Welcome back to our weekly update. I'm Charlotte Mloud with investingnews.com and we're going to run through a few of the week's biggest stories in the mining industry. If you enjoyed this video, don't forget to hit the like button, subscribe to our channel, and of course, leave us a comment below. Let's get into it. [music] It's been a wild couple of weeks for gold and silver. After surging to record highs at the end of January, prices for both precious metals saw significant corrections, creating turmoil for market participants. [music] This week brought some relief with gold bouncing back from its low point and even trading above 5,000 per ounce for a brief period of time. [music] Silver, which is known for outperforming gold on both the upside and the downside, was more volatile, but seems to have bottomed out around the 70 per ounce level. Why did gold and silver drop? And more importantly, what's next? As always, there are a variety of different factors at play, but I'll give you a rundown of what I've been hearing. [music] Starting with the pullback, I spoke with Joe Cavaton of the World Gold Council, who pointed to speculative players as a key reason for gold's price decline. Here's how he explained it. >> But at the end of this, you're looking at a lot of people who were pushing the price higher, speculative in terms of nature, pulling back and taking money off the table. And that's why I think we're seeing a correction in the price. I don't think that we have an issue with fundamentally what's going on in the gold market. I think that we saw a market that got very aggressive in terms of its price levels and now we're coming back to a 46 4700 level. >> Gary Savage of the Smart Money Tracker newsletter made a similar comment saying that there are times when sentiment gets so bullish that eventually there's no one left to buy. However, on the silver side, he saw signs of market manipulation as well. Some of it is just we just got, you know, way too bullish, ran out of buyers. We were due for some kind of correction anyway. And I think the banks took advantage of that and uh and coordinated a huge overnight attack that dropped silver, whatever it was. I think it was almost 30% or maybe it was 30% almost overnight that allowed them to get out of their shorts because a lot of those contracts were going to stand for delivery. and uh and they were going to have to buy physical silver at $120 an ounce to um to deliver. So, I I think it was some of it was just sentiment got too bullish and some of it was the banks needed to bail out, get out of the short position. So, >> adding more nuance to the silver story this week is the news that billionaire Chinese trader Banji Ming has reportedly established the largest net short position on the Shanghai futures exchange with his bet against the metal clocking in at 300 million. Bloomberg analysis of exchange data shows he started ramping up silver shorts in the last week of January, although [music] he initially began shifting from a long silver stance this past November. Aside from silver, Gan is known for his moves in gold and copper. [music] There's also been commentary suggesting that the nomination of Kevin Worsh for the US Federal Reserve chair position has weighed on gold and silver prices. President Donald Trump announced his choice on January 30th with market watchers quickly pointing to Worsh's hawkish reputation and questioning whether he'll fall in line with Trump's calls for lower interest rates. However, in the days since the news broke, the tone has shifted with Trump himself saying that Worsh wouldn't have gotten the job if he said he wanted to raise rates. Taking a step back from what's happening now, I want to emphasize that the majority of the experts I've been speaking with recently don't believe gold and silver are topping. In a January 25th interview, Adrien Day of Adrien Day Asset Management said exactly that, pointing [music] to previous bull markets where both metals move steeply down before continuing up. This clip is from before last week's correction, but I think you'll see why it's still relevant. >> Um, look, a pullback is always in the cards. And people forget, everybody talks about, well, not everybody, you talk about as 1974 to75 and gold dropped almost 50%. But people forget the same thing happened in 2006. You know, halfway through the bull market, you had a 30% correction in gold, which of course means a much bigger correction for gold stocks. So a pullback at some point is is always not just a possibility but it's almost a certainty. But I if if if I may re if we rephrase the question to is this a top you know absolutely not. In my view we are absolutely nowhere near a top. >> With that said a point that's come up repeatedly in my interviews lately is personalization. While it's valuable to listen to other people's views, what's really important is to form your own opinions and understand why you own the assets in your portfolio. [music] If you can do that, you'll be better equipped to weather any storms and to buy and sell when it's time. [clears throat] I'm always curious to know your thoughts, so leave a comment below if you'd like to share your ideas on what's next for Gold and Silver or how you're positioning. Now, thank you for watching. [music] If you like this video, make sure you hit the like button and subscribe to our channel. We'd also love to hear your thoughts, so leave us [music] a comment below.