On a recent episode of the Money Metals podcast, host Mike Maharrey sat down with veteran market technician J. Michael Oliver, commonly referred to as simply Michael Oliver, to unpack why he believes silver is breaking out of a half-century “box” and entering a radically new price regime.
Oliver, who entered the futures business in April 1975 and later developed his proprietary Momentum Structural Analysis (MSA), argued that the current move in monetary metals isn’t a normal bull market. In his view, familiar “overbought” rules and tidy profit-taking instincts are exactly how investors get shaken out before the real acceleration begins.
(Interview Starts Around 6:51 Mark)
Who Is Michael Oliver, and What Is Momentum Structural Analysis?
Oliver said he began as a futures broker at EF Hutton in New York in the mid-1970s and learned old-school bar-chart technical analysis early in his career. In the early 1980s, he started building his own approach, which he later formalized as Momentum Structural Analysis.
He launched MSA in 1992, initially serving institutional clients. In 2015, he opened the service to retail subscribers.
His key claim is simple - momentum tends to break first.
Instead of watching price alone, Oliver converts price into a momentum-style oscillator that measures how far price is above or below an average. He says those momentum structures form their own floors, ceilings, and trendlines—and major turns often show up there before they become obvious on price charts.
Why Oliver Thinks Gold’s Bull Market Still Has Much Higher Targets
Oliver used gold as a framing device for the bigger thesis. Most people underestimate how large percentage moves can be in monetary metals.
He referenced gold’s 1976 corrective low near 100 and the 1980 peak near 850, which he described as a roughly eightfold gain. He then pointed to the 2001–2011 bull market, which also produced an approximately eightfold rise, culminating in gold’s 2011 peak around $1,920.
Against those historical comparisons, Oliver argued the current cycle—starting from the $1,050 bear-market low—has only delivered roughly a fourfold increase so far.
If gold merely matched prior eightfold gains, he suggested a reference point around $8,500. He implied the current macro backdrop could justify even more than that, but used the $8,000–$8,500 range to challenge the idea that gold is “overdone.”
The Silver Breakout: Why $90+ Doesn’t Mean “Bubble”
Maharrey noted that silver had pushed above $90 and that many listeners were asking if the move was too fast, too vertical, and therefore a bubble. He said he regularly hears from people asking whether they should take profits.
Oliver’s answer was blunt… this is exactly how people miss the move.
He said his team began arguing about six months earlier that silver was poised to accelerate after approaching $35 for the third time, including attempts around October 2024 and March 2025, both of which failed before the market finally broke higher.
In Oliver’s view, silver wasn’t just moving up. It was breaking out of an entire historical regime.
The Silver-to-Gold Ratio Signal Oliver Says People Missed
The centerpiece of Oliver’s case was silver’s relationship to gold.
He described measuring the silver-gold spread by dividing gold by silver and expressing the relationship as a percentage. He said silver was around 1% of the price of gold early in the year and then surged—especially in April and May—effectively doubling its relative value from that depressed level.
He pointed to prior historical spread peaks for context.
He cited about 6.5% during the 1979–1980 silver run and about 3.1% during the 2011 peak, describing those as monthly peak closes.
Then came the crucial technical event. Oliver said a ceiling in that spread that extended back roughly 10 years was broken in October and November. After that, he argued, silver’s price didn’t just rise—it went vertical.
He compared the setup to summer 1979, when he said silver nearly quintupled over the next five months, and to September 2010, when he said silver rose roughly “two and a half” times over the next six months.
Silver Price Prediction: “A Couple Hundreds,” and Possibly $300 to $500
Oliver argued that silver is no longer bound by the old $40–$50 range that contained the market for about half a century.
In the next handful of months, he said he expects silver to reach “the couple hundreds,” with a realistic possibility of $300 to $500.
He also said the historic silver-gold ratio ranges—3.1% and 6.5%—could be challenged or exceeded. His point was that even if gold only moved to something like $8,000, those percentage relationships imply silver prices that would shock investors who sell simply because the chart “looks overbought.”
