Silver Outshines Gold: Industrial Demand from EVs, Solar & Electronics Meets Tight Supply
Move over, gold. Silver's industrial muscle is flexing, pushing its price higher on a wave of green-tech demand and supply constraints.
The Green-Tech Engine
Forget vaults and jewelry. Silver's real action is on the factory floor. Every electric vehicle rolling off the line, every solar panel soaking up rays, and every new piece of consumer electronics demands more of the conductive metal. It's not a speculative play—it's wired directly into the energy transition.
A Supply Squeeze in the Spotlight
That booming demand hits a wall of finite supply. Mining new deposits is slow and costly, creating a fundamental pinch. While gold often dances to the tune of interest rates and fear, silver's trajectory is getting carved by hard industrial math.
The Precious vs. Practical Dilemma
So, is it 'better'? That depends on your portfolio's personality. Gold is the classic safe-haven diva, shining in crises. Silver is the workhorse—a hybrid asset playing both the precious metal and critical commodity game. Its volatility can be brutal, but its fundamentals are now driven by megatrends, not just monetary anxiety.
The metal is having a moment, proving that sometimes the best hedge isn't in a vault—it's in your pocket, your car, and on your roof. Just don't expect Wall Street to understand an asset that has actual, you know, utility.
ETF flows, weak mining, and option bets trap Silver investors. Do they have a plan?
According to data from LSEG, the global total silver stash is currently under $50 billion. For comparison, gold sits at around $1.2 trillion, with a huge chunk of that in central bank vaults (especially the Bank of England) where it can be lent into markets when things get tight.
That system doesn’t exist for silver, so yeah, it’s every trader for themselves. Still, silver is cheap per ounce compared to gold too, so it is so much easier to buy for retail investors, though also riskier. But for those guys, this is a non-issue.
Meanwhile, physical silver-backed ETFs picked up 15.7 million ounces in November alone. Holdings have climbed in 9 of the last 11 months. These are active bets on supply staying tight and prices staying hot. But it’s not just ETFs. The options market is on fire too.
Jonathan Krinsky, chief markets technician at BTIG, pointed out that the iShares Silver Trust (SLV), which tracks the metal’s performance, posted three straight daily gains of 2.5% or more in the past week. “That’s only happened five other times in the ETF’s history (back to ’06). Four of the five occurred either at, or right before, a major peak for SLV,” he said.
Silver skew (a measure of call-option demand over puts) jumped 8 points to hit 10 percentage points in two weeks, which is the highest since March 2022 and also means that betting on an upside just got a lot more expensive. Wonder how that’ll play out.
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