← Back to the front page

Historical Figures with Unforeseen Downfall and Misfortune

Khalid Elhassan April 9, 2020 33 min

Silver Thursday - United States — Nelson Bunker Hunt. Express News

37. Bursting the Silver Bubble

The bursting of the silver bubble. New York Times

The Hunts’ bubble market burst on March 27^th, 1980, which came to be known as “Silver Thursday“. Prices collapsed, and the Hunts almost immediately lost over a billion dollars.

The Hunt family fortune survived, however, and the brothers pledged most of it as collateral for a rescue loan package. Unfortunately for them, the value of their family assets declined steadily throughout the 1980s. By 1985, their net wealth had dipped from over $5 billion just before Silver Thursday, to less than a billion. Then things got worse, especially for the genius behind the silver hoarding plan, Nelson Hunt.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.