Silver Surges Past Gold as Buffett Hoards Cash

While Warren Buffett sits on a record $334 billion cash pile at Berkshire Hathaway — a move widely read as a signal that equity valuations are stretched — precious metals markets are flashing their own warning signs. Gold has already broken through historic highs in 2025, but now attention is shifting sharply toward silver, with Crescat Capital strategist Tavi Costa making a bold case that silver is the most undervalued hard asset on the planet right now.

Costa argues that the gold-to-silver ratio — currently hovering around 88:1 — is historically extreme. In past cycles where this ratio compressed back toward its long-term average near 50:1, silver delivered explosive returns that dwarfed gold's gains. His thesis rests on three pillars: silver's dual role as both a monetary metal and an industrial input critical to solar panels and EV batteries, tightening mine supply, and a structural shift by central banks and institutional investors toward real assets as dollar credibility erodes.

The timing of this call matters. Global central banks bought more gold in 2024 than in any year since 1967. If even a fraction of that institutional appetite rotates into silver — a market roughly 1/10th the size of gold by value — the price impact could be dramatic. Costa's target range implies silver prices potentially doubling or tripling from current levels, a scenario that would rewrite portfolios built around conventional fixed income and equity assumptions.

Ekonomik Gündem Analysis: Ekonomik Gündem Analysis: For Turkish investors, this isn't an abstract Wall Street story. Turkey's household gold holdings are among the highest per capita in the world — the Central Bank estimates Türkiye holds somewhere between 3,500 and 5,000 tonnes of gold under mattresses and in safe deposit boxes. But silver? Almost nobody here holds it systematically. That gap is the opportunity worth examining.

At current exchange rates, silver trades around 950-980 TL per gram on the Istanbul market. If Costa's gold-to-silver compression thesis plays out and the ratio moves from 88:1 to even 65:1 — not even a full normalization — silver's TL-denominated price could reach 1,400-1,500 TL per gram, purely on ratio mechanics before any additional dollar weakness is factored in.

From my banking years, I watched Turkish retail investors pile into gold exactly at cycle peaks and ignore silver entirely. The physical silver market in Turkey is thin and illiquid, which cuts both ways — small demand increases move prices sharply. For those without commodity brokerage access, BIST-listed gold and silver ETFs offer the cleanest entry point. Position sizing matters: silver is volatile, routinely moving 3-5% in a single session. This is not a savings substitute — it is a speculative allocation that deserves no more than 5-10% of a portfolio.

Kaynak: Sozcu Ekonomi