CAD 
Products
USD 
Welcome to the May 2025 edition of the Precious Metals Projections with Craig Hemke and Chris Vermeulen. In this explosive episode, we break down what’s really happening with the gold price and silver price right now — and what could be coming next. Chris explains why the recent gold rally — could be a classic FOMO blow-off top, warning investors that we’re in “nosebleed territory” with high risk for a sudden reversal. They also examine recent volatility in the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, exploring whether this is a true breakout or the final bounce before a major stock market crash. As for silver price, Chris sees the potential for an explosive move — but with serious downside risk. The episode covers key technical analysis patterns, investor sentiment, short squeezes, and the broader implications of Fed policy and inflation.
Buy Gold As A Hedge Against Market Volatility
Chris Vermeulen, known for his technical price-action-based trading, offered sharp insights into current gold market trends. Gold's recent performance has raised eyebrows, with Hemke noting, "we've had six days where gold has rallied over $90 in the last 20 days," juxtaposed against equally steep pullbacks, including days when gold fell "nearly $100."
Vermeulen didn’t mince words: “I'm in the camp that it is extremely overbought. It's a crowded trade.” His technical analysis showed gold has hit several “measured move” targets, suggesting the current levels may represent a parabolic top. “Each one of these gold rallied roughly 22 to 24% and it's right where we're at right now,” he noted, emphasizing that this signals a potential short-term reversal. Nevertheless, he acknowledged gold’s upward momentum, predicting, “gold could rally to about 3750 as that next target.”
Despite this bullish momentum, Vermeulen warned about the fragility of such moves. “It could in one monthly red bar… reverse down so quickly… We could see a big, big pullback in price.” He referenced historical corrections, particularly the “34% correction” in 2000, implying that gold might revisit levels around “2200 if we go into a big financial reset.” His broader view is that while short-term price action may still be bullish, “6, 8, 12 months from now, gold will be much cheaper.” For those navigating the turbulent gold spot price, Vermeulen advised caution. “Just be cautious. I think if you're looking to buy gold and you have FOMO, I think you could probably buy it at the same or a much better price if you just give it a bit of time.”
Buy Silver For High-Risk, High-Reward Trades
Turning to silver investing, Chris Vermeulen offered a sobering yet opportunistic analysis. Unlike gold, silver remains far from its all-time highs, causing frustration among traders. Vermeulen didn’t shy away from criticizing silver’s volatility: “Silver right now... carries a ton of volatility,” explaining that it fell “22 or 24% in a few days” during recent sell-offs. He described silver as “like walking through a landmine,” due to its extreme reactions to market fear and liquidation events.
Still, silver has technical potential. Vermeulen highlighted a bull flag pattern, stating, “I do think silver has potential though right now to rally to about $38 an ounce,” a significant move from current levels. This move aligns with a Fibonacci measured extension, but he was quick to caution, “If it hits 38, I would expect it's probably going to come down very sharply.” The pattern of quick run-ups followed by fast declines makes silver challenging: “It sometimes takes forever to etch out some growth and then boom, it wipes it all out in a couple of days.”
Silver’s small market size makes it especially reactive during broader financial market corrections. “Silver gets hit very hard,” Vermeulen emphasized, underscoring that it’s not a buy-and-hold asset in this context. “It's more like get in, make some money, protect your position, like manage it and get out.” He concluded with a firm note of caution: “People buying right now, I think for the long term, you're kind of buying at kind of a high price. I think you can pick it up a little bit better price down.”
Gold Spot Price And Market Timing
The conversation about the gold spot price also touched on the psychological aspect of investing, particularly during periods of fear and volatility. Vermeulen highlighted how technical traders must remain rational amid emotion-driven markets. “We have this kind of fear in the market, it pulls gold down,” he said, referring to specific periods where “gold fell seven and a half percent” in just three days, coinciding with sharp stock market drops.
