Has silver lost its shine?

Silver has had a legendary run this year, is heavily correlated with Gold. However, that was only in regards to the movement.

Returns for Silver and Gold from the Start of the year – Start of September. Silver in Candlesticks, Gold in orange.

Returns for Silver and Gold from March – Start of September. Silver in Candlesticks, Gold in orange.

Before September, Silver has outperformed Gold year-to-date, and even from its March lows. Year to date, it has returned just under 50%. Meanwhile, Gold has returned 27%. From March, Silver has returned 68%, while Gold only returned 24% from the same period.

Returns for Silver and Gold from the start of September. Silver in Candlesticks, Gold in orange.

However, in September, the equities’ market selloff has transferred to both Gold and Silver, hitting Silver incredibly hard. Silver dropped 14% this month, in comparison to Gold, only falling 3.25%. If Gold was a haven turned speculative bull run, Silver was a speculative run on steroids. However, some fundamental factors may show some profit-taking.

Silver woes shining in Investors?

Investors who invest in metals and commodities such as Oil, Silver, and Gold tend to put their capital into ETF backed by metals, instead of buying futures or the physical metal, primarily due to low transaction costs. However, investors have started to take money out of these ETF’s, especially Silver backed exchange-traded funds – raising worries that the rally in Silver might be over. IShares Silver Trust ETF has seen a 3% decrease in its silver holdings over the past month to 555m ounces.

The initial case bulls were using to justify the silver trade was its use in Solar Panels. The rally came from the ECB and Joe Biden promoting policies pushing on cleaner power, with the ECB apportioning a large portion of their stimulus package to fighting climate change. However, as risk-off prevailed at the start of this month, investors started to question the actual demand for solar panels at this stage.

Furthermore, with its correlation with Gold, weakness in bull factors for Gold is also associated with a weakness in Silver. Gold is historically associated as a hedge against inflation. With the Fed making it their goal to increase inflation by allowing inflation to go above their 2% mandate, investors and traders question whether they are able to stimulate inflation even amidst their unprecedented rate cuts and quantitative easing.

For now, we’ve seen a selloff in many risk on assets – so these metals may be a part of that. Will we see further setbacks for the two metals?