RJ Hamster
Silver’s Implied Volatility Just Hit Crisis Levels
Friday, December 26, 2025
What if being right 50% of the time was enough?
That’s the starting point. Not 70%. Not some magic win rate. Fifty percent.
I just showed how option selection and risk-reward do the rest. This is the 0DTE session I wish existed when I started.
Don here…
SLV, the silver ETF, just traded 2.7 million option contracts in a single session.
For context, that’s approaching Nvidia territory. On a holiday Friday with virtually no volume anywhere else.
The bigger question isn’t whether this trade ends badly. It will. No market cracks the expected move five weeks in a row and stays elevated forever.
The real question is whether this spills over into the S&P 500. No market trades in complete autonomy, and this kind of crisis-level implied volatility has a way of bleeding into everything else.
Here’s what caught my attention:
- Implied volatility in silver has spiked to levels we haven’t seen since 2020 and 2011. Those weren’t random dates. In 2011, markets were convinced we were headed back into the financial crisis. That’s the kind of fear being priced into silver options right now.
- Buyers are sweeping entire order books without negotiating. Trades at the ask or above are outpacing trades at the bid by roughly 100,000 contracts. When you see that kind of aggressive call buying, market makers have to sell calls and buy stock to hedge. The result is a feedback loop that keeps pushing prices higher.
- SLV is now up 162% year to date. The silver futures contract is threatening to crack 80 before Monday’s open. Initial margin on silver futures has ballooned to $37,400, and some firms are simply telling clients not to trade silver at all.
Speaking of the S&P: The Nasdaq continues underperforming while financials carry the entire index.
That’s not healthy rotation. That’s money managers stuffing cash into dark holes before year-end.
When tech comes back online, those same managers will likely dump financials just as quickly as they bought them.
The expected move for next week is only $66. After everything we just witnessed in silver, I’m taking the over on that bet.
To your success,
Don Kaufman
Chief Market Strategist, TheoTRADE
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