A Quiet Currency Alert: 50-year lows in USD vs Silver

BY BILL GRIFFO

December 17, 2025

Hey Income Hunters,

The Dollar Just Blinked (Silver Didn’t)

If you want a clear signal that the precious metals complex may be gearing up for another leg higher… start staring at the dollar priced in gold and silver.

This historic move has been quietly happening in December…

The U.S. dollar is losing ground versus monetary metals, and that’s rarely “random noise” when it shows up alongside new liquidity injections from the Federal reserve.

As we mentioned in our report on Monday Fed QE is Back! No matter what the Fed says QE has been restarted.

And markets don’t wait for the textbook definition. They front-run the consequences.

Measuring the Price of Money

Money is the measuring stick. If you shrink the measuring stick, you need more of them to measure the same thing.

So when the Fed injects liquidity and the market senses more will be needed, the question becomes:

Do you want to hold the measuring stick… or what it measures?

That’s why gold and silver tend to “smell” policy shifts early…

And right now, they’re not just holding up—they’ve been strong enough that even routine pullbacks are happening near extreme highs.

Gold is still near record territory after a huge year and Silver has made new highs with traders focused on what policy looks like into 2026.

The Truth in Numbers

Check out this 50-year chart of the USD/Silver ratio:

Now we know the story on Gold… Once the U.S. and allies froze Russian central bank reserves after the 2022 invasion, every reserve manager on earth was forced to ask, “Is a dollar reserve truly ‘risk-free’ if it can be frozen?”

This realization forced central banks to start buying up gold to replace US dollars and strengthen their reserves used for trade. Gold is the classic “no counterparty risk” asset.

Silver on the other hand as you can see in the chart above has an extra rocket booster: it’s money and an industrial workhorse…. And, as you can see in the above chart, since the US added Silver to its critical mineral list it has soared versus USD

Don’t make the mistake of selling silver based on this chart because a 100-year shift in global monetary policy causes a major adjustment in currencies that may continue for many years.

What this means for markets (and your portfolio)

When the Fed is forced back into balance-sheet expansion (even if they refuse to call it that), you typically get:

Downward pressure on the dollar (at least in bursts)… and upward pressure on Gold first, then Silver, which tends to catch-up and sprint ahead:

The chart above illustrates the move up in Silver down in DXY well ahead of Fed policy announcement.

The markets now are becoming more policy-sensitive and headline-driven, which means volatility returns.

Changes I am Making this Week

I have held a long-term position in Silver and added to my Gold position last week

This week I am buying the TIP ETF. The underlying assets of TIPs are Government Guaranteed Inflation Protection Securities.

This makes them a “boring but effective” hedge as inflation re-accelerates…

And with potential for volatility in markets to rise, reallocating out of long bonds and risk assets into TIP ETFs will lower your overall volatility and offset the negative effects inflation has on your wealth.