Why is Neumeyer calling for a US$100 silver price?

Neumeyer believes silver could hit US$100 due to a variety of factors, including its consistent deficit, its industrial demand and how undervalued it is compared to gold.

There’s a significant distance for silver to go before it reaches the success Neumeyer has boldly predicted. In order for the metal to jump to the US$100 mark, its price would have to double from its November price of above US$50. However, silver has already tripled from its price of around US$17 per ounce when he made his US$130 call in November 2017.

Neumeyer has previously said he expects a triple-digit silver price in part because he believed the market cycle could be compared to the year 2000, when investors were sailing high on the dot-com bubble and the mining sector was down. He thinks it’s only a matter of time before the market corrects, like it did in 2001 and 2002, and commodities see a big rebound in pricing. It was during 2000 that Neumeyer himself invested heavily in mining stocks and came out on top.

“I’ve been calling for triple-digit silver for a few years now, and I’m more enthused now,” Neumeyer said at an event in January 2020, noting that there are multiple factors behind his reasoning. “But I’m cautiously enthused because, you know, I thought it would have happened sooner than it currently is happening.”

In an August 2022 with Wall Street Silver, he reiterated his support for triple-digit silver and said he’s not alone in this optimistic view — in fact, he’s been surpassed in that optimism. ‘I actually saw someone the other day call for US$500 silver,’ he said. ‘I’m not quite sure I’m at the level. Give me US$50 first and we’ll see what happens after that.’

Another factor driving Neumeyer’s position is his belief that the silver market is in a deficit. In a May 2021 interview, when presented with supply-side data from the Silver Institute indicating the biggest surplus in silver market history, Neumeyer was blunt in his skepticism. “I think these numbers are made up,” he said. “I wouldn’t trust them at all.”

He pointed out that subtracting net investments in silver exchange-traded products leaves the market in a deficit, and also questioned the methodology behind the institute’s recycling data given that most recycled silver metal comes from privately owned smelters and refineries that typically don’t make those figures public.

‘I’m guessing the mining sector produced something in the order of 800, maybe 825 million ounces in 2022,’ Neumeyer said when giving a Q4 2022 overview for his company. ‘Consumption numbers look like they’re somewhere between 1.2 and 1.4 billion ounces. That’s due to all the great technologies, all the newfangled gadgets that we’re consuming. Electric vehicles, solar panels, windmills, you name it. All these technologies require silver … that’s a pretty big (supply) deficit.’

In a December 2023 interview with Kitco, Neumeyer stressed that silver is more than just a poor man’s gold and he spoke to silver’s important role in electric vehicles and solar cells. In line with this view on silver, First Majestic is a member of a consortium of silver producers that in January 2024 sent a letter to the Canadian government urging that silver be recognized as a critical mineral. Silver’s inclusion on the list would allow silver producers to accelerate the development of strategic projects with financial and administrative assistance from the government.

In this 2024 PDAC interview, Neumeyer once again highlighted this sizable imbalance in the silver’s supply-demand picture. “We’re six years into this deficit. The deficit in 2024 looks like it’s gonna be bigger than 2023, and why is that? Because miners aren’t producing enough silver for the needs of the human race,” he said.

More controversially, Neumeyer is of the opinion that the white metal will eventually become uncoupled from its sister metal gold, and should be seen as a strategic metal due to its necessity in many everyday appliances, from computers to electronics, as well as the technologies mentioned above. He has also stated that silver production has gone down in recent years, meaning that contrary to popular belief, he believes the metal is actually a rare commodity.

Neumeyer’s March 2023 triple-digit silver call was a long-term call, and he explained that while he believed gold would break US$3,000 that year, he thought silver will only reach US$30. However, once the gold-silver ratio is that unbalanced, he believes that silver will begin to take off, and it would just need a catalyst.

‘It could be Elon Musk taking a position in the silver space,’ Neumeyer said. ‘There’s going to be a catalyst at some time, and headlines in the Wall Street Journal might talk about the silver supply deficit … I don’t know what the catalyst will be, but investors and institutions will wake up to the fundamentals of the metal, and that’s when it will start to move.’

