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The Hunt Brothers and the 1980 Silver Squeeze

By the Silver Market Chart editorial team · Updated November 10, 2026

Quick answer: Between the summer of 1979 and the spring of 1980, Nelson Bunker Hunt, William Herbert Hunt and their partners gathered so much silver, in metal and in futures, that a federal jury later found they had acted unlawfully in what the Deseret News called an attempt to corner the market. A federal court opinion says silver climbed from nine dollars a troy ounce in August 1979 to about fifty dollars in mid-January 1980. Then the exchange limited positions and margins rose, and the price broke. On March 27, 1980, the day later called Silver Thursday, silver fell to $10.80 an ounce, as the ABA Journal reported. Sources last reviewed November 10, 2026.

The account below leans on primary records first: two statements Paul Volcker gave Congress as Federal Reserve chairman, the CFTC's own history of the decade, and the federal court opinions in the Minpeco case. Where only a newspaper or magazine recorded a figure, the sentence names that publication. Where two sources give different numbers, both appear, each with its own source.

Timeline, 1979 to 1989

DateWhat happenedSource
Before August 1979Silver traded below $10 an ounce, Wikipedia says, citing the SEC's 1982 staff report
August to September 1979Silver rose from $9 to $18 an ounce, per the court opinion
October 1979The Chicago Board of Trade adopted emergency position limits in silver
October 6, 1979The Fed asked banks to refrain from speculative lending
December 1979Silver reached $25 an ounce, per the court opinion
January 7, 1980The Comex board imposed position limits on silver futures holders
Mid-January 1980Silver peaked at about $50 an ounce, per the court opinion
January 21, 1980The Comex board ordered liquidation-only trading in silver
Early March 1980Silver was down to $35 an ounce, per the court opinion
March 26, 1980A brokerage told the Fed that Hunt interests were failing to meet margin calls
March 27, 1980Silver Thursday: silver at $10.80 an ounce, as the ABA Journal reported
March 28, 1980The CFTC voted not to use its emergency powers to suspend silver futures trading
April 4, 1980The CFTC approved speculative position limits for the silver futures contract
April 30 and May 1, 1980Volcker gave statements on the episode to House and Senate subcommittees
May 29, 1981The CFTC sent Congress its report on the silver market of late 1979 and early 1980
February 28, 1985The CFTC ended its silver investigation alleging the Hunts manipulated prices
August 1988A jury found the Hunts and partners liable to Minpeco
September 1988Personal and trust-estate bankruptcy cases in Dallas

How the squeeze worked

A squeeze has two halves, and the Hunts held both. One half is physical metal: bars and coins in vaults, which cannot be sold short by anyone who doesn't own them. The other half is futures, contracts that promise delivery of silver on a set date. If one group owns a large part of the deliverable metal and also holds many long contracts, the traders on the short side have a problem. They either find metal to deliver or buy their contracts back from a market where the biggest buyer is the same group that holds the metal. Either way, the price they pay is set by the side that holds the silver.

How much silver the brothers controlled depends on whose count you read, and the counts measure different things. TIME reported that by late 1979 the brothers had acquired more than 180 million ounces of bullion and coin. Wikipedia, citing the SEC's 1982 staff report, puts the figure at about 195 million troy ounces at the end of 1979 for the two brothers together with International Metals Investment Co.. The Deseret News, reporting on the 1988 verdict, said the Hunts bought 59 million ounces in under a year. The ABA Journal wrote that they controlled more than 69 percent of the world's silver supply, a share none of the other sources repeats. In his May 1, 1980 statement, Volcker gave no quantity, but he did describe what the Fed saw as an attempt to control the supply of a significant commodity.

The difference between paper silver and metal in a vault sits at the heart of the story, and it still matters for how silver is priced today. Our page on spot vs futures price explains how a futures contract becomes the quoted price, and why the nearest contract and the spot figure normally sit close together.

How high silver went: the sources differ

No primary record we read gives an exact, dated peak with its market and whether it was a closing or intraday price. The court opinion says the price "peaked at about fifty dollars per ounce" in mid-January 1980. TIME, writing in 1988, put the January 1980 peak at $50.35 an ounce. The ABA Journal gives $49.45 on January 18, 1980. These are not errors to be settled here. They are most likely different markets and different moments in the day, and none of the three tells us which. If you see a single figure quoted with confidence elsewhere, ask which market it came from.

