April 2025 is off to a wild start as the silver price drops over 20% in just two days, leaving investors scrambling. In this month’s Precious Metals Projections, Craig Hemke and Chris Vermeulen break down what’s driving the sudden plunge across silver, gold, and broader markets. They discuss how tariff hikes, panic selling, and key technical patterns like Fibonacci measured moves are shaping short- and long-term trends. Is this a temporary dip or the start of a deeper correction? How is the gold price responding, and what should you watch for next? Watch the full video to understand what’s really happening behind the scenes.
Buy Gold As Price Momentum Stalls At Highs
Gold surged past $2,000, challenging all-time highs—but there are clear signs of exhaustion. “If you zoom in, you’ll see the MACD line has already crossed its signal line to the downside,” said Chris Vermeulen. “We’re not in a ‘buy the breakout’ environment anymore.” Volume is thinning, and price action is stalling—classic signs of distribution, not accumulation. The bullish momentum in gold prices is fading fast.
Silver Price Faces Breakdown Below Key Support
Silver’s recent rally lost steam quickly after hitting resistance in the $26–$27 range. “We had a beautiful run up from the low $20s, but once we hit $26–$27, it was like slamming into a brick wall,” said Vermeulen. “Price rejected hard.” Support broke at $24.50, and silver could retest $22 or even $20 if panic sets in. “If we look at the weekly chart, we can see just how bearish Silver is. The MACD Histogram is also still going down.”
Precious Metals Under Pressure From Fear Selling
This isn’t about manipulation—this is about fear. The current environment has investors dumping all assets, including precious metals. “People are just dumping everything because they don't know what to do and they are scared and that is why precious metals are falling,” Vermeulen explained. “It is fear.” Across markets, investor behavior reflects broad risk-off sentiment, and gold and silver are being hit like everything else. Chris remains long-term bullish on silver, but now is not the time to buy. “The opportunity is coming, but it’s not today,” he said. “My ideal buy zone? Somewhere between $20 and $22. That’s where you get maximum fear, minimum risk.” The key is patience. The silver market needs to flush out retail and weak hands before the next major rally begins.
Gold Miners Sell Off As Investors Retreat
Gold miners, which typically lead metals higher, are underperforming badly. “GDXJ can’t hold above $38. Every rally has been met with selling,” said Vermeulen. “The smart money isn’t buying.” He’s watching for capitulation under $30 before considering any long positions in mining stocks. Macro data continues to deteriorate. With ISM manufacturing down and jobless claims ticking up, the warning signs are everywhere. “The 2s/10s yield curve has been inverted for months,” Vermeulen warned. “These are indicators that don’t lie.” He believes this is the early stage of a recession, and that investors must prepare accordingly. Cash is currently outperforming many asset classes. “Sometimes the best trade is no trade,” said Vermeulen. “Cash is yielding 5% right now and it’s liquid.” With markets at risk of a major breakdown, holding cash offers flexibility and safety.
Stage Four Bear Market Underway For Equities
Vermeulen emphasized that the stock market is topping out and long-term investors are especially vulnerable. “This year is going to be a bad year for investors,” he said. “If you have to buy and hold, you are screwed if you're 45 plus because it could be a lost decade of no returns.”
Start protecting your wealth now — invest in gold and silver today. Contact the Sprott Money team.
Craig Hemke (00:01)
Welcome to April and your new month of content from Sprott Money. It is Friday April the 4th and it is time for your precious metals projections for the month of April and if I seem like I'm staggering a little bit as your host, it's because we had a crazy two days. Anyway, I'm your host Craig Hemke for the precious metals projection video. Joining me is Chris Vermeulen of the Technical Traders. Chris. Nice to see ya!
Chris Vermeulen (00:30)
Always a pleasure. Yeah, always a pleasure and always wild times sometimes. It's crazy.
Craig Hemke (00:36)
I see you've moved you and your family to that underground missile silo bunker that you bought a couple of years ago, so you're ready for about anything.
Chris Vermeulen (00:42)
Yeah, yeah, temporary office doing renovations and it's like, yeah, yeah, stored away with weak Wi Fi. It's tough. Yeah.