In an August 2023 interview with SilverNews, Neumeyer said banks are holding the silver market down. He pointed to the paper market for the metal, which he said the banks have capped at US$30 even in times of high buying.

‘If you want to go and buy 100 billion ounces of (paper) silver, you might not even move the price, because some bank just writes you a contract that says (you own that),’ he noted, saying banks are willing to get short because once buying stops, they push the price down to get the investors out of the market and buy the silver back. ‘… If the miners started pulling their metal out of the current system, then all of a sudden the banks wouldn’t know if they’re going to get the metal or not, so they wouldn’t be taking the same risks they’re taking today in the paper markets.’

The month after the interview, his company First Majestic launched its own minting facility, named First Mint.

In 2024, gold experienced a resurgence in investor attention as the potential for Fed rate cuts came into view. In an interview with Cambone at PDAC 2024, Neumeyer countered that perception, stating, “There’s a rush into gold because of the de-dollarization of the world. It has nothing to do with the interest rates.”

In an April 2025 Money Metals podcast, Neumeyer reiterated his belief that silver is in an extreme supply deficit and that eventually silver prices will have to rise in order to incentivize silver miners to dig up more of the metal.

‘You need triple digit silver just to motivate the mining companies to start investing again because the mining companies aren’t going to make the investment because there’s just so much risk in it,’ he said.

Several market analysts have raised concerns about this silver supply deficit.

Moreover, in April at the Sprott Silver Conference, Maria Smirnova, senior portfolio manager and chief investment officer at Sprott Asset Management, highlighted the deficit as well.

Smirnova explained that silver has been in a supply deficit of 150 million ounces to 200 million ounces annually (or 10 percent to 20 percent of total supply), while production has been stagnant or declining over the past decade. She emphasized that above-ground inventories have declined by nearly 500 million ounces in recent years.

What factors affect the silver price?

In order to glean a better understanding of the precious metal’s chances of trading around the US$100 range, it’s important to examine the elements that could push it to that level or pull it further away.

The strength of the US dollar and US Federal Reserve interest rate changes are factors that will continue to affect the precious metal, as are geopolitical issues and supply and demand dynamics.

Although Neumeyer believes that the ties that bind silver to gold need to be broken, the reality is that most of the same factors that shape the price of gold also move silver.

For that reason, it’s helpful to look at gold price drivers when trying to understand silver’s price action. Silver is, of course, the more volatile of the two precious metals, but nevertheless it often trades in relative tandem with gold.

First, it’s useful to understand that higher interest rates are generally negative for gold and silver, while lower rates tend to be positive. That’s because when rates are higher, investment demand shifts to products that can accrue interest.

The Fed’s rate moves are currently playing a key role in pumping up silver prices. Heading into September of this year, the silver price was testing 14 year highs as market watchers expected the first rate cuts on the part of the Fed since it paused its interest rate moves in November 2024. The Fed chose to cut rates at the meeting, and silver and gold both climbed even further in the week following the decision. The subsequent rate cut during the October 29 meeting also pushed silver prices higher.

While central bank actions are important for gold, and by extension silver, another key price driver lately has been geopolitical uncertainty. The past decade has been filled with major geopolitical events such as tensions between the US and other countries such as North Korea, China and Iran. The huge economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the banking crisis in early 2023, Russia’s ongoing war with Ukraine, and rising tensions in the Middle East brought about by the Israel-Hamas war have been sources of concern for investors.

Trump’s tariffs have also rattled stock markets and ratcheted up the level of economic uncertainty pervading the landscape in 2025. This has proved price positive for gold, bringing silver along for the ride.

However, silver’s industrial side can not be ignored. In the current environment, the industrial case of silver is weakening in the short term; but longer term still holds some prospects for larger gains.

Higher industrial demand from emerging sectors due to factors like the transition to renewable energy and the emergence of AI technology will be highly supportive for the metal over the next few years. Solar panels are an especially exciting sector as manufacturers have found increasing the silver content increases energy efficiency.

