Keith Neumeyer
CEO & Director, First Majestic Silver; Founder, First Mining Gold
Silver is the most undervalued asset on the planet. The manipulation is real and it will end.
Background
Keith Neumeyer is the founder and CEO of First Majestic Silver, one of the world's largest primary silver mining companies with operations in Mexico and the United States. He also founded First Mining Gold. Across a resource-market career running since 1984, he has built two publicly traded mining companies and developed a reputation as one of the most outspoken advocates for silver as a monetary and industrial metal. He is unusual among mining CEOs in that he publicly challenges what he describes as manipulation of the silver futures market by major financial institutions.
Neumeyer has been a regular presence at the Sprott Natural Resource Symposium, Vancouver Resource Investment Conference, and Kitco News, and has become one of the most recognisable faces in the silver investment community. His view that silver is structurally suppressed by short positions in the paper futures market — and that the disconnection between the paper price and the underlying fundamental value will eventually resolve explosively — has made him a central figure in the retail silver investment community.
Investment Thesis
Neumeyer's silver thesis operates on two reinforcing levels. The monetary case mirrors the broader precious metals argument — silver is a historical monetary metal whose paper price has been suppressed relative to physical demand by concentrated short positions in the COMEX futures market. He has publicly called on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to investigate concentrated silver short positions held by major banks, arguing that these positions distort price discovery in a way that harms miners and investors.
The industrial case is increasingly central to his argument — solar panels, electric vehicles, 5G infrastructure, semiconductors, and medical devices all require silver, and in his account the growth of these applications is creating demand that mine supply cannot match. He argues that silver is uniquely positioned at the intersection of monetary demand (store of value), industrial demand (energy transition), and supply constraint (falling grades, limited new discoveries) — a convergence he describes as a "perfect storm" for price appreciation.
His specific price target of $130/oz reflects his estimate of what silver would trade at if the gold-to-silver ratio reverted to historically normal levels alongside normalised industrial demand growth.
Critiques & Limitations
Neumeyer's silver manipulation thesis — while directionally interesting — has not produced the regulatory action he has called for over more than a decade of advocacy. The CFTC investigations into silver market concentration have repeatedly failed to substantiate the manipulation claims at the level required for enforcement action. The solar part of his industrial case has also met thrifting: the Silver Institute's World Silver Survey 2026 reports photovoltaic silver demand falling 6% in 2025 as manufacturers accelerated thrifting and substitution, even as the market stayed in deficit. His price targets have proven consistently too high too soon, creating frustration among silver investors who positioned aggressively based on his framework. As with all CEO-commentators, his public advocacy for silver is inseparable from his commercial interest as the head of a large silver mining company.
Notable Calls
- 2020: Argued silver would outperform gold, with the gold/silver ratio falling much lower from its 2020 high (Mixed)
- 2021: Called on retail investors to participate in the "Silver Squeeze" to expose futures market manipulation (Wrong)
- 2022: Predicted silver industrial demand from solar installations would create structural deficit by 2025 (Unscored)