He discussed the concept of a blow-off top, warning that “this feels like that crowded FOMO trade,” suggesting the gold price has entered a phase driven more by emotion than fundamentals. Nonetheless, Vermeulen offered a long-term optimistic view, suggesting that after a corrective phase, gold could “skyrocket up to, you know, seven, eight, twelve thousand.” He explained that during economic downturns, “almost everything goes down when the economy collapses,” including gold, but those phases offer new entry points.
“Right now, it is kind of in that parabolic blow off phase… it's to me… very high risk.” However, he maintained that savvy investors could take advantage of the coming correction: “It'll be ready for the next leg up when you get into it.”
Silver Spot Price And Tactical Opportunities
Discussing the silver spot price, Vermeulen’s tone remained cautious but acknowledged the trading potential. “Silver and miners do have bullish chart patterns along with gold,” he admitted, but reiterated, “they're not a bad play… just people need to realize they're not like a buy and hold here.” In his view, the silver market rewards timing and discipline, rather than long-term passive investing at current levels.
The gold-silver ratio surpassing 100 has led some to speculate that silver is undervalued. Yet Vermeulen pointed to silver's tendency for sharp, short-lived rallies: “If it hits 38, I would expect it's probably going to come down very sharply.” This aligns with historical performance where silver's bullish runs are often followed by steep declines. “You're kind of like, you got to be in there and you got to ride the volatility, put in time and hope for that pop,” he said, summarizing silver’s unpredictable behavior.
Ultimately, silver’s role in a diversified portfolio hinges on timing. “If we have a financial reset, that’s when I'm excited about silver and miners,” Vermeulen added, suggesting that now may not be the optimal time for long-term accumulation.
Invest In Mining Stocks And Technical Setups
While much of the discussion centered on gold and silver, Chris Vermeulen also addressed mining stocks, which he grouped with silver in terms of volatility and opportunity. “I like silver and I like miners when we... have a financial reset,” he said, signaling that now might not be ideal for long-term plays in mining stocks.
The key challenge with miners, like silver, is timing the market. Their sensitivity to equity volatility makes them prone to large swings. “Silver and miners do have bullish chart patterns along with gold. They are the favorite asset right now. They're holding up very well.” But he was quick to qualify that this doesn’t make them safe for the average investor. “People just need to realize... it's more like get in, make some money, protect your position, like manage it and get out.”
Investors interested in this space should pay close attention to technical setups and market signals. Miners, like physical metals, are expected to shine in the event of a financial reset or extended bear market.
Start protecting your wealth now — invest in gold and silver today. Contact the Sprott Money team.
Craig Hemke (00:01) Greetings again from Sprott Money at SprottMoney.com. We have now reached the month of May 2025 and we are kicking off the month as we usually do with our precious metals projection video. I'm your host, Craig Hemke. Joining us as per usual is my good friend, Chris Vermeulen of the TechnicalTraders.com. Chris, good to see you.
Chris Vermeulen (00:33) It's a pleasure. Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Craig Hemke (00:35) Always appreciate your input, my friend. Hey, as we get started, the usual notice, this content didn't appear from nothing. Someone's gotta pay for it. The people paying for it are Sprott Money. So the best you can do is to thank them for all that they do by visiting SprottMoney.com, buying some metal. You can store your metal there. They'll ship it to you for free and insured if you buy more than 500 bucks, which with prices these days, that ain't hard to do.
Anyway, go to SprottMoney.com or call them at 888-861-0775. Chris, as we get going, markets are everywhere. For people that may be watching this for the first time, tell everybody about your background and what you do at the Technical Traders, so they kind of know where you're coming from.
Chris Vermeulen (01:17) Yeah, sure. Well, from a really high level, I'm a technical trader, focus on price action. And my whole focus really is to try to take advantage of market gyrations, large swings and protect people and of course my own capital from bear markets and to profit from them. And that's kind of my whole mission. I follow price. I have a newsletter where I share video analysis, a lot like what you and I are about to share here, Craig, with everybody, except for I usually zoom into the shorter term charts and we take advantage of the market swings and things like that. So more or less I just share my analysis, I share my portfolio trades with subscribers and we just follow price action, we manage risk and we kind of ignore the news. The only way as investors we make money is when the asset we own is moving in the direction we want, which is generally higher. And so that's what I follow. Follow price and manage those positions.