The fall is easier to pin down in rough terms. The court opinion says silver was at thirty-five dollars by the beginning of March and fell as low as ten dollars by the end of that month.

The exchange's rule changes

The Minpeco court opinion describes the exchange's actions without a rule number, so we describe them the way the court does. On January 7, 1980, the Comex board imposed position limits on holders of silver futures contracts. On January 21, 1980, it imposed liquidation-only trading, meaning traders could close positions but not open new ones; the opinion records ten governors in favor and five abstaining. The same opinion says the board and its Special Silver Committee raised margin requirements periodically and held at least 25 special or emergency meetings.

Volcker's statement to the Senate subcommittee summed up the same period: in January and February 1980, the exchanges raised margins substantially and limited individual positions. Fortune, writing in July 1980, reported that Comex raised silver margins from $2,000 to $60,000 per contract, without giving the date. A higher margin means a trader has to post more cash to hold the same position, which bites hardest on the biggest holders.

The Chicago Board of Trade had moved first. A 2010 statement from the CFTC's general counsel says the CBOT adopted silver position limits on an emergency basis in October 1979 and COMEX did the same in January 1980.

Silver Thursday and the bank loan

Volcker told the House subcommittee that at midday on Wednesday, March 26, 1980, the Fed received an urgent call from a leading brokerage house, which he did not name. The firm said Hunt interests were failing to meet substantial margin calls. His Senate statement adds that some of the brokerage's own bank loans, secured by Hunt silver, were under-margined or at risk, and that the firm feared its capital would fall below SEC and New York Stock Exchange requirements.

The next day was Silver Thursday. Wikipedia, citing the SEC staff report, says silver closed at $10.80 on March 27 and that the unsecured debit in Hunt accounts at Bache was about $122 million at that day's prices. On March 28, the CFTC voted not to use its emergency powers to suspend silver futures trading.

Late on Friday, March 28, Volcker learned of large forward contracts under which Hunt interests were to buy silver from Engelhard Minerals & Chemical at prices far above the market. Banks rejected a refinancing proposal at Boca Raton late on March 30, and the Hunts settled with Engelhard partly by handing over oil properties.

What followed is often called a bailout, but Volcker's own words are narrower. The new bank loans were to go to, and be secured by, Placid Oil Company; control of the silver would pass to Placid and the silver-related loans to the Hunts would be paid off. The Fed would not object to the loan, provided the parties refrained from silver and other speculative commodity purchases for the life of the loan. Volcker said neither he nor any other government official instigated or guided the negotiations, and as of May 1, 1980, he said they were incomplete. Neither of his statements gives a dollar amount.

The amount comes from other sources, and they differ. The Christian Science Monitor reported on May 1, 1980 that banks were negotiating a loan package of about $1 billion. Wikipedia, citing the SEC staff report, says a group of 13 banks arranged a $1.1 billion loan to Placid Oil, backed by Bunker, Herbert and Lamar Hunt.

The aftermath: verdicts, bankruptcy and the CFTC

The private lawsuit, Minpeco v. Hunt, ran through federal court in New York. In August 1988, a jury found Nelson Bunker Hunt, William Herbert Hunt, Lamar Hunt, Mahmoud Fustok and International Metals Investment Co. liable under the Commodity Exchange Act, antitrust law and New York fraud law; all but Lamar were also found to have violated RICO, as a 1989 opinion in the case records.

The damages figures, again, depend on the source. The full court opinions that would settle them were behind a subscription. TIME reported jury damages of $63 million, trebled under antitrust law to $189 million, and a net judgment of $134 million after earlier settlements. The Deseret News reported "more than $130 million" and said Minpeco had originally sought $450 million, with six financial institutions settling for a combined $64.6 million.

Weeks later, TIME reported that Bunker and Herbert Hunt had filed for personal bankruptcy protection in Dallas while facing a $225 million appeal bond. A bankruptcy court opinion of September 16, 1988 covers Chapter 11 cases for trust estates of all three brothers.

