A 15% rally in silver prices now comes in days, not months
LONDON (January 16) Silverprices are heading for a weekly gain of about 15% after pushing to fresh records earlier in the week, even as prices pulled back after the Trump administration said it would delay import tariffs on critical minerals.
“Silver continues to attract speculative interest, increasingly from both buyers and sellers, resulting in erratic price swings and challenging trading conditions,” analysts at Saxo Bank said.Signs of tightness in the physical market are beginning to ease. Saxo noted that silver is flowing back from Comex warehouses to Europe, while elevated prices are starting to weigh on industrial demand, a dynamic that could help bring supply and demand back into balance.
Meanwhile, speculative appetite in China remains strong, with Shanghai prices trading close to $10 an ounce above London levels.
Silver has become the most crowded commodity trade among individual investors, according to Vanda Research. Over the past 30 days, retail buyers have poured $921.8 million into silver-backed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) such as the iShares Silver Trust (NYSE:SLV).
The iShares ETF alone saw $69.2 million of retail inflows on Wednesday, the largest single day of buying since 2021, when individual investors last helped propel prices sharply higher. The fund is up more than 31% so far this year and has surged more than 210% over the past 12 months.
But Vanda argues that this rally differs from the 2021 episode. “This isn’t just a meme-stock spike; we are witnessing a structural accumulation that has now surpassed the heights of the 2021 ’Silver Spike’,” the firm said, adding that silver should now be viewed as “a core macro trading asset,” rather than a purely speculative trade.
Silver prices have set a string of new highs in recent sessions. On Friday, the metal was trading down 1.1% at $91.30 an ounce, but remains up sharply from $72.62 at the start of the year. The metal hit an intraday record above $93.5 earlier in the week.
Mining stocks have followed suit, with the MSCI ACWI Select Silver Miners Investable Index up roughly 225% over the past year.
Investing.com
