Trillions gone and gold’s not so shiny

The scale of losses in the precious metals market today is just unreal. Gold’s above-ground supply value crashed from $39.48 trillion to $33.032 trillion in a single day - that’s $6.46 trillion in value wiped off the map in 24 hours. Silver took an even rougher beating for regular investors, dropping from $2.35 trillion to $1.63 trillion and losing about $720 billion in value. And yet, the general stock market seems to be chilling through all this - the S&P 500 (SPY) is barely down 0.51% as I’m writing this, acting like none of this precious metals bloodbath is even happening. What really gets me is how precious metals were always supposed to be a safe hedge, a totally separate universe from stocks or the dollar. Today that old idea just went flying several stories out the window. You expect crazy swings in crypto because it’s small and wild, but gold and silver are supposed to be stable, not meme stocks. There’s no way all this vanished value is just retail panic-selling - it’s too much money, too fast. And when trillions can disappear from gold and silver in one day while stocks barely blink, it makes me wonder how much longer the markets can stay this disconnected. If this is how things go on a “normal” day, the next big shock is going to be even nastier. Guess I’ll just keep humming “always look on the bright side of life” while I watch the numbers tank.