Craig Hemke (02:21)
Well, that's important because I mean, this last month has been crazy and it's been a news-driven, headline-driven market, but that's never the full picture. And so it can be very helpful to have some of these technical signals. We'll try to hit a few of them here over the course of the show. I guess, Chris, maybe why don't we start with US stocks in general, whether you want to use NASDAQ or the S\&P. Wow, just crazy ever since the tariff announcements by President Trump back on about the second or third of April, sharply down and then recovering. In a sense, I feel like we've just kind of gone through a wormhole in time. We're back to where, you remember all the headlines in 2017 and 18 about trade war, you know, and algos and see that and respond. But anyway, taking that all out of the picture, looking at it technically, what do you see?
Chris Vermeulen (03:18)
Yeah, I mean, the market's definitely put in a high volatility kind of that big news-driven move, as you just mentioned, Craig, like everybody panicked and moved out of the market. You can see it in the price action. You can see it in the volume of people moving out and the market typically is driven by emotions and that's what we saw. And of course, anything that happens on a news-driven move, usually that move is given back. And of course, it has been given back from right back to where we were.
Pre that news, now overall this looks like the market is trying to bounce. Looks like it wants to continue to go higher. It does have a short-term trend to the upside and I do believe this is more of a bear market bounce. There's a lot of really interesting price action going on that we can touch on. I think the sentiment right now has shifted and it's funny because I have some charts here that show back here in February and March.
I noticed everyone was trying to pick a bottom, saying, you know, they're all buying on the pullback. This was a substantial pullback and pretty much everybody was saying, I'm picking up more. I'm buying stocks right at discount and they're picking up a bottom. And when it's interesting, when we go and we look at this chart here, this is showing us how much money was piling into the leveraged long ETFs. And this is February and March. We saw one month of money just piling in and people picking the bottom.
And I even posted a video on this. I'm like, bottom pickers be aware. If everybody's trying to pick a bottom, the bottom is not in. And so we saw lots of that taking place. And then of course we ended up seeing the stock market have this huge precipitous fall, which all these people with the leverage more or less started to panic. And this big down day here on a Friday, I remember posting and saying, listen, this is a close near the lows after a huge sell-off and this is a Friday. I said, we're probably going to see everyone panic over the weekend.
They're gonna put their orders in to get out on Monday. We're gonna see the market gap lower. We're gonna see a big wave of selling in the morning. And then suddenly we're gonna probably see the market put in a washout low and go higher. And it's funny, because everyone here, Craig, was picking a bottom. And everyone right down here bailed out of their positions and started betting on the downside. And check this out. So I overlaid the Google Trends searches of people searching inverse exchange traded funds.
Craig Hemke (05:30)
Right.
Chris Vermeulen (05:39)
And right over here, everybody was picking a bottom and then like five days later, the bottom falls out and they all bail out of their long positions. And then they all start looking to play. How do I bet on falling pricing with inverse ETFs? And of course, it was like a signature bottom. We called this the day before, just like a signature type move. And now the market's been going higher. So there's a lot of these gyrations in the stock market. This is the monthly chart of the SP 500 at the top. This is 2007, 2008. And the bottom one is right where we are right now, the monthly. And we had this break to the downside. And I have the search terms for Google, the big spike on the big first break in 2008. Everybody started searching for bear markets in Google. Well, we just had the first spike here as well on the S &P 500.
