Market Place: A Shortage of Silver Has Prices for the Precious Metal Surging
Article by Savannah Peters in Market Place
We hear a lot about surging gold prices in this uncertain economy, but silver has been breaking records, too. Helping fuel that rally is a physical shortage.
At the beginning of the year, something weird was happening in the silver market: Huge volumes of silver bars were being flown from the metal’s international trading hub in London to New York.
“People literally were putting metal on airplanes and shipping it across,” said Maria Smirnova, senior portfolio manager and chief investment officer at Sprott Asset Management.
That unusual flow of silver into the U.S. in early 2025 — plus a spike in demand for silver during the Diwali holiday in India — helps explain why the London market nearly ran out of physical silver last week, she said. (Gold faced a similar squeeze earlier this year.)
But underlying all of that is a longer-term shortage of the white metal.
“There hasn’t been enough investment in silver mines in the last 10 years,” Smirnova explained.
Global demand for silver has been outstripping supply since 2020, according to the industry trade group the Silver Institute.
“Quite frankly, right now, where we speak, this fifth year will more than .....