At Stack's, a coin dealer in midtown Manhattan, the shop floor is filled with glass cases displaying coins and banknotes ranging from recently-minted pieces to 18th-century antiques. These days, however, customers mainly have eyes for one product: the silver American Eagle.

"Silver's hot. People want it. People don't want to have money in the bank," says Eric Streiner, the shop's manager. Buyers include everyone from "business executives to lunatics", he adds.

The same story is being repeated across the US. Silver has become the favoured investment of disaffected Americans. The recent wave of disenchantment with the economic stewardship of the country's institutions - from the government and the Federal Reserve to big Wall Street banks - has sent demand skyrocketing.

With that, the price of silver has more than doubled since the Fed first raised the prospect of a second round of quantitative easing - effectively, printing money to prop up the economy - in late August. That has made it the best performing precious metal, with nominal prices rising to levels only seen during the height of the Hunt brothers' famous squeeze in 1980.

Daniel Brebner, commodities analyst at Deutsche Bank, says silver investors "don't like where their country is going - particularly in the US but elsewhere as well.

"They are looking at other political alternatives, but they're also looking at diversifying away from conventional assets they've held in the past."

Nowhere is the unbridled enthusiasm for silver clearer than at the level of coins and small bars - the type of product most accessible to smaller investors. All the world's top mints are selling silver coins at record pace: the US Mint has sold 12.4m ounces of silver American Eagles in the first three months of the year - equivalent to about 6 per cent of quarterly global mine output.

David Fuller's view Has the mania phase for silver's secular bull market commenced?

If so, how long will it last and how high will the price go?

Silver has certainly advanced a long way since Fullermoney forecast a secular bull market for precious metals and most other commodities approximately 10 years ago. There were three main reasons behind that forecast: 1) The prior secular bear markets resulting in Brobdingnagian base formations; 2) Excessive money printing by the US Federal Reserve and many other central banks; 3) The Asian-led growth potential for emerging markets which had embraced capitalism.

Despite silver's pace-setting advance evident in these charts (historic, monthly, weekly & daily), I think this is only the early stage of a mania phase which could last for several more years. Despite American interest in silver Eagles, the metal is neither a front-page nor an international story. Also, this CPI inflation-adjusted chart of silver does not look that overextended relative to the size of the base.

Price targets and the duration of bull markets are pure guess work, so it is more useful to assess charts for evidence of trend reconfirmation, periodic corrections and the eventual ending. My guess is that silver will reach another medium-term peak within the next several weeks as it is becoming increasingly overstretched relative to its 200-day moving average.

Also, seasonal strength for precious metals usually dissipates in 2Q. Watch for a probable upward acceleration relative to what we have seen recently, followed by a downward dynamic which is likely to be dramatic, and then a break in the progression of rising lows. Since trading risks obviously increase as trends become more overextended relative to their MAs, anyone participating in these climactic moves is advised to use trailing stops for money control purposes.

As to the longer-term outlook, silver is unlikely to complete a final mania phase without similar action by gold (monthly & weekly). There is little technical evidence of a gold mania at present, but seasonal factors suggest that it is also likely to reach another medium-term peak in 2Q.