Silver Goes Parabolic While Tech Breaks Down: What the Charts Are Telling Us

The markets are sending mixed signals heading into the trading week, with precious metals screaming higher while tech faces a critical breakdown. After the long holiday weekend, futures are pointing to a rough open as geopolitical noise around Greenland rattles investor confidence and breaks key technical patterns that had been holding for weeks.

Silver Futures

The NASDAQ’s symmetrical triangle pattern—a formation traders had been watching closely—has decisively broken to the downside. This technical breakdown doesn’t bode well for tech bulls in the near term, and the S&P 500’s wedge pattern is showing similar weakness. Meanwhile, the real action has shifted to precious metals, where silver has gone vertical in what can only be described as a textbook parabola. When a chart reaches the point where it’s making almost no progress on the time axis and shooting straight up, you know you’re in dangerous territory. Silver is trading around $94, and while no one knows the ceiling, the music always stops eventually—the only question is whether you’re still dancing when it does.

Silver
Source: https://sigmanomics.com/stock-markets

The retail favorites from six months ago have largely stalled out. SoFi, Palantir, and Tesla—the darlings of the meme stock era—have gone essentially nowhere since their summer peaks. The money has rotated into semiconductor plays like Micron, which just broke to new all-time highs above $362. That’s roughly a three-fold increase from its lows just six months ago, fueled by back-to-back earnings beats. On the flip side, Microsoft sits about 20% below its highs with a notable chart gap between $390-$425 and earnings looming on January 28th.

VIX (Volatility S&P 500)

Source: http://vixcentral.com/

For those watching the macro picture, the VIX term structure remains in healthy contango—short-term volatility priced below longer-term volatility, exactly as it should be in calm markets. But keep your eye on this curve: if it flattens or inverts, with front-month volatility rising above second-month, that’s your canary in the coal mine. For now, the vol markets are signaling normal conditions, but that can change quickly. Stay nimble, watch those technical levels, and check the Sigmanomics economic calendar for upcoming data releases that could move markets.