Craig Hemke (00:52)
Got to do what we got to do, brother. Look, a couple of things before we get started. Of course, the usual notice that all of this content that's this video, everything else is going to come at you here in March, it's brought to you by Sprott Money. Thank them by keeping them in mind whenever you're looking to buy metal or store metal. Go to SprottMoney.com. You'll find some of the best deals you can. Of course, if you want to talk to an individual, just call them up, 888-861-0775 and now a disclaimer. We're recording this at about noon Eastern on Friday, April the 4th. Had we recorded this at noon Eastern on Wednesday, April the 3rd before US President Trump raised the tariff level to the highest has been maybe I mean even higher than it was at the start of the Great Depression with the Smoot-Hawley tariffs. Okay, so this got a lot of folks by surprise Chris and I I'm sure included. nNow that said, by the time you watch this video over the weekend or maybe on Monday, April the seventh, who knows how things look. So, with that disclaimer here on Friday, April the fourth, let's roll Chris. Yeah, there you go. Go buy yourself some metal. I mean, for God's excuse me, I'm for crying out loud. silver is down 20 % in less than two days.
Chris Vermeulen (02:07)
Yeah, no kidding. It's on sale today. Especially silver.Yeah, we might as just jump on silver because I mean that's
Craig Hemke (02:19)
So. Alright, let's do it. Look at that. 90 days up, 2 days down.
Chris Vermeulen (02:26)
Yeah. Typical staircase takes forever. It's a painful way to, you know, it works its way up, grinds its way higher, takes the elevator, you know, does a squirrel suit off a cliff down.
Craig Hemke (02:38)
Well, and just so people, mean, again, this is not just silver and gold. mean, what copper at one point was down 10 % today. Crude is down about 15 % in two days. Okay, so this is not like, know, woe is me. You know, the bankers are crushing silver again. This is just, I mean, silver to me earlier today looked like it was almost bidless. I mean, it was just straight down. All right, so.
Chris Vermeulen (02:57)
Yeah, I think that's a good point. Yeah. Yeah, the selling is broad market, right? It's not it's not people can't say, silver precious metals are being manipulated like this is a bloodbath across the market. Like, yeah.
Craig Hemke (03:09)
Right. Right. Okay, so here we are. Again, we're like throwing darts to some extent because again, by the time you're watching, maybe somebody watching this on Monday or Sunday, whenever, I mean, what are they going look at? I mean, who knows what the news flow is and where price might be. But as we record this, Chris, what should people be thinking, watching? What has your experience taught you over the years? dDuring times of near panic like what we're seeing.
Chris Vermeulen (03:43)
Yeah, I think that the natural tendency is when this type of stuff happens is people naturally try to pick a bottom. They're like, it's super cheap. It's affordable. But I do believe we've I think we've turned a tide. We've got a pretty major sell signal on the market overall stock market and economy actually that's actually taking place potentially today. We won't know till the weekend, but overall this actually could be a tide changing and while silver may be oversold and down near a support level and ready for some type of bounce.
I actually think, you know, we've worked its way up. It's made actually three surges to a high, which is, know, if we look at the weekly chart, this is a very bearish chart pattern. When you see these kind of moves where it rallies up and has a sharp pullback and we have these three surges where it does the same thing, it can lead to a huge sell off in the market. And this to me feels like, you know, the market, we might see silver have a bounce, but overall I do think we're going to see the economy slow. We've obviously the tariffs are
triggering, I think the majority of this, it's everything for Americans now, not everything, but a lot of things are going to be a whole lot more expensive crap. Most of the stuff comes from China. There's massive tariffs there, vehicles and all this stuff. So, you know, that is going to slow business. It's going to slow the economy. And, you know, now we're going to go. I think people are selling going, OK, I think the recession, this is going to kick. You know, usually they kick the can down the road. This is like.