The regulator's file ran in parallel. The CFTC's history page records that on February 28, 1985, the agency ended its silver investigation alleging that the Hunts and others manipulated and attempted to manipulate silver prices in 1979 and 1980. Wikipedia reports that the Hunts were later fined and barred from trading commodities after settling CFTC charges; we did not find the CFTC's own order, so the amount is left out here.

The episode on the annual chart

$0.00$5$10$15$20$2575$4.4276$4.3577$4.6278$5.4079$11.0980$20.6381$10.5282$7.9583$11.4484$8.1485$6.14
Silver, annual average 1975 to 1985 (USGS): 1975 $4.42; 1976 $4.35; 1977 $4.62; 1978 $5.40; 1979 $11.09; 1980 $20.63; 1981 $10.52; 1982 $7.95; 1983 $11.44; 1984 $8.14; 1985 $6.14. Linear scale.

Annual averages from U.S. Geological Survey Data Series 140. An annual average hides the January 1980 peak and the March collapse inside the same bar.

The chart above uses the USGS annual average values for 1975 to 1985, the same series that runs the first century of our silver price chart over 30 years. Notice what it does to the squeeze. An annual average blends the January spike with the months of lower prices on either side, so 1980 rises well above its neighbors but nowhere near the peak figures quoted above. That is not a flaw; it is what an average is for. If you compare 1980 with recent years on the silver price by year table, keep in mind that each row is a yearly mean, not a high.

The comparison with 2026 is natural, and it has limits. Silver set its record of $121.30 on January 29, 2026, and it now sits 57.5% below that high. Our page on why the silver price is dropping covers this year's slide from dated reports. The 1980 collapse followed one group's buying and the exchange rules aimed at it; nothing in the sources for 2026 describes a single buyer of that kind.

What changed in market rules since

The clearest legacy is the position limit. Emergency limits at the CBOT in 1979 and COMEX in 1980 were followed by CFTC approval of speculative limits for silver futures on April 4, 1980. Congress held hearings: a House subcommittee met on several dates from March 31 to May 22, 1980, and a Senate subcommittee held a hearing on silver futures price volatility on June 26, 1980. A law, Public Law 96-276, required the CFTC's report on the episode, which went to Congress in May 1981.

Margins are still the exchange's main brake. In January 2026, Reuters reported that CME switched precious-metal margins from fixed dollar amounts to a percentage of contract value, with COMEX silver at 9%. Then and in 1980, a higher margin served the same purpose: it raises the cost of holding a large position in a market that is moving fast. Today's vault stocks behind COMEX contracts are covered on our COMEX silver inventory page.

What this page can't tell you

This page can't tell you the exact peak price of January 1980, because the primary records we read give only "about fifty dollars" and the secondary figures don't say which market they measured. It can't settle the loan amount or the final damages, because the documents that would were not readable to us. And it can't tell you what silver does next. The episode shows how a concentrated position and an exchange's rule changes can move a price; it doesn't make the present repeat it. The current price is on the silver market price chart, and you can follow today's silver quote with its time stamp there.

Information, not financial advice. We do not tell you to buy or sell and we do not predict prices. Figures are reference numbers as of the time shown.

If you are reading about 1980 because you are weighing physical silver for a retirement account, Augusta Precious Metals is the dealer this site works with, and its page sets out what we know about it and who it suits.

Frequently asked questions

What was Silver Thursday?

Silver Thursday is the name given to March 27, 1980, when the silver price collapsed after Hunt interests failed to meet margin calls. The ABA Journal reported that silver fell to $10.80 an ounce that day. The day before, a brokerage had warned the Federal Reserve that the Hunts were missing calls.

Did the Federal Reserve bail out the Hunt brothers?

Not with its own money, by Volcker's account. Banks negotiated new loans to Placid Oil Company, secured by its assets, and the Fed said it would not object provided no further speculative commodity buying followed. Volcker said no government official instigated or guided the talks, and his statements give no loan amount.

How much money did the Hunt brothers lose on silver?

The sources disagree. Fortune estimated Hunt losses at $1.7 billion in July 1980, while the Deseret News, reporting on the 1988 verdict, said the Hunts lost $1.5 billion. Neither figure comes from a court record or official accounting, so treat both as press estimates.

Sources

Each page we drew a fact from, with whether it was the publisher's own page or a page reporting it.