Silver Linings Trade BookAt the expense of using a mixed metaphor, silver may at times appear to be a mercurial trading instrument. Even if you only trade silver as a CFD product, utilising pure technical analysis, and without holding any of it as a physical asset, you should still be aware of the macroeconomic context that influences this metal alongside supply and demand fundamentals. Silver, according to many players in the market, is heavily manipulated by some of the big banks as well as the U.S. Fed and Treasury. By manipulation, we mean a suppression of the real price of silver given bullish fundamentals that should translate into much higher prices.
Let’s first discuss the safe haven nature of silver. Four precious metals typically interest safe haven investors, namely gold, silver, platinum and palladium. It may come as a surprise to many that gold is not always the strongest and safest of havens and indeed during certain periods, silver, along with platinum and palladium, has acted as a safe haven when gold has not. Silver has been resilient in this regard as seen through the Covid-19 pandemic when its position as a safe haven asset climbed 47.89% between 31/12/2019 and 31/12/2020 compared to 25.12% for gold, 25.86% for palladium and 10.92% for platinum during the same period.
Silver’s backbone though is built from its use as an industrial metal and although industrial demand has been fickle since Covid-19, that’s still not been as fickle as investment demand since that time. As of January 2020, industrial buyers accounted for more than 50% of demand for the metal. Recent bearish economic data from key markets such as the U.S., China and Germany has put a lid on any attempts at a parabolic move eyeing the highs of Feb 2021 despite gold hitting an all-time high recently. When the global economy emerges from troubled waters, the global drive for cleaner energy will resume in earnest and make silver a key decarbonisation trade and we may see a resumption of the 2020 bull run. There is still room for a momentum rebound with a change in sentiment and consequent space to manoeuvre between where we are at the moment and the $30 high reached in early Feb 2021 and between that top and the all-time high of $49 in 2011.
Technical traders using leverage on gold CFDs, especially intra-day traders, get nervous when they look at the price action of silver in comparison. Silver’s price action is not as smooth as gold’s and the daily ranges may also appear tighter in comparison but this is in part due to silver’s wider use in industry compared to the yellow metal. As a result, silver has more cyclical characteristics than gold but this helps contextualise patterns and trends for trade analysis. Traders are losing out on not trading silver because intra-day trades as well as swing/position trades can offer an excellent risk to reward ratio with this instrument. Silver, like gold, is also offered by many brokers with a very reasonable spread and ones that are also much lower compared to platinum and palladium. As always, remember that when you go to market, be careful out there.
