Silver Price Crisis: 40% Spread Between COMEX and Shanghai Exposes the Truth

The silver market is facing one of its most significant fractures ever. On January 30, 2026, silver futures on COMEX crashed by 31.4% in a single day, which means the largest one-day drop since the infamous Hunt Brothers collapse in 1980. Analysts quickly declared that the bubble had burst. Bloomberg ran with the headline “Silver Bubble Bursts,” and Goldman Sachs immediately reiterated its sell recommendation. The prevailing narrative? Speculative excess was purged, and silver would now return to a reasonable price under fifty dollars an ounce.

But there’s a problem with that narrative: it’s ignoring the most crucial data point.

As paper silver plummeted on the COMEX, the physical silver market in Asia was showing a very different story. In Shanghai, physical silver traded at premiums over 50% higher than COMEX prices during the crash low. In other regions, the premiums were also massive—18% in Dubai, 25% in Mumbai. While the COMEX price hit its lowest point at $78.12, silver in these physical markets was going for the equivalent of $120–$130 per ounce. This was big divergence between paper and physical silver, and it reveals a critical disconnect in the market.

The Great Divorce: Paper vs. Physical Silver

When a market is truly in a bubble, and the correction happens, the general expectation is for physical silver to trade at a discount as paper sellers flood the market. But the opposite occurred. Physical premiums widened as paper prices collapsed, signaling something deeper at play. This wasn’t just a short-term reaction; it’s the signature of a market that has fractured into two separate pricing regimes; paper and physical markets that are no longer in sync.

The financial media, focused on the paper crash, missed this crucial detail. They didn’t report that during the very session where paper silver dropped, physical premiums pumped by 13% to 54%. This is not how a typical correction works, where both markets usually move in tandem. The divorce between these two markets is a major red flag, and it indicates that silver’s price structure is evolving in a way that the mainstream consensus isn’t recognizing.

Shanaka Anslem Perera, an outspoken analyst and vocal silver advocate, has been keeping a close eye on this development. Perera’s analysis dives deep into the supply-side dynamics that the market consensus is ignoring. As he points out, the belief that supply will catch up to meet demand and return silver to “equilibrium” is based on an outdated assumption. The supply response simply cannot occur at the pace the market expects.

Perera argues that the January crash confirmed that the bull market is inevitable. The data, when correctly interpreted, tells us that physical silver is still under severe supply constraints, and the gap between paper and physical pricing is a clear sign of that. What’s more, he sees the disconnect between these markets as the key signal for the next phase of the silver bull run.

Read also: Gold and Silver Slump Wipes Out Over $6 Trillion: What Forced This Massive Liquidation?

What’s Coming Next: The Institutional Blind Spot

For the next phase of this silver market, Perera warns that many institutional investors are missing a crucial vulnerability in their positioning. The supply constraints facing the physical market are far more serious than most realize. The market is running on the assumption that the paper market will somehow find a way to resolve these issues, but that just isn’t realistic given the structural issues.

The arbitrage opportunity (the 40% spread between New York and Shanghai) is impossible to exploit right now, not just because of logistical issues, but because the mechanism that should close this gap is essentially economically dead. The cost of borrowing silver to engage in arbitrage now exceeds the potential profit from the trade. The silver market is caught in a tug of war between paper prices and physical reality, and the pressure is mounting.

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