And it's funny because I'm getting pushback. People are like, well, the sentiment is super bearish. Everyone seems to be bearish on the financial sentiment indicators. And they're saying that if everybody's already bearish, the bottom is in. Well, I I always think of it this way. If you think of the ocean and the tide going down, if we know the tide is going to top out, say at six o'clock tonight, and it's going to start going down through the night, just because we know the tide is going down doesn't mean it's not going to go down. The tide is a huge cycle that we can't stop. And these
Chris Vermeulen (08:56)
Economic cycles are the same. These are global cycles that just because we know like we're entering bear market territory doesn't mean it's over. In fact, we're to see multiple waves of huge fear over and over again as the bear market evolves. And so I think we've we're turning this tide. And so we're definitely realizing that I think this this this market could rally and bounce for a few months. We could see it move higher like it did just before it went into the stage for financial.
know, reset, which I believe we're going to go into another reset here in this year and next year.
Dope With A MacBook (09:26)
Yeah.
So in the short term, ⁓ there's a potential for a continued bounce, maybe a little short squeeze, right? Gets up, what's the green line there?
Chris Vermeulen (09:42)
This is 150 day moving average and yeah, it's a pretty key level.
Dope With A MacBook (09:44)
Okay, so gets up above there and kind of gets everybody nervous.
Yeah, what then would then concern you? Get above there and then break back down and then start taking out others in the weeks ahead?
Chris Vermeulen (09:59)
Yeah, naturally the market likes to try to always get wherever the crowded trade is, it tries to get them offside. So I think a lot of people are are actually betting on a bearish environment here expecting this market to roll over. But if we do break this high and this if this market pushes up through here above this level, we're going to see a lot of people cover those shorts. It's going to create people to also get long. It's going to create a short squeeze and a wave of buying.
Dope With A MacBook (10:11)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Vermeulen (10:26)
And then I think we're going to see that stall out and get sold out very quickly. And then we're going to go into like a much bigger correction going forward. So short term wise, I'm still bullish on this chart pattern. ⁓ We do have a couple of patterns here pointing to about a four or 5 % rally in the S &P 500 and the NASDAQ over the next ⁓ week or two, really it could unfold. And then I think it's going to run out of steam and sell off.
We got a lot going on with the Fed and the tariffs that ⁓ it could create a big pop and some noise in the market. But overall, short term, I'm expecting this market to kind of grind a little bit higher in this dead cat bounce.
Dope With A MacBook (11:05)
All right. Well, it'd interesting to talk to you next month. That's for sure. And see where we go even just over the next four weeks. In our remaining time, let's talk about the precious metals because they've had such a crazy time. And I know silver is driving a lot of folks crazy, but let's start with gold. ⁓ By my count, Chris, as we record this, ⁓ today's the 20th day we've had six days where gold has rallied.
Chris Vermeulen (11:15)
Mm-hmm.
Dope With A MacBook (11:33)
⁓ over $90 in the last 20 days. Now we've also had a couple of days where the gold has fallen nearly $100. Crazy volatility. What I wanted to ask you about is I keep reading people on X and other sites that say, from a technical perspective, it's so overbought and such a crowded trade. And I've been writing about the commitment of trades report and more fundamental stuff. ⁓ But on the technical side, what do you see?
Chris Vermeulen (11:36)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, there's a lot going on. mean, if we break it down into some different scenarios. I'm in the camp that it is extremely overbought. It's a crowded trade. I think you and I showed these charts and talked about this the last time you and I were on, but more or less, I don't know if I have the chart here. I don't have the chart on me at the moment, but pretty much gold hit its measured move here at this 27, 2800. It hit another measured move back over here.
Dope With A MacBook (12:29)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Vermeulen (12:34)
It hit another measured move back over here. It hit another measured move back over here and another one over here. Now, the reason I bring this up is once you've hit a measured move, sometimes you can have a blow off top or a kind of a bubble phase or a crowded trade plate or whatever you want to call it. Each of these, it may not look like it, but every time we've hit a measured move and then it becomes that crowded play where everyone seems to be piling into it.
