying to make a quick profit.
Their concerns include currency stability, reserve diversification and geopolitical uncertainty. And none of those problems disappeared because gold briefly traded below $3,900.
And that brings us to a Twilight Zone moment: Why did gold fall when inflation concerns were rising?
The explanation, as usual, involves the Federal Reserve. Higher inflation pressures the Fed to maintain higher interest rates or raise them further. Those higher rates increase the appeal of interest-bearing alternatives to gold.
That’s defensible logic. Interest-rate expectations can influence gold price substantially in the short term.
But here’s what bothers me.
The same inflation that can temporarily pressure gold price through higher interest rates also erodes the purchasing power of the dollar.
Higher rates don’t automatically reverse that damage. They certainly don’t make groceries, insurance or medical bills return to their old prices. At best, higher interest rates simply slow the bleeding. They don’t stop it completely.
In other words, while speculators and day traders were watching the Fed, I was watching something else.
Gold had just suffered a substantial decline, yet central banks were continuing to accumulate it.
That seems much more relevant to me than whether one particular Friday was a good day for gold, or a bad one.
And it’s why I believe everyone considering physical gold should – as Phillip Patrick explains – look beyond the daily price chart.
Can anyone help me make sense of silver’s price?
Gold’s recent correction was notable. Silver’s was downright brutal.
On October 30, Reuters reported that silver had fallen below $50 an ounce, reaching $49.34.
Despite the drop, that number deserves some perspective. Remember, silver reached an extraordinary record over $121 on January 29, 2026. In early February, Reuters described how rapidly the metal had reversed course, losing more than a quarter of its value in a single trading session. (For the record, when finance types say the word “volatility,” that’s what they’re talking about: Big price moves, up and down.)
Today, we’re talking about silver around $50 again.
Brief history lesson for perspective: That’s about where silver was during its prior historic peaks in 1980 and 2011.
Think about that for a moment!
After decades of inflation, rising industrial demand and repeated supply deficits, silver is revisiting a price level it first approached nearly half a century ago.
Of course, silver’s January 2026 record proves its price can move dramatically higher. It also proves that those gains can disappear frighteningly quickly.
But there’s another part of the silver story that I find particularly puzzling.
The gold-to-silver ratio. This ratio measures how many ounces of silver it takes to purchase one ounce of gold.
When gold was around $3,900 and silver was just below $50, the ratio was roughly 80-to-1. At their January 1980 peaks, the ratio was closer to 18-to-1. Around silver’s 2011 peak, it was roughly 38-to-1. Now, over the last 25 years, the ratio has averaged about 65:1.
So, does that mean silver should be worth $100, $200 or even more today?
…well, not necessarily. Here’s why.
Gold and silver have very different sources of demand, different supply dynamics and different roles in the global economy. Silver is more an industrial metal, while gold demand mostly comes from investment and jewelry. Historical ratios provide useful context, not a mathematical rule that determines what either metal must cost.
But I still find the comparison remarkable. Especially when we consider silver’s fundamentals.
According to the Silver Institute, the global silver market was projected to experience its sixth consecutive annual supply deficit in 2026 (estimated at 67 million ounces).
Only 28% of silver mine production comes from silver mines. Most silver is mined along with other metals (lead, zinc, copper and gold), making it incredibly difficult for miners to just ramp up production when silver price goes up.
That’s a genuine supply constraint, and it means that silver’s supply is what economists call “inelastic.” Silver supply doesn’t automatically respond to increased demand the way you’d expect.
Now, that doesn’t mean silver is running out. Recycling delivers 15-25% of annual supply, and silver recycling is much more responsive to high prices. Existing inventories help satisfy demand. Remember, there’s a lot of above-ground silver in the world (over 600,000 metric tons), and it’s everywhere – in my iPhone, in my neighbor’s Tesla and in the spoon I used to eat my granola this morning. When prices get high enough, some portion of that existing silver gets sold to scrappers and refiners, re-entering the economy.
Even so, the apparent disconnect between supply conditions and market prices deserves attention. And yes, we should address price manipulation. (This isn’t a subject invented by people who enjoy conspiracy theories.)
For example: In 2020, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission ordered JPMorgan to pay approximately $920 million for misconduct that included deceptive trading in precious metals markets. That’s a real and documented case. Is it still happening today? A lot of people say so.
But that doesn’t every silver price decline was engineered by scheming bankers.
I’ve also seen claims that Basel III explains why gold has performed better than silver. There are genuine differences in how banking regulations treat these metals. But it doesn’t help us establish a “correct” price for silver.
The precious metals market is more complicated than that. There are very few simple, satisfying stories here. And that’s precisely why I hesitate when I hear anyone describe $50 silver as a “guaranteed bargain.”
