TLDR:
- Silver dropped from $121.64 to $65 in 53 days, with 25% of the loss coming after Jane Street’s filing went public.
- Jane Street increased its SLV holdings by 500x in Q4 2025, quietly becoming the ETF’s largest shareholder ahead of the crash.
- SEBI fined Jane Street a record $570M for running a stock-buying scheme in India to profit from larger short options positions.
- No US regulator has demanded Jane Street’s full derivatives exposure in silver for January 29 and 30, the crash dates.
Silver has lost nearly 50% of its value in just 53 days, dropping from an all-time high of $121.64 to around $65. The sharp decline has drawn attention to Jane Street, a high-frequency trading firm with a documented history of controversial trading practices.
Analysts and market observers are now questioning the firm’s role in the crash, given its massive, undisclosed position in the silver ETF, SLV.
Jane Street’s Hidden Stake in SLV
In Q4 2025, Jane Street quietly accumulated 20.67 million shares of SLV, the world’s most liquid silver ETF. That figure is up from just 41,100 shares the quarter before — a 500x increase.
The position, valued at approximately $1.3 billion, made Jane Street the largest SLV holder, ahead of BlackRock and Morgan Stanley.
This stake was not publicly known while silver was rallying toward its January 29 peak. On January 30, silver collapsed 30% within 30 hours.
That was the worst precious metals crash since 1980. The CME raised margin requirements mid-crash, triggering further cascading liquidations.
The 13F filing revealing Jane Street’s position only became public on February 25. After that disclosure, silver dropped an additional 25%.
As Bull Theory posted on social media, “Silver hit ATH $121.64 on January 29, 2026. Today it sits at $65, a 46% collapse, and 25% of that drop happened AFTER February 25, 2026.”
A Pattern Documented in India and Crypto
Jane Street’s trading practices have already attracted regulatory scrutiny in two other markets. India’s SEBI issued a 105-page order against the firm, resulting in the largest fine in the regulator’s history. SEBI impounded $570 million from Jane Street after finding market manipulation across 18 expiry days.
In those sessions, Jane Street bought large amounts of index stocks in the morning to push prices higher. At the same time, it built short options positions 7.3 times larger than its stock exposure.
By afternoon, it offloaded the stocks, the index fell, and the options paid out. On one day, the firm reportedly lost $7.5 million on stocks while making $89 million on options.
In the crypto market, the bankruptcy administrator for Terraform Labs filed an 83-page federal lawsuit against Jane Street.
The lawsuit alleged the firm used non-public information to avoid over $200 million in losses tied to the $40 billion Terra/LUNA collapse. Blockchain forensics reportedly traced key wallet activity back to Jane Street through Coinbase records.
The Question No Regulator Has Asked
A 13F filing only discloses long equity positions. It does not show short positions, options exposure, or full derivatives books. That gap means Jane Street’s net silver position on January 29 and 30 remains unknown.
The physical silver backing SLV is held by JPMorgan. In 2020, JPMorgan paid $920 million to resolve CFTC charges related to eight years of precious metals market manipulation. That remains the largest CFTC sanction on record.
No US regulator has publicly demanded a full accounting of Jane Street’s complete silver derivatives exposure around the time of the crash.
As Bull Theory noted online, “If the India playbook was running in silver, the $1.3B ETF stake was just the cost. The options position on the other side was the profit.”
None of this has been proven in US courts, though the documented regulatory history raises questions that remain unanswered.
