India’s Silver Surge: $5.9 Billion Import in Four Months Marks Staggering 400% Jump from Q4
Silver's back—and it's wearing a price tag that's turning heads from Mumbai to Manhattan.
While crypto traders obsess over digital volatility, a physical asset just pulled off a move that'd make any altcoin blush. We're talking about a four-month import spree so aggressive it rewrites the playbook on commodity flows. Forget gradual accumulation—this is a wholesale pivot executed at scale.
The Scale of the Shift
The numbers don't lie, they just happen to be astronomical. A 400% quarter-over-quarter increase isn't a trend; it's a statement. It represents capital deployment on a level that suggests a fundamental reassessment of value, not just a tactical trade. When a single nation redirects billions into a single physical asset in such a compressed timeframe, the market notices.
Beyond the Obvious
So what's driving the rush? Industrial demand? A hedge against currency volatility? Strategic stockpiling? The sheer magnitude points beyond simple arbitrage. It hints at institutional-grade positioning, a move often made when traditional financial instruments look... let's say, creatively priced. Sometimes the smartest trade isn't in the futures market—it's on the next container ship into Mundra port.
In a world chasing digital abstractions, maybe the real alpha is still buried in the periodic table. Just don't tell the crypto bros—they're busy looking for the next metaverse silver mine.
Nifty Metal Index rallies as silver leads the charge in Indian stocks
The buying fever is hitting India’s stock market too. The Nifty Metal Index, which tracks mining and metals companies, just had its best opening quarter since 2018. It’s crushing the Nifty 50, sending the metals-to-main-index ratio to the highest point in 11 years. Metal stocks are flying, and silver’s right at the center of it.
On the global side, spot silver jumped 5% to $94.41 an ounce, hitting an all-time high of $94.61. Prices have now climbed more than 32% since January. But despite the record-setting price, India’s demand cooled off. Physical silver started trading at a ₹10,000 per kilo discount.
“There is a ₹10,000 per kilo (kg) discount for bars prevailing in the physical market here,” said Surendra Mehta, the IBJA national secretary. His association’s pricing is used by the Reserve Bank of India for its sovereign gold bond program.
Surendra said dealers in Mumbai were offering silver at ₹292,628 per kg, though the landed cost was ₹302,628. Meanwhile, MCX silver futures surged by 5.5% to ₹3.03 lakh per kg on Monday, per data from Reuters.
The Nippon India Silver ETF surged by 5.66% to ₹284.70 per gram, pushing its YTD returns to 32.45%. In the past year, it’s delivered 225%. By comparison, the Nifty index dropped 2.15% so far this year and only managed 10.3% over the past 12 months.
ETF assets have ballooned from ₹15,339.21 crore in March 2025 to ₹72,907.44 crore by the end of December 2025, Kotak Mutual Fund reported.
Silver profits are also showing up in earnings. Hindustan Zinc (the company that controls about three-fourths of India’s zinc market) posted a 46.2% profit jump in Q3. Its profit hit ₹39.16 billion ($430.6 million), up from ₹26.78 billion last year.
Revenue was up 27.5%, and mined and refined production grew 4% each, both record highs for the October to December quarter.
Gold ROSE 1.7% to $4,672.49 an ounce, while U.S. gold futures added 1.8% to $4,677.70. The yen and Swiss franc also gained. Platinum added 1.5% to $2,362.65, and palladium increased 1.1% to $1,819.99.
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