“Even in the US, the policy really is ‘all of the above’ — all forms of energy. So I’m not concerned about solar cells diminishing. Could they go flat? Yeah, that’s fine. Flat at 300 million ounces? That’s great demand for silver,” said former Hecla Mining (NYSE:HL) CEO Phil Baker during a May webinar hosted by Simon Catt of Arlington Group.

“(Prime Minister Narendra) Modi made a policy decision a year ago to grow the solar industry in India. So in India, only about 10 percent of their demand for silver is used for industrial purposes. In China, it’s 90 percent, and so what you’re going to have in India is you’re going to see their solar panel growth skyrocket,” he added.

Could silver hit US$100 per ounce?

While we can’t know if we’ll reach a $100 per ounce silver price in the near future, there is support for Neumeyer’s belief that the metal is undervalued and that “ideal conditions are present for silver prices to rise.”

So, if the silver price does rise further, can it go that high?

Let’s look at silver’s recent history. Prior to this year, the highest price for silver was just under US$50 in the 1980, and it came close to that level again briefly in 2011. After spending the latter half of the 2010s in the teens, the 2020s have seen silver largely hold above US$20.

In August 2020, the price of silver reached nearly US$28.50 before pulling back again, and moved back up near those heights in February 2021. The price of silver saw a 2022 high point of US$26.46 in February, and passed US$26 again in both May and November 2023.

Silver rallied in the later part of the first quarter of 2024, and by April 12 was once again flirting with the US$30 mark as it reached an 11 year high of US$29.26. Despite pulling back to the US$26 level soon after, by October 22 the price of silver had a nice run in the lead up to the election, rising up to US$34.80.

However, a stronger dollar and signs that the Fed might not be so quick to cut interest rates as deeply as expected were seen as price negative for silver. It was in a downward slide for much of the remainder of the year.

For much of 2025, silver has followed gold higher on factors including persistent inflationary pressures brought on by Trump’s aggressive tariff announcements and the ongoing geopolitical risks in the Middle East. The commodity’s price uptick also came on the back of very strong silver investment demand.

What do other experts think about US$100 silver?

As silver’s trajectory continues upwards, some silver market experts are agreeing with Neumeyer’s triple-digit silver hypothesis, or at least that the price of silver still has further room to grow.

“It’s hard not to reference Keith, our CEO, and triple digit comes to mind pretty frequently now — more people are talking about it,” Alkhafaji explained at the time.

He elaborated, “I’m a believer of economics, you look at the mining ratio and that’s sitting at 7:1, yet the price ratio is sitting at 90:1 right now. We just talked about how gold is comfortable at US$3,000, so that tells us that silver needs to play catch up to collapse that ratio.”

This set up bodes well for those not only invested in physical silver, but in silver mining stocks as well.

‘I manage a fund that invests in gold and silver stocks. And you know, these silver miners, a lot of them, have costs to mine an ounce of something between US$20 and US$30,” Lepard said. “If the price of silver goes to US$120, that’s a heck of a profit margin. And so these stocks are going to be very, very attractive to hold, and that’s why I hold them.”

Chris Marcus, founder of Arcadia Economics, sees the silver supply deficit as not only an issue for the industrial sector, but for the futures and bullion markets as well, which has already sparked a major rally in the silver price in October and could ignite further rallies.

Electronics manufacturers like Samsung (KRX:005930) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) are often referenced when discussing the dangers of the silver deficit. However, Marcus said that an October Bloomberg article about the UK Royal Mint warning it was running low on silver shows that it is not just the industrial users struggling to get hold of the metal.

“The Royal Mint is not an electronics manufacturer. But do you want to call that industrial? I mean, they use silver to make their product, and they’re talking about delays,” he explained.

Even more remarkable, said Marcus, is that this is happening at the same time as the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) is short of the metal and heavy demand in India is also leading to supply challenges. “They have a silver shortage. They cannot buy it right now. So do we have an overall silver shortage?”

