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Hunt brothers: the silver corner that crashed in a day

In January 1980, silver hit nearly $50 an ounce, up from about $6 a year earlier. Two Texas brothers were behind much of the buying. On 27 March 1980, a day now called Silver Thursday, the price fell by half and their empire began to crack.

Story · 7-minute read · Updated 2026-10-21

Who they were

Nelson Bunker Hunt and William Herbert Hunt were sons of H.L. Hunt, a Texas oilman who was one of the richest men in America.

The brothers inherited a fortune and grew it in oil, land and horses. By the 1970s, by most accounts, they were among the wealthiest people in the country.

They were deeply worried about Inflation. In the 1970s, US prices were rising fast, and they believed paper money would keep losing value. Silver, a real metal you could hold, seemed to them a safer store of wealth.

What happened

Early 1970s. The Hunts began buying silver, then priced at a few dollars an ounce. They bought both physical metal and silver Futures contracts.

Unusually, they often took delivery: instead of closing their futures, they took the actual metal. The story goes that they flew a large amount of it to Switzerland for safe keeping.

1979. They teamed up with wealthy Saudi investors and bought much more. By the end of 1979, by most estimates, the Hunts and their partners controlled well over 150 million ounces of silver, on top of large futures positions. That's a big share of the silver available to trade at the time.

They used a lot of borrowed money to do it. Futures already have Leverage built in, and they borrowed against their silver to buy more.

Late 1979. As they bought, the price climbed fast. Silver started 1979 at about $6 an ounce.

7 January 1980. The COMEX exchange, where silver futures traded, adopted new limits on how many contracts one trader could hold. The rule became known as "Silver Rule 7."

18 January 1980. Silver hit a record of close to $50 an ounce. Sources give slightly different peak figures.

21 January 1980. COMEX went further: traders could only close silver positions, not open new ones. Buying pressure dried up. The price began to fall.

Early 1980. The Federal Reserve was raising interest rates sharply to fight inflation. That made holding a metal that pays no interest less appealing.

27 March 1980: Silver Thursday. Silver fell from about $21.62 to $10.80 an ounce in a day. The Hunts couldn't meet a margin call from their broker, Bache. There were fears that brokers and banks owed money by the Hunts could fail too.

A group of banks then arranged a loan of about $1.1 billion to the Hunts so they could pay their debts in an orderly way.

The moment everyone remembers

Silver Thursday is the moment. A price that had climbed for a year halved in a single session.

The fear that day wasn't only about the Hunts. If they defaulted, the firms that had lent to them might fail too. That's how one investor's leverage became a risk for the whole market.

Bunker Hunt is often quoted as saying afterwards, "A billion dollars isn't what it used to be." The line is widely repeated, but treat it as "often attributed to."

What it teaches

1. When you're the market, there's no one left to sell to

The Hunts bought so much that they were the main reason the price went up. When they needed to sell, there were few buyers at those prices.

For a trader, this is a reminder to trade where there's plenty of buying and selling, and in sizes small enough that you can get out. See risk management for beginners.

2. Borrowed money turns a fall into a crisis

Without loans, a 50% drop would have been a huge paper loss. With loans, it meant margin calls they couldn't pay.

Before using margin, know how far price can move before your broker steps in. See leverage and margin explained and the margin calculator.

3. Rules can change in the middle of your trade

COMEX changed its rules twice in January 1980. Those changes were a big part of why the price fell.

Exchanges, brokers and regulators can change margin, limits and hours. Plan for it: don't build a position you can only survive if nothing changes.

4. Big-picture forces still matter

The Fed's sharp rate rises in 1980 worked against silver. Interest rates affect almost every market. See how interest rates affect stocks and CPI and FOMC days.

What it doesn't mean

It doesn't mean silver is a bad market. Silver trades every day around the world. The problem was trying to control it with borrowed money.

It doesn't mean a big price move always comes from one buyer. Most moves come from many people acting at once.

And it doesn't mean being rich protects you. The Hunts started with one of America's biggest fortunes. Concentration and leverage put most of it at risk anyway.

How it ended

In 1988, a federal jury in New York found the Hunts liable in a civil case brought by Minpeco, a Peruvian minerals company, over the silver scheme. The damages were reported at more than $130 million.

Both brothers filed for personal bankruptcy that year. In December 1989, they settled with the CFTC, the US futures regulator. Each agreed to pay a $10 million fine and was banned from trading on US commodity markets.

Timeline

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