They're putting the can in the garbage saying, okay, we're in a recession. Like they're kind of kickstarting it at this point to the downside. So I believe any bounce here in metals in the stock market is going to get sold into. And I do think there will be able to pick up, you know, silver and gold and miners actually at a much lower price still in fact. So I wouldn't be a bottom picker here. I would be very cautious if you're short term trader, a bounce, you're lucky, but I do think the tide has changed and when we go into a bigger correction, I do think we're going to see probably silver potentially come back down in the 24, 26 area, which is still a long ways down. This is really just a two day move, really kind of the start of I think something pretty ugly to come.
Craig Hemke (05:56)
You look at on your chart there, that big plunge in March of 2020 as COVID was kicking in, it was not identical, but it was the same kind of fears, know, lockdown, know, global economic seize up and all that kind of stuff. And back then the Fed responded, you know, with trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars. And obviously you can see the result. don't know. I would expect that's an eventuality again. I just don't know how soon, right?
In the meantime, you're right. mean, there's nothing wrong with just kind of sitting it out, you know, waiting to see how it plays out. Is that green line? Is that the 200 or like a 50 week or something? What is that moving average there?
Chris Vermeulen (06:37)
This moving average Let's just see what that is. I flip it. Usually it's 150 day moving average. So now it's a hundred and fifty period weekly so Because I flipped it to a weekly chart. Let me just go to the daily real quick So it's 150 day moving average, which is kind of based around Stan Weinstein's theory of you know Price is above the hundred fifty day if the hundred fifty day is sloping upward
you're still in a bullish environment. you know, silver has pulled. Well, it's definitely sliced all the way down through that. And, you know, I believe silver is kind of putting in a topping phase, but the trend is still up. This is a very sold news driven move. And I think the key to look at here is I just kind of drew the Fibonacci level. I'm just going to zoom out so we can get the whole chart pattern. But here, if we take a look, Craig, as we had this in Covid low rally up to these highs and then we had this big pullback.
And then of course we came up to the 618, which it kind of chopped around for a while with some volatility. And now we've hit the hundred percent measured move, which is what the one stands for. And of course we hit that with three surges to a high. I was talking about this last earlier this week, because the end of the week saying like, this is a bearish sign. Silver's at resistance. Miners are at resistance. And it feels like the market has actually turned a corner in terms of the magnificent sevens are selling off. If there's global panic selling, it's going to pull precious metals and everything down with it. And so now we've seen silver pull back. We're seeing our miners collapse. Gold is holding up the best out of anything. Gold is the play because it's more stable and nothing like what silver in the miners do when when all you know, when red bars hit. So this is interesting. We have a lot of these critical levels like for example, we have this hundred percent measured move and now we've got price being rejected.
Well, take a look at the SPY. If we look at the SP500 and we go and use the same Fibonacci extensions, which to me are one of the most powerful tools for predicting forward pricing. If we carry that forward based on those moves, we just hit, my computer's a little laggy here, but we've hit that level. We've had the rally up, we've had the pullback.
Chris Vermeulen (08:52)
We hit the 618, we had a hiccup here, and now we've hit the 100 % measured move, and now we're selling off. And the crazy part is I shared this in a video a couple days ago saying, listen guys, everybody was trying to pick a bottom right here, and it was putting in a bearish pattern. Well, I took Fibonacci and said, guys, look at this chart pattern. We got this move down, we've got this bounce, and look where those moves play out. The 618, it closed out the previous session.
Today it comes right down to the 100 % measured move. And now we're starting to see signs of actually a couple of Magnificent Seven stocks putting in a bottom. I believe Microsoft's trying to put in a bottom. Google, I think those are very early warning signs that the Magnificent Seven are getting oversold and next week, I think we could have a big open lower on Monday. This fear could carry over the weekend and freak a lot of people out. So Monday could be, whenever, I don't know when this video is gonna be released, but I would expect next week we're gonna see.
