Barrons: Gold Is Off to the Races. It Isn’t Too Late to Buy Silver.
For the past several years, gold prices have staged a historic rally while silver has largely struggled to keep up. For investors, that could mean a buying opportunity.
It has been a great time to invest in gold, which outperformed the S&P 500 in 2024, and continued to shine in 2025. It hit a new high of $2,893 an ounce Wednesday but slipped to $2,876 on Thursday afternoon.
Silver has also performed for investors, but not quite as well. It returned 12% a year on average for the past three years, compared with 16% for gold.
On Thursday, silver traded at $32.65 an ounce, about 7% below its 12-month high of $35.04, reached Oct. 22, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Given that the two metals’ prices typically move together, that could mean silver is poised for a rally.
“While gold has broken out and continues to act well, silver remains below the highs hit in October,” wrote Jeff Jacobson, head of derivative strategy at 22V Research, in a note Wednesday.
Gold’s strength has widened the price differential between the two metals, he added, potentially setting the stage for a silver “catch-up” rally. We “have seen silver stage sharp rallies on both an absolute basis, as well as relative to gold, the last two times the silver/gold spread has gotten to these levels,” he wrote.
There are also fundamental reasons to be bullish on silver.
The supply of silver has been largely stagnant for the past decade. A big reason: Unlike gold which is mined directly, about three-fourths of silver is produced as a byproduct of other metals, such as lead, zinc, and copper. Prices for many of these base metals have been soft lately, giving miners less reason to dig them up.
As a result, the global supply of silver is expected to increase just 3% in 2025, forecasts the Silver Institute, a trade group. “Silver may be rallying, but miners are not getting the signal to increase activity” because their financial incentives are elsewhere, said Nitesh Shah, head of commodities research at WisdomTree.
At the same time, demand has been increasing steadily, largely thanks to a surge in interest in solar panels, an important industrial use for the metal. President Donald Trump’s election hit U.S. solar companies hard. But the U.S. is a relative sideshow when it comes to the global solar picture. China produces about 80% of the world’s solar panels, and the country has no plans to let up on its green energy push.
Solar’s share of global energy capacity is expected to surge to about 13% by 2028 from 5%, wrote Imaru Casanova, a portfolio manager at Van Eck, in a recent note. “The implications for silver are clear,” she said.
