By Dr Rahim Said
Early December, an old friend breezed in from Bali, glowing brighter than any candlestick chart. Over coffee, she announced — almost apologetically — that a small online punt on silver had turned into a “great fortune” in just two weeks.
The kind of story that makes rational adults momentarily suspend disbelief and wonder if retirement can, after all, be crowdsourced by an app.
My wife and I played the predictable role of damp towels. Metals, we said gently, behave like tides. What rushes in can rush out. Take some winnings off the table. At least bank the joy before the market collects it back with interest.
She assured us she had. Partially. The rest, she said, had been “ploughed back”.
By the third week, she was no longer glowing. One brutal night, the screen had turned against her. All her earnings—not the original capital, but everything the market had so generously gifted—were wiped out.
She was devastated. The pain was real, even if the money had technically never been “hers” to begin with.
I tried explaining this the way behavioural economists do after the fact: that humans feel losses more intensely than gains, that recent success rewires the brain, that confidence grows faster than wisdom.
Nobel laureates like Daniel Kahneman and Richard Thaler built entire careers explaining why smart people do foolish things with money. It did not help. Loss has a way of silencing theory.
Then came Christmas, and with it AFP’s sober explanation of why metals are behaving like caffeinated stallions.
Gold above US$4,500 an ounce. Silver at US$72. Copper is breaking US$12,000 a ton. A weak dollar. Trump-era uncertainty. Wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Fear of AI bubbles. China is stimulating demand. Thin holiday trading. FOMO layered upon FOMO.
In short: all the right reasons—and all the wrong conditions.
This is where many online traders, especially newcomers, misunderstand the story. Metals today are no longer just commodities. As one analyst put it, they have become “insurance”. But insurance behaves very differently when it is traded like a lottery ticket.
Yes, gold and silver are safe havens. But safe havens are for storms, not speedboats. When leveraged, traded on margin, or flipped daily on apps designed like video games, even “insurance” can explode spectacularly.
Volatility, especially during thin year-end trading, cuts both ways. Prices surge not only because of fundamentals, but because there are fewer people on the other side of the trade.
Liquidity dries up. Stops are triggered. Algorithms panic faster than humans. What looks like a staircase up can turn into an elevator down — without stopping at your floor.
The real danger isn’t the metals market. It’s human behaviour inside it.
Early wins breed overconfidence. Overconfidence invites larger positions. Larger positions magnify emotions. And emotions—fear of missing out on the way up, terror of loss on the way down—are the most expensive commodities of all.
For those tempted by online metal trading, a few unromantic truths:
First, profits are not real until they are realised. Screens lie politely.
Second, if a trade feels exciting, it is probably too big.
Third, safe havens are meant to reduce anxiety, not create insomnia.
Finally, markets do not know your story. They do not care that you “almost” withdrew yesterday, or that this run feels different, or that everyone else seems to be making money. The market only knows flows, fear, and timing—and it charges tuition mercilessly.
My friend will recover. The loss was painful but not ruinous. Still, it was an expensive reminder that in markets driven by uncertainty, geopolitics, AI dreams and thin holiday trading, the real metal being tested is not gold or silver — but temperament.
And temperament, unlike commodities, cannot be hedged.