Yep, it’s official. Bank of America just told its institutional clients that silver could finish 2026 anywhere between $135 and $309 an ounce.
Michael Widmer, the bank’s head of metals research (not some guy on the YouTube circuit, not a goldbug newsletter, not us), got there using sixth-grade arithmetic on the gold-to-silver ratio. With gold near $5,000, he ran the 2011 ratio low of 32:1 and got $135. He ran the 1980 Hunt Brothers extreme of 14:1 and got $309.
That arithmetic was the same arithmetic in 2013.
And in 2018.
And in 2021.
The only thing that changed is who’s willing to say it on bank letterhead.
The exhibit
Here’s TheStreet’s coverage, lightly trimmed:
Bank of America just made one of the boldest silver price calls on Wall Street. Michael Widmer, the bank’s head of metals research, projects silver could reach anywhere between $135 and $309 per ounce before the end of 2026. With gold near $5,000, applying the 2011 ratio low of 32:1 puts silver at $135. Apply the 1980 extreme of 14:1, the level reached during the Hunt Brothers silver squeeze, and the number climbs to $309.
So… “The level reached during the Hunt Brothers silver squeeze.” That is the comparison BofA’s own metals chief reached for. Bank research notes don’t casually invoke 1980 unless somebody at the desk thinks 1980 is in the option set.
What we’re actually looking at
What changed isn’t silver. What changed is who’s saying it.
The structural case has been visible from any decent monetary-history bookshelf for a decade. The Money Bubble did this math in 2013 when gold was $1,300 and called silver a steal. Lips’ Gold Wars documented the suppression mechanics back in the 1990s. The Mises canon laid the framework a century ago. None of that is new. The new thing is that a TBTF bank with a desk full of derivatives just sent it to clients with a price target attached.
And note how banks behave…
They don’t forecast moves like this until they’re already underway. The book has to be repositioned first; then the research note hits the wire. Most of Wall Street consensus still clusters between $79 and $90 a year out. Bank of America just broke from the consensus, and they did it loudly. That isn’t a contrarian call. That’s a desk telling its clients what the desk has already done.
The math BofA finally did
The structural case is now embarrassing in its simplicity:
Six straight years of physical deficit. Cumulative shortfall since 2021: roughly 820 million ounces. That’s an entire year of global mine output, gone. The world has been short one full year of new silver for half a decade, and somehow the price is still only $81.
Mine supply is a brick wall. Production has plateaued near 813 million ounces a year. About 70% of newly mined silver comes out of the ground as a byproduct of copper, lead, zinc, and gold mining, which means miners can’t respond to silver’s price signal even if they wanted to. New mines take seven to fifteen years from discovery to first ounce. Fresnillo, the world’s largest primary silver producer, just cut 2026 guidance.
The plumbing is already breaking. In late 2025, London silver inventories dropped enough that spot prices traded above futures. Lease rates spiked to 39%. Backwardation and 39% lease rates are not “the market is a little tight.” Those are signals that paper claims are outrunning available physical metal. The squeeze isn’t theoretical. It already flashed once.
The ratio. Gold at $5,000. Silver at $81.50. Ratio at 59:1. The 3,000-year mean is 16:1. The 1980 extreme was 14:1. At $5,000 gold and a 32:1 ratio, silver is $156. At 16:1, it’s $312. At 14:1, it’s $357. BofA isn’t being aggressive. BofA is being arithmetic.
January 29 was the warning shot
Here’s the part most coverage of the BofA note is missing.
Silver hit $121.67 on January 29, then crashed 36% to $75 within days, and has clawed back to roughly $81. Any chartist will call that a failed breakout. Anyone looking at structure knows what it actually was.
The market tested how much physical silver was available at $120, and the answer was “not enough to satisfy delivery without breaking something.” The crash wasn’t a top. The crash was the paper market reasserting control over a physical market that briefly got away. Lease rates above 30% during that window are the receipt. The setup is intact. The pressure is building.
Three roads, one destination
Pick the macro path you find most plausible:
The Fed cuts. Dollar weakens, real rates compress, monetary demand for silver detonates. Silver up.
The Fed holds (or new chair Warsh hawks). Inflation grinds higher (it’s been above target for five straight years, per the Cleveland Fed), real rates stay negative anyway, the deficit keeps eating aboveground stocks, the Treasury keeps issuing into a market running out of buyers. Silver up.
Recession. Industrial demand softens modestly. But monetary panic into hard assets accelerates violently, central banks (already net buyers) accelerate purchases, and retail rotates out of stocks at all-time-high valuations. Silver up.
Three paths. Same destination. Same coin.
The states are pricing it in faster than the Fed
Kansas just exempted gold and silver from state capital gains tax. The “red state gold rush” is mapping the same legislative momentum across more than a dozen states. Read that sentence twice, because it tells you something the Federal Reserve never will: state governments are pricing in monetary failure faster than the Federal Reserve is. The institution closest to citizens’ actual financial pain is treating sound money as a legislative priority. The institution that creates the inflation is still calling it transitory.
The landing
The trade isn’t over because BofA noticed. The easy part of the trade is over.
The part where you could buy sovereign coins at single-digit premiums, where junk silver was available in any quantity at any dealer, where the ratio sat at 90:1 and screamed at anyone willing to look. That part is closing. Bank of America’s note is the bell.
What’s left is the violent part. The repricing that happens when retail money, advisor money, target-date-fund money, and the slow-moving giants of pension capital finally do the same arithmetic Widmer just published.
You can be early, but you aren’ late either.
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