Silver has soared more than gold this year amid the coronavirus– but can it last?
- Silver has gained more than 50 per cent this year. Local shops having trouble meeting demand
- Safe haven commodity can be very volatile – and could sink if a coronavirus vaccine is found
Silver has soared this year – outpacing even superstar gold – driven up by global uncertainties around the coronavirus and by shortages that have prompted investors to snap up silver-backed exchange-traded funds as well as coins, bars and other physical assets.
“All of a sudden, people call us and are ordering silver,” said Pádraig Seif, partner of Precious Metal Asia, a trader based in Hong Kong. “And they're not buying just small quantities. They're buying a hundred kilos here. So, I say right now, we have more silver transactions than gold transactions.”
Anyone who has invested in silver knows how extremely volatile it can be, explaining why it has been called everything from “the devil’s metal” to “gold on crack”.
Silver was trading at US$27.10 per ounce on Thursday. Earlier this month, it hit US$29.13, a level it hadn’t reached in more than seven years. Meanwhile, the increasing popularity of ETFs has made it easier for investors to get in and out of silver: they’ve snapped up 284.6 million ounces of silver through ETFs, a 47 per cent increase since the beginning of this year, according to Bloomberg data.