After watching silver fall from more than $120, I think we’d all agree that further declines are possible. But are they likely? For people considering long-term diversification, silver’s combination of industrial demand, constrained supply and historical importance remains worth studying and seriously considering.
Gold and silver don’t behave identically. Understanding their differences matters far more than trying to predict the next price spike.
A $6.3 billion reminder of what makes physical gold different
And now, for our final visit to the Twilight Zone… On October 29, Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, suffered a “security breach” involving approximately $6.3 billion in digital assets.
Read that number again: $6.3 billion.
According to Reuters, hackers drained cryptocurrency from Binance-controlled wallets in what became the largest reported cryptocurrency theft in history.
The exchange temporarily suspended withdrawals while investigators worked to contain the damage. By October 31, Binance said it had replenished 90% of the stolen assets using company resources and pledged to cover the remainder. Now, that’s welcome news for customers!
But there’s something about this incident that deserves more attention than the sheer size of the theft. Simply consider what happened…
Billions of dollars in digital assets were hijacked without the authorization of their rightful owners. Binance’s customers had to rely on the exchange itself, law enforcement and other cryptocurrency companies to contain the damage and restore access to their property.
Now, Binance isn’t some obscure operation working out of a crypto influencer’s spare bedroom. This is the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, with sophisticated security systems and truly substantial resources.
If an institution of that size can experience a breach of this magnitude, what should that tell ordinary Americans about the risks associated with digital assets?
Now, I’m not suggesting that all cryptocurrencies are inherently unsafe, or that every digital asset faces identical risks. For example, cryptocurrency stored in an offline wallet has a different risk profile from assets left on an exchange. But even offline storage cannot eliminate every vulnerability.
And that brings me to something I’ve been thinking about for quite some time… Why own digital gold when you can own physical gold?
“Tokenized” gold is an increasingly popular concept. In simple terms, a company issues digital tokens intended to represent ownership of, or a legal claim on, physical gold held somewhere else.
In theory, this combines gold’s historical appeal with the convenience of digital transactions. And I’m sure there are legitimate, well-structured products attempting to do exactly that.
But consider what you’re relying on.
First, the company issuing the token must actually hold the gold it claims to hold.
Second, its custody arrangements and records need to be accurate and trustworthy.
Third, customers must have clearly defined rights to the underlying metal, including what happens if the company encounters financial trouble. (In a precious metals depository, for example, all gold and silver are the property of the customers – not the depository.)
And fourth, the digital infrastructure used to transfer and store those tokens must remain secure.
The World Gold Council has identified these very concerns, including operational vulnerabilities, uncertain redemption rights and risks involving the companies issuing digital gold.
None of this means tokenized gold cannot work. It means that owning a digital representation of gold introduces an entirely different set of questions from owning physical gold itself.
The Binance incident illustrates something important: Digital ownership arrangements can carry technological and institutional risks that reach far beyond changes in the underlying asset’s price.
Physical gold has risks of its own, of course. Prices fluctuate. Storage costs money. Physical metals can be stolen, at least theoretically (as far as I know, this has only ever happened in the movies though). Reputable custody arrangements matter.
For customers owning physical precious metals in an IRA, the assets are stored at a qualified depository, with 24/7 physical security, monitoring and insurance coverage subject to the facility’s terms.
The important distinction is that physical gold cannot simply be transferred out of a vault through a compromised digital wallet, or hacked credentials.
Stealing from a depository requires gaining physical access. And while vault security isn’t utterly infallible, it’s an entirely different challenge from remotely hacking digital accounts from a cube farm in Pyongyang.
Which brings me back to our first story.
We talked about gold and silver prices, and how some people worried about those recent dips. Now, those prices matter, but only to people who need to buy or sell.
The Binance incident reminds us that price volatility isn’t the only risk worth thinking about.
There’s also the question of what you actually own, where it’s held and whom you must depend on to access it.
That’s one of the reasons I believe physical precious metals deserve consideration as part of a diversified approach to long-term savings.
Not because gold or silver prices can’t fall. But because physical ownership offers something fundamentally different from a digital promise.
And in an increasingly complicated financial world, that distinction is worth understanding!
The dollar buys less today than it did a year ago, a decade ago, a generation ago. That slide is the predictable result of endless printing and borrowing. Dr. Ron Paul believes the FED has the answer. But they’re keeping it to themselves. Fortunately, a new financial chart has publicly exposed their secret moves. See it for yourself: https://freekit.birchgold.com/lf/ro...D_v02a_article&placement=article&cid=rp_media
To learn more about how physical gold could help protect your retirement portfolio, click here to get your FREE info kit on Gold IRAs from Birch Gold Group. And now introducing a Crypto IRA to capitalize on the fastest growing market in the world.
Tweet
Continue reading...
[ H/T The Burning Platform ]
