Silver in 2025: What Seasoned Investors Are Watching

Jeffrey Christian: You’re seeing more investors turning to silver as a long-term store of value and portfolio diversifier. So, you probably won’t see people evacuate the silver market the way they did in 2013-2015, because there are investors around the world who have sort of said, “Yeah, you know, these are different times, and these different times are going to be around for years, not weeks or months.”

Sean Brazney: Here we are today, silver sees a spike, actually over the last Tuesday, saw a pretty big spike in the metals, and then today spikes up in just over $36 an ounce. Highest price we’ve seen in, what, 12, at least 13 years. So, again, seeing silver light up and get active again, really wondering what your take is on some of the price movement we’ve seen, especially since the drop in April, in the full recovery and on to higher prices. What do you think is going on?

Jeffrey Christian: I think there’s a combination of factors, but one of the things is that you have a lot of investors around the world who are extremely concerned about the political and economic environment and what it means for their own personal finances and their family, and that has caused investors to be buying more gold and silver recently. In the last few weeks, in early May, you saw investors kind of calming down about all of the economic uncertainties, but then in the last three weeks, that has increased again, not just in the United States, but on a global basis. There’s much greater concerns about where the world’s going economically and politically, and I think investors were coming into the market. So, it’s this ball of economic and political issues that’s the key factor driving it, and you’re seeing that. You’re seeing higher oil prices, higher gold prices, higher platinum, palladium, copper. You’re seeing it in the treasury market. You’re seeing it in other government bond markets. So, that’s there, but the other thing is that you have a July– July is an active COMEX Silver Futures contract, and right now you have 591 million ounces of open interest in the July contract. Between now and early July, most of the 591 million ounces will be bought back and rolled forward. Most of it will be rolled forward into like September or even December futures contracts, but the act of buying back July and selling September, or just buying back and closing out those positions, or buying it and taking delivery, any of those acts, whatever you do to get rid of that 591 million ounces of open interest, has the effect of pushing the silver price up. That’s what you saw in April 2011, when the price went from $35 to $50, and then once the roll was over in early May, it came back down to $32 in five trading days. So, we think that you’ll see strong silver prices now for the next three weeks, and then you could see the prices come back, but when they come back, they’re coming back to $34, $35. They may not come back to $31 or $32, because that heightened economic and political uncertainty is still going to be there in July and for months to come.

Sean Brazney: Silver has really, since we went to the upside above $26, I think it was late last year, mid last year, when it made its push to $26 silver, it’s really stayed at the high side of the price, really for one of the longest durations going back to the 2010-2013 run where we saw some great prices for a good amount of time. I think you just said it, is this a price area, whether it’s $30 or $29 or $32, is this kind of a price mechanism that we think will hang on and last longer?

Jeffrey Christian: I think it is. I think one of the things that you’re seeing, you saw the first wave of it in 2010-2013, and I think this is the next wave and it’s a longer wave. You’re seeing more investors turning to silver as a long-term store of value and portfolio diversifier. So, you probably won’t see people evacuate the silver market the way they did in 2013-2015. Our expectation is that, as I said, when the price comes down, it’s not going back to $15 the way it was in 2015. It’s going to stay much, much higher, because there are investors around the world who have sort of said, ” Yeah, you know, these are different times, and these different times are going to be around for years, not weeks or months.”