wash out low in the markets because it's hit its hundred percent measured move. We've got the VIX up dramatically up 80 percent in two days or a hundred and something percent in two days and prices just hit its measured move. This is the first move down and what I believe is going to happen is we're going to go into a multi-month bounce. Big question is how big is that bounce? And then I believe we're going to go down and I mean things are eventually I think get pretty ugly when when you look at this, you know, in a bull market phase, we have a series of
rallies and higher highs and higher lows. But eventually we're going to break down and have a series. We're going to go into a stage four full on bear market this year. You and I have talked about I believe this year is going to be like the top. It's going to be a bad year for investors. If you have to buy an old you are screwed if you're 45 plus because it's going to it could be a lost decade of no returns and one nasty roller coaster ride. So I don't recommend everybody try to pick a bottom because it isn't a downtrend. This market, you know, it could continue to have these crazy bars. You never know how far something's going to go. And that's why you have to like manage positions when the trend changes, get out and wait for a new setup. And that's what we're going to have to see is next week is do we find a bottom? Technically we should because we've hit Fibonacci measure moves to the upside, Fibonacci to the downside. We're seeing capitulation selling, means everyone's just dumping shares. I don't think I have the chart up here, but there was like 45 shares being hit on the bid on the New York Stock Exchange today. People just saying like market orders saying get me out to every one share being bought on the ask and anything over three is panic selling and we're at 47. So I mean everybody is just dumping everything because they don't know what to do and they are scared and that is why precious metals are falling and everything is falling is because it is
fear and when people are scared they don't know what to do they liquidate and it doesn't matter if they're in the right or a good investment they still liquidate it. Even dividend stocks are down 4 % today if we look at the SP 500 dividend stocks they're breaking down and and they're this is like tied to I think the energy space pretty big like the energy the dividend stocks still have more downside dividend stocks a big chunk of them are energy stocks.
And as you just mentioned, Craig, look at oil down 15 % in two days. And if we zoom out, it has broken that significant pivot low, which is the $65 per barrel level. And what's been going on is we've had oil going down for the past couple of years. And then you and I talked about this last month is how I'm looking at this trade set up in terms of, well, energy stocks have been going up. Well, now they're going sideways. And I believe this is going to turn into that kind of rounding formation where it's actually broken down now. And I think we're going to see it eventually put in these series of lower highs and lower lows. And I think there's an inverse trade here on the energy space, because now that oil is breaking down, energy stocks are going to get absolutely hit. And anyone with the dividend stocks are going to feel this in their bank account. I think there's 20 to 30 percent downside in XLE, which means, you know, huge haircut for dividend stocks.
in terms of the price. So there's a whole lot going on. I mean, these are huge moves in the market. Massive supports, support levels have been broken. We're seeing major targets on the upside for silver, for the stock market being hit and everything's clearly being rejected. And that's what you and I look at. This is the monthly projection. I look at the weekly or monthly charts and I draw those Fibonacci and these are the big trends that you you and I are trying to talk about, not the daily gyrations, but hey, we hit a target top.
Now everything's pulling back and it's important to understand these overall tides. you need to be? Should you be long stocks? Should you be long metals? Should you be short? Should you be in cash? This is definitely a pretty volatile space and the magnificent seven obviously not showing a whole lot of signs of life here when we look at how it's put in a major market top and it broke down from this level and you know, it's
The whole stock market over the past year and a half has been driven by mass market participants, just the media and everybody buying and chasing Nvidia and all that stuff and Tesla. And the problem is they're all going to panic at the same time. And I believe they're just starting to panic. And of course, I think the Magnificent Seven are going to struggle for a long time because it's a lot of small investors that just keep hitting their threshold of just liquidating their couple hundred shares here and there. And it drags out over a long time.
Craig Hemke (14:10)
Do that one too, would you? Yeah, Chris put your fibs on that one too, would you?
Chris Vermeulen (14:37)
And I think one of the best examples of what I think like that could look like would probably be, what is the, I'm think what it, here we go, the MJ, the kind of marijuana space. you look at it and you zoom out, I think it's gonna be very similar. It's gonna be a slow bleed of a lot of investors moving out of it. If you look at this, and we go back way in time, I mean, it just fades down into the right. And I believe we're going to see that for the rest of this year. I think there's going be a lot of selling.
Craig Hemke (15:07) It makes me think about Bitcoin as well. You know all the people that bought Bitcoin on everybody else's... what does that say? Hold on I'm getting a message says Chris Vermeulen's recording will continue on a new track. I hope that's okay. Still there?