Copper and Lead: Why Silver Could Repeat a “New Reality” Breakout
To make the idea of a “new reality” breakout more believable, Oliver pointed to other commodities that spent decades trapped in ranges and then abruptly repriced higher.
He said copper was capped for decades at around $0.50 to $1.50 before breaking out in late 2005 and running to about $4.50 within several quarters.
He also said lead stayed range-bound for decades and then in 2007 “quadrupled plus” in several quarters after breaking out.
His point wasn’t that silver is copper or lead. His point was that once a long-held ceiling breaks, markets can destroy conventional ideas about overbought levels and measured moves.
Why the “$95 Target” Mindset Is the Wrong Lens
Oliver argued that most people do the math in a way that automatically caps their expectations.
On an arithmetic chart, silver’s historical range from roughly $4 to $50 looks like a $45 box. So investors project $45 higher and see $95–$100 as the natural stopping point.
Oliver said that’s not the real dimension.
On a logarithmic scale, going from $4 to $50 is more than a tenfold move. And he noted that silver achieved a comparable tenfold-type move twice over the past 50 years.
By that logic, he argued that a similar move above $50 implies something like $500—numbers that sound impossible only until the market reprices and forces everyone to adjust.
CPI vs M2: Why Oliver Thinks Money Supply Tells the Real Story
Maharrey mentioned that some skeptics were using CPI comparisons to argue silver had overshot fundamentals. Oliver rejected CPI as an inflation yardstick.
He said M2 is the better metric and described M2 as parabolic.
Maharrey agreed and noted he’s been hammering that point for months, even as some people refuse to accept it.
Oliver suggested that when people finally understand the degradation of the currency unit, they’ll realize that a doubled stock price over a decade might not represent real gains—just a reflection of a declining measuring stick.
The Real Catalyst: A Government Bond Crisis, Not a Normal Cycle
Oliver widened the lens beyond metals and into systemic risk.
He argued the West is facing a government debt crisis, not another mortgage-style shock like 2007–2009. In his view, U.S., Japanese, and European/UK debt markets are all vulnerable, and any major break could ripple across the entire financial system.
He cited a comment he attributed to the head of the New York Fed in November, saying they would start “buying bonds,” ostensibly to provide liquidity. Oliver interpreted that as support.
He also warned about the U.S. 30-year bond, saying 30-year T-bond futures were around 116, with a crash low around 117 in October 2022. He argued the market has been stuck near the floor for years, and said a drop toward 111 would be “flush city” by his technical measures—potentially triggering an emergency in the government bond market.
Oil Could Shock Everyone Next, Oliver Warns
Near the end of the conversation, Oliver flagged oil as an underappreciated risk.
He said if oil moves above $63 during the quarter—especially on a monthly close—his momentum structures suggest the potential for a sharp upside run. He floated a 50% surge in oil and said it may not even need a news catalyst.
In his view, it would be a technical “ambush” that hits consumers directly at the gas pump.
Manipulation, Reversion, and Silver’s Coming “Tantrum”
Maharrey asked why silver stayed trapped in an old pricing regime for so long. Oliver said he couldn’t fully explain it, but noted the long-standing argument that silver has been manipulated.
He suggested that if suppression has been real, the unwind could be violent. When markets are forced away from reality, he argued, they often overcorrect when the restraint breaks.
That’s why he expects silver not only to reprice, but to overshoot—because the market is correcting decades of distortion in a short, explosive window.
Where to Follow Michael Oliver’s Work
Maharrey closed by encouraging listeners to look into Oliver’s approach as a complement to macro analysis.
Oliver said people can learn more at OliverMSA.com, where he explains Momentum Structural Analysis and offers sample copies. Maharrey also noted that longer interviews with Oliver are available online for those who want a deeper dive.
The episode ended with Maharrey thanking Oliver and inviting him to return for a future conversation.
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