Silver has fallen about 60% from its peak. At first glance, that’s pretty alarming, and the price action can easily give you the impression that “the thesis is broken.” But over a longer time frame, pullbacks of this magnitude are nothing new in the history of precious metals. In 1980, after the Hunt brothers’ attempt to corner the market, silver fell from around $50 per ounce to near $10, a drawdown of about 80%. After surging to nearly $50 in 2011, silver fell to around $14 by 2015, a drawdown of more than 70%. When precious metals rally too fast and too steeply, it’s not unusual for them to “pay it back” with a deep correction. Late last year, someone wrote that gold and silver might be entering one final push higher before a deep correction. Sentiment was running hot at the time, and few people took it seriously. Looking back now, that warning is at least worth rereading.

I stack Bitcoin myself, but I’ve always kept a close eye on gold and silver. The logic isn’t complicated: the faster and steeper the rally, the greater the pressure for a correction afterward. The real question now isn’t “how bad was the drop?” but whether prices will keep grinding lower or have already entered a wide trading range. At this point, continuing to chase shorts in one direction could leave you vulnerable to a bounce; rushing to buy the dip could get you stopped out by the next wick.

Especially in the early hours of the morning, when liquidity is thinnest, the order book is sparse and spreads can widen. Stop-loss orders, meanwhile, tend to be clustered, so one wick can take you out. Chasing shorts or buying the dip in conditions like these can get you whipsawed. My approach is simple: sell high and buy low within the range. Don’t try to guess the direction—doing so is just giving your money away. At its current level, silver looks more likely to consolidate and recover than to keep crashing in a straight line. We’ll come back next week to see whether this call on a certain coin was right.