Chris Vermeulen (15:26)
I think the internet got out, I'm not sure.
Craig Hemke (15:29)
Yeah, okay. Hey, we'll let them edit it. They can put, can piece that together. You were pulling up the marijuana stocks.
Chris Vermeulen (15:41)
Yeah, I'm not sure if that showed it probably did but I can I can go back and pull that up here real quick Let's go back and take a look So if you take a look at the like kind of the marijuana stock it was kind of like the big crave everyone got in you had a blow-off phase and then it put in a top and What happens is because the general mass is all piled into the same thing which I believe is kind of like the Nvidia and the whole Magnificent 7 There's a lot of small investors that are gonna just every day and every week hit their threshold of like I'm done with these it's it's dead
Craig Hemke (16:11)
Can't take it anymore. Yeah.
Chris Vermeulen (16:11)
And it creates this never ending stream of money of things going down. And so I think we've hit that that capitulation with the magnificent seven stocks in terms of when you look at the ETF as the basket, it's topped out. And now there's going to be a never ending stream of a bunch of smaller investors all just saying, I'm done with it. I'm just going to sell it and get out of it. And and so I think that is going to lead to a longer stream of price just kind of drifting down. Like I actually have a couple of weeks ago.
For Nvidia, I said my downside target is 99, and after 99, it's $64. And we blew through 99 today, so my downside target is $64 way down here. And I can totally see that happening. A lot of people were like, no way that's gonna happen. We're about to have a, like, it might not happen right now, but even in a couple of months, I still think it's very, very possible that it hits 64, 65.
because it's gonna be a bunch of investors all just dumping shares and there's no one who really wants to buy them now because everybody's already bought them who wanted them and now it's just a bunch of people saying I'm tired of it, it's not in favor and there won't be much demand but lots of overhead supply of people saying I'm done with it and getting out. So this is gonna drag the market down. Magnificent seven topping to me is telling us the stock market top is here.
Craig Hemke (17:08)
Yeah. Right. Right. Those Fibonacci levels are just amazing though. And as we record this on Friday, there's still three and a half hours to go on the Friday New York Stock Exchange session. nobody would be surprised if sometime in the next three and a half hours or maybe let's call it two and a half hours to give the market an hour. that's something, some headline hits. And suddenly from all these deeply oversold levels, you get some huge bounce that lines right up with those hundred percent. You know those those pullback levels and everything on the fibs, but we'll see we'll see
Chris Vermeulen (18:03)
For sure. It's totally possible. That's why as you stated at the very beginning, this type of market condition, you're best to stand aside. Technically, you kind of should have been out of the market. The market topped out. Like when we look at the NASDAQ here, I mean, we had an exit signal. The market was rolling over. It's down 16 % from where we got out. And you don't really want to hold it. Bonds are starting to become a play. But in the grand scheme of things, I mean, it's... It's a dangerous market and it could rip back by the end of the day. And I mean, we haven't heard of the PPT, the plunge protection team. Like did Elon scrap that or what?
Craig Hemke (18:31)
Yeah. Right, right. Well, and you know, hey, there's 4 % sitting in cash. Sure beats the heck out of trying to, you know, catch the falling knife and being down 20. So anyway, it just is what it, again, who knows how this, by the time you, the individual watching this is watching it, who knows how things have changed. But let's, Chris, let's wrap up with gold because you mentioned this. I mean, there's so many things that tug at gold daily anyway. You know, geopolitical risk.
Chris Vermeulen (18:48)
Yep.
Craig Hemke (19:07)
Economic risk, monetary policy, fiscal policy, regular political, I mean, you go on and on and on, right? Initially it's held up. Well, heck, even earlier today on Friday was high as 31.60 and now it's 5 % off those highs. As you look at that gold chart, again, maybe you lay the same Fibonacci levels or whatever, those key moving averages could come in as support. Let's close with that one. What do you see in...
How does it project?