Each one of these gold rallied roughly 22 to 24 % and it's right where we're at right now. ⁓ And to me that is like the crowded play once we've hit that target and kind of the masses have FOMO because I see this all the time. Everybody feels like they're missing out on gold if they're not in it and they're piling in and they're driving the markets up. So this feels like that crowded FOMO trade, which is why some people are saying it's like way overbought and I believe it is overbought temporarily.
I do think we're going to come way back down and have a sharp pullback. ⁓ So longer term looking forward, I do believe we're going to see gold have a correction and it could it could pull back to you know, 26, 2400 maybe even 2200 if we go into a big financial reset and we've seen this over and over again. The 2000 was 34 % correction. If we look at where that is on this chart, it brings us back down to about 30, 20, 22, 2300.
which is also a Fibonacci retracement level. It's actually a sweet spot where it should pull back and it would be actually very bullish and then it could turn around and skyrocket up to, you know, seven eight twelve thousand after that. So short term, if you're if you're a short term trader like focusing on the daily chart, it is still in a strong uptrend. You you really don't want to be trying to pick a top. You don't want to be betting against it. You should just know that this is like borrowed time or free money if you're long and riding it up.
And the short term chart based on this reversal that we've seen in the past week is pointing to a fairly significant push to the upside. Now it looks like gold could rally to about 3750 as that next target. So this here is a bull chart, a bull flag pattern. It rallies up flags against the direction. And then of course, I think we're going to rally up to 3540 somewhere in there and then up to 3750. So I think gold has more potential to
blow off and continue to shoot higher. And that's what gold does in this type of environment. Typically, when we have this type of stage three topping phase that the stock market and the economy is in, we tend to see gold, ⁓ fairly specifically gold, come to life and outperform everything right near a stock market top. So that's kind of where I see that scenario is still bullish on gold short term.
But I think 6, 8, 12 months from now, gold will be much cheaper. It'll sell off with the stock market and because almost everything goes down when the economy collapses and we go into recession. And a good example of that is if we take a look at gold, these three trading sessions, these were the three days that the S &P 500 had that collapse in price where the panic hit the market. These right here.
This is the first time we've had that bout of bear market mentality where everybody literally freaked out bailed out of their trades. And then they started finding out how do they profit from a bear market when we have this kind of fear in the market, it pulls gold down. So those days are exactly what hit gold. And so you can imagine gold fell seven and a half percent on those three days, which is huge for gold. ⁓
Dope With A MacBook (15:55)
Tell everything.
Chris Vermeulen (16:14)
Just imagine if you're in a bear market for 6, 8, 12 months and we have more every week. have a few of those big down days that pull everything down. So gold probably won't be immune to it. I think gold will pull back and I think it's going to be an opportunity as you and I have talked about, but you definitely don't want to be betting against gold right now. It is kind of in that parabolic blow off phase. You know, it's kind of in a little bit of a bubble move and you it's to me. It's very high risk. It could in one monthly red bar.
It could reverse down so quickly. It'll make people's head spin in terms of how it can wipe out price action. We could see, you know, a big, big pullback in price, which we've seen in the past. You know, one huge blow off move is more than wiped out the very next month. And I believe we're kind of in this nose bleed territory. So just be cautious. I think if you're looking to buy gold and you have FOMO, I think you could probably buy it at the same or a much better price. If you just give it a bit of time.
and it'll be ready for the next leg up when you get into it.
Dope With A MacBook (17:16)
Let's discuss silver then too. Because unlike, I everybody's talking about the gold-silver ratio being over 100, know, and gold making all these new all-time highs and silver just kind of putzing along. Let's wrap up with silver. What do you see there?
