---
title: "Michael Oliver Says $1,000 Silver Wouldn’t Shock Him Within a Year"
url: "https://www.readplaza.com/articles/enFsqNIiSSC"
type: "article"
publisher: "Commodity Culture"
category: "Market Commentary"
published: "2026-08-13T20:40:00+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-22T05:47:09.251376+00:00"
reading_time_minutes: 10
tags: ["Silver Mining Companies", "Gold", "Silver"]
---

# Michael Oliver Says $1,000 Silver Wouldn’t Shock Him Within a Year
I had Michael Oliver back on Commodity Culture this week, and he is more bullish on silver now than he was when he first called for $300-plus silver.

In fact, he is raising his target.

He would not put an exact number on it, but he said he thinks silver is going to “go berserk.” He also said it would not shock him to see a $1,000 handle on silver at some point within the next year.

That sounds completely insane to most people.

But the important thing is not whether you agree with the number. The important thing is understanding the framework behind it.

Michael does not think silver is simply having another bounce inside a weak market. He thinks the correction we have seen since the highs was a normal negative zigzag within a much larger long-term uptrend.

And he thinks that once silver gets through this current congestion zone, the move could be extremely fast.

The correction did not break the trendA lot of investors looked at silver’s sharp correction and assumed the bull market was over.

Michael sees it differently.

He pointed out that silver hit a major low only a couple of days after the peak, bounced, came back down, and then continued to hold a relatively tight range. It has been volatile, but it has not truly collapsed.

That distinction matters.

The long-term momentum structure, in his view, never broke. The intermediate trend turned negative for a while, which is normal during a correction, but it has now started to turn back up.

Michael thinks most people are looking at the recent rally and assuming it is just another move to sell. His momentum work tells him this rally is different. He believes it can sustain, work back toward the highs, and potentially move through them quickly.

The next move may not take years.

He thinks it could happen in a matter of months.

Why he thinks silver is still wildly undervaluedThe core of Michael’s argument is that silver is still priced in a completely different reality than most other metals.

Look at where major metals trade today compared to their 1980 highs.

Copper, zinc, aluminum, lead, steel, and gold have all moved multiples above those old levels. Gold is more than four times its 1980 high. Copper is roughly six times higher than where it traded in 1980.

Silver is only marginally above its old high.

That is the disconnect Michael is focused on.

Silver has been in a supply deficit for years. It has growing industrial demand. It has thousands of years of monetary history. It moves with gold far more than it moves with the general commodity index. And yet it is still trading at a fraction of where it would be if it had simply kept up with the repricing seen across other metals.

In Michael’s view, silver has made a major pricing error.

And markets do not always correct those errors gradually.

When something has been too cheap for too long, the eventual adjustment can happen with shocking speed. It can also overshoot.

That is why he is not looking at $200 silver as some extreme fantasy. He sees it as a possible normalization relative to gold and other metals. The higher numbers come into play if silver moves from simply correcting its discount to overshooting as the market catches on.

Silver is still moneyOne of the more bearish arguments around silver today is that it is no longer a monetary metal.

Central banks are buying gold. Gold has been recognized as a top-tier reserve asset. Countries are accumulating it as they look for alternatives to the US dollar.

Silver does not have that same institutional support, at least not in the same visible way.

Michael does not buy the argument.

Silver has been money for thousands of years. It has been the “poor man’s gold” through countless monetary systems, often carrying official government stamps and serving as a widely recognized store of value.

He thinks the idea that silver suddenly stopped being money is simply an excuse people use to explain why it has lagged gold.

That lag is not proof that silver has lost its monetary role.

It may be the reason the opportunity is still there.

The real driver may be a debt crisisMichael’s silver thesis is not only about supply and demand.

He thinks the bigger driver is the government debt crisis that most investors still refuse to take seriously.

In 2008, the world had a debt crisis centered largely around mortgages and credit markets. This time, Michael thinks the problem is much bigger.

Government bonds.

Japan is already struggling. The United States is not far behind. Europe is part of the same story. Governments across the developed world have taken on debt levels that cannot realistically be paid down through normal economic growth.

So what happens next?

More printing.

More intervention.

More attempts to prevent the bond market from breaking.

That is bullish for monetary metals.

Michael’s view is that the crisis is already here, even if the headlines have not fully caught up. The real warning signs will likely become obvious only after the move has already begun.

That is how markets work.

The fundamentals that explain the move usually become mainstream after prices have already exploded.

By the time silver is at $150, $200, or higher, the average investor may finally start hearing the headlines about bond-market stress, debt monetization, currency debasement, and the loss of confidence in fiat money.

But the opportunity will not be the same then.

Why the silver miners could move even fasterMichael is not just bullish on silver.

He is rampantly bullish on silver miners.

He thinks the sector is close to a major revaluation relative to gold. He watches the spread between mining stock indices and gold, and he believes the miners are approaching the top of a long-term range that has contained them for more than a decade.