Chris Vermeulen (19:38)
Yeah, well, mean, gold is kind of hit. It's kind of measured move based on where it started this last rally. It pulled back. We had our first target was was around this 30, 30, 50, which is the 618 level. And then the 100 percent measured moves about 3200, which is what it hit like three days ago, three trading sessions ago. And now it's getting rejected. So, you know, gold, you and I have talked about the monthly chart of gold and how it's hit these very long term.
targets in terms of like where it should go in the long run when we look at like the decade long or the last two super cycles in gold. We are looking forward to go more or less up to that 272800 and of course we've gone up and we've we've hit those levels. This is based off the 2011 high and the low back in 2015. We hit that hundred percent measured move and that's always as far as I go with Fibonacci. I know other people say well they go
125 % or 27 % or 200%. But I find 100 % measured move is good, is great. It's super accurate. After the 618 and 100 % level, you really have to take it one leg at a time. And so that's when we drop down to that daily chart I just showed you here, it zooms us into the next chart pattern. It's pretty ugly here, but it says, okay, well based on this pull back and pause from the 100 % measured move, which is this,
Green Line at the 2700 now we can take that next leg in this pause and tells us where that next target is. So now we can only inch our way up. I know other people will have huge upside targets, but almost everything this past over the past couple months has hit major long-term Fibonacci targets. And now we're starting to see like the downside targets starting to be reached. Gold is definitely the most secure down 5%. That's nothing compared to everything else. And that's why I say like
Gold is the one, it's the global barometer. The reason gold's really selling off is simply because there's mass panic selling and people don't know what to do. But as you can see, it is holding up pretty much better than everything. Everything else today is down 5 % and gold's only down 5 % over the past three trading sessions, which is nothing. Everything else is down about 15 to 25 % over the past three or four trading sessions. So gold is the safe play, it always has been and it's gonna hold up better I think than everything else.
Craig Hemke (21:53)
Right, right, right.
Chris Vermeulen (22:01)
But if we do have a lot more selling over this through this year, I do think gold will pull back and it'll just take it on the chin with everything else for a little while, but it definitely won't fall as much as everything else.
Craig Hemke (22:14)
Well, it seems to augur again for what has served me well over the last 15 years, which is this the old financial planning trick of dollar cost averaging, you know, buy a little bit every month, a quarter or whatever. Sometimes you buy it a high, sometimes you buy it a low. But if you're right about the general trend, TF Metals report, we call it the end of the great Keynesian experiment. If you're right about the general trend, it works out in your favor. again, boy, I what am I? I'm not anybody to give financial advice.
Chris Vermeulen (22:23)
Yep. Yep.
Craig Hemke (22:44)
But sometimes in the world, sitting around and doing nothing is okay.
Chris Vermeulen (22:50)
Yeah, for sure. Cash is one of the best positions sometimes. Nobody likes it, but it is one of the best positions and Buffett's in a huge cash position. hopefully this video turns out. I keep seeing our connection disconnecting, but I think it's recording on fresh tracks.
Craig Hemke (23:03)
Right. We'll let the experts on the Sprott Money tech team piece it together, Chris. I know we got the first part for sure. So anyway, thank you. Again, you're a very, very busy guy. Anybody that is watching this and, you know, and maybe it's absolute information by Monday or not, you can sign up for the technicaltraders.com and on Monday morning, Chris will make it not obsolete, right?
Chris Vermeulen (23:31)
Yep, for sure. Yep, 100%.
Craig Hemke (23:33)
Just go there, you've got updates every day and through the day. So, thetechnicaltraders.com, if you want to hear from Chris and not have to wait until the first of May to hear from him again. Brother, it's interesting time to be alive, that's for sure. I appreciate your time today. Thank you, it was really helpful.
Chris Vermeulen (23:48)
Yep, thank you. All right, take care. Appreciate it.
Craig Hemke (23:52)
And from all of us at Sprout Money, SprottMoney.News. Hey, Sprott Money, News, SprottMoney.com. See, I'm even over the... Anyway, keep an eye on this channel. All through April, we're gonna have more content. And we'll just see where we go from here. For now though, we're gonna sign off. Have a great weekend, everybody, and thanks for watching.
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