Chris Vermeulen (17:32)
Yeah, silver definitely. It's not. It's not my thing right now. I like silver and I like miners when we if we have a financial reset, that's when I'm excited about silver and miners silver right now. I think carries a ton of volatility. It's it's the daily chart really shows it very clearly as soon as we hit about of selling those those waves of fear in the stock market. You can see what silver does it felt like 22 or 24 % in a few days. It is a small market when
people freak out and they hit liquidation. sell things. Silver gets hit very hard. So it's kind of like walking through a landmine. I do think silver has potential though right now to rally to about $38 an ounce, which is a pretty substantial move. This is this is the Fibonacci ⁓ measured extension move to the upside. We got a rally. We got this bull flag pattern and it shows that it could go all the way up to about 38. So percentage wise if it can get traction and hook up here, it could have a very explosive move but
Dope With A MacBook (18:13)
Yeah.
Chris Vermeulen (18:29)
⁓ As you know, silver is very tough to trade because it sometimes takes forever to etch out some growth and then boom, it wipes it all out in a couple of days. So it's very, very difficult. You're kind of like, you you got to be in there and you got to ride the volatility, put in time and hope for that pop. But pops, you know, will probably be fizzled out. If it hits 38, I would expect it's probably going to come down very sharply. I think it'll be a very quick crowded trade move, kind of like what we saw over here. You see a big pop.
Dope With A MacBook (18:38)
It's so good.
Chris Vermeulen (18:58)
takes about two or three days to work itself out and then it just fizzles out again. So silver and miners do have bullish chart patterns along with gold. They are the favorite asset right now. They're holding up very well. So they're not a bad play. just, people just need to realize, I think they're not like a buy and hold here. It's more like get in, make some money, protect your position, like manage it and get out and then look for a fresh trade. People buying right now, I think for the long term, you're kind of.
kind of buying at kind of a high price. think you can pick it up a little bit better price down.
Dope With A MacBook (19:33)
We'll see. Yeah, it's interesting how that picture can change. You you think of even just within the last month, you know, as everything was crashing. It's like, boy. And then it turns right around. ⁓ Really remarkable that that silver. Yeah, I think we all kind of deal with a little PTSD. ⁓ It just seems like, like you said, it's always a stairway up and the elevator down. ⁓
Chris Vermeulen (19:54)
Yeah.
Dope With A MacBook (20:03)
Anyway, Chris, thank you for your time. It's always great to visit with you and get your perspective. Again, people can find your work at thetechnicaltraders.com. Is that right?
Chris Vermeulen (20:08)
Yeah, no problem.
Yeah, or on YouTube, just search up the technical traders. share daily analysis there and yeah, you can stay up to speed with all the short term charts.
Dope With A MacBook (20:22)
Awesome. I was sitting there trying not to sneeze there for a second and people wondering what the heck I'm doing. That old trick. Anyway, Chris, thank
Chris Vermeulen (20:27)
The trick is to push
your tongue on the front of your front teeth and it gets rid of the sneeze. It's weird.
Dope With A MacBook (20:32)
Hey,
look at that. It worked. All right. Hey, thank you, Chris. Thank you everybody for watching. And again, please be sure to like, subscribe to Sprout Money on whatever channel you've been watching. So you're notified later this month as more content comes from Sprout Money. But in the meantime, it's time to sign off. Thank you for Sprout Money for putting this together. And thank you, Chris, for your time.
Chris Vermeulen (20:56)
Brom Greg, take care everybody.
Dope With A MacBook (20:58)
And from all of us at Sprout Money, SproutMoney.com. Again, keep an eye on this channel. We'll have more content as May continues.
Don’t miss a golden opportunity.
Now that you’ve gained a deeper understanding about gold, it’s time to browse our selection of gold bars, coins, or exclusive Sprott Gold wafers.
About Sprott Money
Specializing in the sale of bullion, bullion storage and precious metals registered investments, there’s a reason Sprott Money is called “The Most Trusted Name in Precious Metals”.
Since 2008, our customers have trusted us to provide guidance, education, and superior customer service as we help build their holdings in precious metals—no matter the size of the portfolio. Chairman, Eric Sprott, and President, Larisa Sprott, are proud to head up one of the most well-known and reputable precious metal firms in North America. Learn more about Sprott Money.
Learn More
You Might Also Like:
Looks like there are no comments yet.