If that relative-performance breakout happens, he thinks the move could be violent.

The miners have spent years trading at depressed valuations relative to gold. Their earnings are improving, profits are improving, and in many cases they are producing huge amounts of cash at current metal prices.

But the market has ignored it.

Michael thinks that will change.

When miners begin to outperform gold on a sustained basis, it is not usually happening because gold is falling slower than they are. It tends to happen when both are rising, with miners rising much faster.

That is why he sees a potential breakout in the miners as so important.

It would not just signal better relative performance. It could signal a much larger upward move in the entire precious metals complex.

You may not need to take exploration riskOne of the better points from the interview is that investors may not need to go out on the risk curve to benefit.

Michael mentioned that someone could simply buy a broad mining ETF such as GDX, or use SIL for more silver-focused exposure, rather than trying to find the next tiny exploration company.

If his thesis is right, the biggest producers, royalty companies, and diversified mining ETFs could still dramatically outperform gold itself.

That matters because a lot of people assume they need to own the riskiest junior stock in the market to make real money in a metals bull market.

You do not.

The juniors may offer more upside, but they also carry much more company-specific risk. Exploration risk. Financing risk. Jurisdiction risk. Management risk.

If the entire sector is revaluing, owning quality exposure through the larger miners can still be a very powerful trade.

Gold may be heading much higher tooMichael’s view on gold is also extremely bullish.

He noted that the last two major gold bull markets both produced roughly eightfold gains from the bear-market low to the bull-market high.

The 1970s bull market did it. The 2001–2011 bull market did it.

Gold’s 2015 low was around $1,050. An eightfold move from that level would put gold roughly in the $8,000–$9,000 range.

And Michael thinks this cycle could be bigger.

His reasoning is that the debt crisis facing governments today is unlike anything markets have dealt with before. If policymakers have to print money aggressively to stabilize government bond markets, gold may become one of the few assets investors trust when both stocks and bonds stop working.

That is the real issue.

The traditional 60/40 portfolio assumes stocks and bonds can balance each other out. But if the stock market is in trouble and bonds are also being undermined by a debt crisis, investors are going to need somewhere else to go.

Michael thinks that “somewhere else” is gold.

And silver may be the more explosive version of that trade.

The broader market may not be as safe as it looksThere is a belief right now that the government and Federal Reserve can keep the stock market elevated forever.

More liquidity. Lower rates. Government stakes in companies. More intervention. More money printing.

Michael pushed back on that idea.

He pointed out that the Fed was cutting rates aggressively in 2001 while the Nasdaq still collapsed. It cut rates again through 2007 and 2008 while the broad market continued falling.

Lower rates do not automatically save stocks.

Neither does money printing.

Eventually, investors decide that the risk-reward is no longer worth it. If stocks look unstable and bonds look unsafe, money has to move somewhere.

Gold has already been outperforming the stock market over longer timeframes.

Michael thinks that trend is only getting started.

The takeawayThe $1,000 silver call is not a casual prediction.

It is the far end of a thesis built on technical momentum, silver’s long-term undervaluation relative to other metals, supply deficits, monetary history, and a looming sovereign debt problem.

You may not agree that silver reaches four digits within a year.

But the bigger idea is hard to ignore.

If silver is entering a new reality, the move may not be slow. It may not be comfortable. And it may not give investors much time to get positioned after the headlines finally turn bullish.

Michael’s view is that the market is still standing on the wrong side of the trade.

When that changes, he thinks silver and the miners could move so fast that most people will be left watching from the sidelines.

My readThe obvious conclusion from my conversation with Michael, like with many of my guests, is that now is a great time to stack more silver, along with gold. Maybe I sound like I'm beating a dead horse but it still surprises me how few investors, even those focused on commodities, own very little to no physical precious metals.

I completely concur with Michael's uber bullishness on silver mining stocks, and I also agree with getting exposure broadly through the SIL or SILJ ETF, as opposed to taking on single company risk, a risk that only rises when we're talking mining companies.

One thing to note when it comes to considering SIL versus SILJ. SIL contains a whopping 22% allocation to Wheaton Precious Metals, a gold and silver streaming company that I own as one of my top holdings in the sector. This is a bit strange to me, as Wheaton's gold streams are more prevalent than silver and very few people would call them a silver mining company. Since I already own Wheaton, I instead use SILJ as my preferred way to gain exposure to the sector. 

The holdings in SILJ are a much better reflection of the silver mining space as a whole and because there are a lot of junior miners in their overall allocation, you get more potential alpha if you believe the sector is headed higher.

As mentioned, I'm as rampantly bullish as Michael on silver miners but outside of uranium stocks, I can't think of a more volatile sector, so be prepared to stomach some big drawdowns if you want to ride the silver coaster. If you are the type who likes to get into the weeds and speculate on individual names, I would strongly recommend smaller position sizing and keeping anchor positions like SIL or SILJ and big producers like Pan American Silver to mitigate downside risk.