“You know, whether in the short term or the long term, one way or another, we’re going to run into a supply demand brick wall. And when that day happens, we could see triple digit silver prices in a very, very short period of time,” he said. “I figure it’s going to be US$200 to US$400 an ounce, at least, before this is all over.”

Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) analysts have a bullish outlook on the silver market and expect to see more record-breaking prices in 2026. The bank is forecasting a high of US$65 per ounce and an average of US$56.25 per ounce for next year.

Can silver hit $1,000 per ounce?

As things are now, it seems unlikely silver will ever reach highs of US$1,000 per ounce, which Keith Neumeyer predicted in 2016 could happen if gold ever climbed to US$10,000 per ounce.

This is related to the gold to silver production ratio discussed above. At the time of the 2016 prediction, this ratio was around 1 ounce of gold to 9 ounces of silver, or 1:9.

If silver was priced according to production ratio today, when gold is at US$4,000, then silver should be around US$445. However, the gold to silver pricing ratio has actually sat around 1:80 to 1:90 recently. With gold at around US$4,000 per ounce in November, silver is trading around US$51 per ounce.

Additionally, even if pricing did change drastically to reflect production rates, gold would need to climb by 150 percent from its current price to hit the US$10,000 gold price Neumeyer mentioned back in 2016.

Why is silver so cheap?

The primary reason that silver is sold at a significant discount to gold is supply and demand, with more silver being mined annually. While silver does have both investment and industrial demand, the global focus on gold as an investment vehicle, including countries stockpiling gold, can overshadow silver.

Additionally, jewelry alone is a massive force for gold demand.

There is an abundance of silver — according to the US Geological Survey, to date 1,740,000 metric tons (MT) of silver have been discovered, while only 244,000 MT of gold have been found, a ratio of about 1 ounce of gold to 7.1 ounces of silver. In terms of output, 25,000 MT of silver were mined in 2024 compared to 3,300 MT for gold.

Looking at these numbers, that puts gold and silver production at about a 1:7.5 ratio last year, while the price ratio on November 19, 2025, was around 1:81 — a huge disparity.

Is silver really undervalued?

Many experts believe that silver is undervalued compared to fellow currency metal gold. As discussed, their production and price ratios are currently incredibly disparate.

While investment demand is higher for gold, silver has seen increasing time in the limelight in recent years, including a 2021 silver squeeze that saw new entrants to the market join in.

Another factor that lends more intrinsic value to silver is that it’s an industrial metal as well as a precious metal. It has applications in technology and batteries — both growing sectors that will drive demand higher.

Silver’s two sides has been on display in recent years: silver demand hit record highs in 2022, according to the Silver Institute, with physical silver investment rising by 22 percent and industrial by 5 percent over 2021. For 2023, industrial demand was up 11 percent over the previous year, compared to a 28 percent decline in physical silver investment.

Is silver better than gold?

There are merits for both metals, especially as part of a well-balanced portfolio. As many analysts point out, silver has been known to outperform its sister metal gold during times of economic prosperity and expansion.

On the other hand, during economic uncertainty silver values are impacted by declines in fabrication demand.

Silver’s duality as a precious and industrial metal also provides price support. As a report from the CPM Group notes, “it can be seen that silver in fact almost always (but not always) out-performs gold during a gold bull market.”

At what price did Warren Buffet buy silver?

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A) bought up 37 percent of global silver supply between 1997 and 2006. Silver ranged from US$4 to US$10 during that period.

In fact, between July 1997 and January 1998 alone, the company bought about 129 million ounces of the metal, much of which was for under US$5. Adjusted for inflation, the company’s purchases in that window cost about US$8.50 to US$11.50.

How to invest in silver?

There are a variety of ways to get into the silver market. For example, investors may choose to put their money into silver-focused stocks by buying shares of companies focused on silver mining and exploration. As a by-product metal, investors can also gain exposure to silver through some gold companies.

There are also silver exchange-traded funds that give broad exposure to silver companies and the metal itself, while more experienced traders may be interested in silver futures. And of course, for those who prefer a more tangible investment, purchasing physical bullion in silver bar and silver coin form is also an option.