Why Is Silver Down Today? Silver Falls About 6% to $55.75 After a Hot CPI Print, and Leveraged Silver Longs on Crypto Exchanges Get Liquidated

What happened, hour by hour (SGT)

Before the data. Silver spent most of Wednesday in a narrow range. On Binance's XAGUSDT perpetual, which tracks the spot silver price, the hourly candles between 08:00 and 20:00 SGT moved between $58.48 and $59.47. Hourly trading volume sat between $10 million and $75 million.

20:30 SGT – the CPI release. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that consumer prices rose 0.6% in September and 3.7% over twelve months, up from 3.4% in August and above the 3.6% forecast. Core inflation, which strips out food and energy, rose to 2.6% from 2.4%, against a forecast of 2.5%. CNBC noted that a 9.1% jump in gasoline accounted for more than half of the monthly increase, which ties the print to the energy shock from the conflict in the Middle East.

20:00–21:00 SGT candle. Silver dropped from $58.58 to a low of $57.50 and closed at $57.58. Volume in that single hour hit $261 million, more than three times any hour earlier in the day.

21:00 SGT to midnight. The selling did not stop after the first reaction. Each of the next three hourly candles closed lower: $56.48, $56.37 and $55.84. That is the pattern of a repricing, not a one-minute spike: traders were moving money out of metals as rate expectations changed.

After midnight. By 02:50 SGT on 15 October silver was at $55.75, near the 24-hour low of $55.55. From the last pre-CPI price of $58.58 that is a drop of about 4.9%; from the 24-hour open of $59.45 it is 6.2%.

Why hot inflation hits silver so hard

Silver earns nothing while you hold it. When interest rates rise, cash and Treasury bonds pay more, so the cost of holding a metal instead goes up. FXStreet, citing the CME FedWatch tool, reported that the market-implied chance of a rate hike at the Fed's 27–28 October meeting jumped from 22% before the release to about 43% after it, while a December hike is priced at around 95%. CNBC, using the same tool later in the US afternoon, put the October odds near 37%. The exact number moves through the day; the direction did not.

The dollar did the rest. FXStreet said the US Dollar Index climbed to about 102.85, its highest level since April 2025, and the 10-year Treasury yield rose above 5.2%. Silver is priced in dollars, so a stronger dollar makes it more expensive for buyers paying in euros, yen or rupees.

Silver usually falls harder than gold on days like this because it is a smaller, more speculative market with a large industrial side. Gold lost about 1.6% on Binance's XAUUSDT perpetual, to $4,101.97, while silver lost 6.2%. FXStreet reported gold as low as $4,073 in spot trading. At current prices one ounce of gold buys about 73.6 ounces of silver.

The crypto-exchange angle: silver longs got liquidated

Many crypto traders now trade gold, silver and stocks through "TradFi" perpetual futures on crypto exchanges, settled in USDT and open around the clock. Binance lists XAGUSDT as a TradFi perpetual in the commodity category; Bitget and OKX list silver perpetuals too. That market was busy on Wednesday:

Our own liquidation feed, which observes forced closures on Binance and OKX, shows how leverage made the move worse:

• $14.34 million of XAGUSDT positions were liquidated in the 24 hours to 02:44 SGT, the eighth-largest symbol across both venues, behind only crypto majors.
• $2.51 million in the last four hours and $0.97 million in the last hour alone, so the forced selling was still running long after the data.
• The largest single liquidation we saw across all symbols in the last four hours was a silver long worth $805,711, closed at 02:01 SGT.

Open interest on Binance's silver perpetual rose from $264 million to $301 million over the same 24 hours, an increase of about 14%, even as the price fell. Gold open interest rose about 22%, from $590 million to $722 million. Rising open interest in a falling market means new positions were opened into the drop: some traders shorted the news, others bought what they saw as a dip with leverage. Funding is still slightly positive on both Binance and Bitget, which means longs are still paying shorts. The crowd has not given up on the long side, and that is how a further drop could trigger another wave of liquidations.

What this means for you

If you hold physical silver or a silver ETF, nothing about the metal changed on Wednesday; the price of money did. FXStreet's technical read puts silver well below its 50-, 100- and 200-day moving averages, which sit between about $63 and $72, with the $60 round number as the first level sellers have to give back. The next macro test is close: the Fed's Beige Book, producer prices, retail sales and jobless claims are due over the next two days, and the Fed meets on 27–28 October. Our economic calendar lists the release times in SGT.

If you trade silver perpetuals, three things matter more than the direction:

1. Leverage. Silver moved about 5% in four hours. A 20x long is wiped out by a move of roughly 5% or less once maintenance margin is counted, which is exactly what our feed shows. Our liquidation and mark price lesson shows how to calculate your own liquidation level before you enter. 2. Data times. US data lands at 20:30 SGT. Do not hold a high-leverage metals position into a CPI, payrolls or Fed release unless you have decided in advance what you will do if it goes 3% against you. 3. Funding and fees. Check funding before you hold overnight on our funding-rate board; on a volatile day you also pay more in fees because you trade more often.

How to act on this: if you want to trade gold and silver alongside crypto from one USDT account, Bitget lists both XAGUSDT and XAUUSDT perpetuals. Opening an account through our Bitget profile with code nexu888 returns up to 60% of your trading fees automatically, which matters most on days like this when you are in and out of positions. Keep the position size small enough that a 5% move costs you a known amount, not the whole account.

Quick answers

Why did silver drop today? Because September CPI came in at 3.7% against a 3.6% forecast, and core CPI at 2.6% against 2.5%. That raised the odds of a Fed hike in October, lifted the dollar and Treasury yields, and made a non-yielding metal less attractive.

How much did silver fall? About 6.2% in 24 hours on the Binance silver perpetual, from $59.45 to $55.75, and about 4.9% from the last price before the CPI release. FXStreet called it the lowest level since July.

Did gold fall too? Yes, but less: about 1.6% to $4,102 on Binance's gold perpetual, with spot trading as low as $4,073 according to FXStreet.

Were silver traders liquidated? Yes. Our feed recorded $14.34 million of silver perpetual liquidations on Binance and OKX in 24 hours, including a single long of about $806,000. The real total across all exchanges is larger, because we only see two venues.

When is the next event that could move silver? The Fed's 27–28 October meeting, with producer prices, retail sales and jobless claims due before it. All times are on our calendar.

Follow the live numbers on our liquidations page, and read our earlier piece on how the same CPI report hit bitcoin.