Silver routinely moves further than gold in both directions over the same periods. The pattern is persistent enough to be structural rather than coincidental.
The market is much smaller in value terms
Annual silver production is large in weight but modest in value compared with gold, and the stock of investment silver is smaller still.
A given sum of money entering or leaving therefore represents a much larger share of the market than the same sum would in gold.
Flows that gold absorbs without much movement can push silver a long way, which is the simplest explanation for the difference in behaviour.
Supply cannot respond to price
Most newly mined silver comes as a byproduct of copper, lead and zinc mining, so the quantity produced depends on decisions taken about other metals.
A rising silver price therefore does not call forth much additional mine output, and a falling one does not remove much.
Without that stabiliser, the adjustment has to happen in price and in scrap flows rather than in production.
Two demand sources pull in different directions
Silver is bought by manufacturers for electronics, solar cells and industrial processes, and separately by investors seeking a monetary metal.
These groups respond to opposite conditions: industrial buying strengthens when the economy expands, while investment buying strengthens when confidence in it weakens.
When both sources buy at once, the price can rise very steeply, and when both retreat together the decline is correspondingly severe.
Leverage concentrates in the futures market
Silver futures allow large positions to be taken with modest capital, and speculative participation is high relative to the size of the physical market.
Positions built on margin have to be reduced when prices move against them, which converts an initial move into a larger one as liquidation feeds on itself.
Sharp reversals in silver have often followed this pattern rather than any change in the underlying supply and demand balance.
The behaviour is not a defect
Higher volatility means larger gains in favourable conditions and larger losses in unfavourable ones, measured over the same holding period.
Holders who size a silver position as though it behaved like gold end up with more risk than they intended, without having chosen it.
Treating the two metals as separate instruments with different characteristics, rather than as versions of the same trade, is what the historical record supports.