Silver Crisis Looms Again: 46 Years After Hunt Brothers' Market Manipulation, New System Outage Sparks Concern

In the late 1970s, Texas oil billionaires Nelson Bunker and William Herbert Hunt amassed control over nearly a third of the global silver supply through a massive credit network. This leverage drove the price of silver from $6 to $50 per ounce. The Hunts demanded physical delivery of their silver futures contracts as they expired, but exchanges and brokers lacked sufficient physical silver to meet these demands.

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They were losing and playing by the rules, so they decided to change the rules of the game.

Facing systemic collapse, exchange management altered the game's rules. They drastically increased margin requirements for silver contracts overnight and imposed additional capital obligations on large position holders, directly targeting the Hunt brothers. This forced the Hunts to find hundreds of millions of dollars in extra cash to maintain their multi-billion dollar silver positions. In late January 1980, COMEX enacted an emergency rule, "Silver Rule 7," which prohibited new silver purchases on the exchange. Investors were only allowed to close existing positions, effectively banning new buyers and ensuring prices would fall.

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The exchange management decided to change the rules of the game.

As prices plummeted from $50, the Hunts' investment value evaporated. Brokers began issuing "Margin Calls," demanding more collateral. On March 27, 1980, Bache Halsey Stuart Shields requested a $100 million margin call from the Hunts, which they could not meet, leading to a market collapse. Now, 46 years later, a similar crisis looms. On February 25, 2026, a critical 90-minute system outage occurred on CME Group's Globex platform for precious metals, just two days before the March silver contract's First Notice Day. This occurred as silver prices were testing a critical resistance level of $90-$91.

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In a market where only sellers could trade, there was only one direction the price could go: down.