It doesn’t have the glitter of gold, the appeal of options, or the excitement of crypto, but silver has other important lures. And if market commentators are correct, investors could start focusing on those soon enough, and when they do, a bull market in silver will be underway. After years of taking a back seat to other investments, is silver finally going to get respect from Wall Street?
“Poor man’s gold” shook the markets in 1979-1980 when it soared from a low of just $5.94/ounce to an all-time high of approximately $50/ounce. But it gave back much of those gains in the few gut-wrenching weeks that followed the rally, taking until 2011 to challenge that high. Since then, with only a few modest exceptions, the bulls have been disappointed.
Investors will have to wait to learn whether The Street’s latest interest is the real McCoy or just a false alarm, but this much can be said. A growing number of market commentators are not only following silver, but have become bullish on it. And they are more confident about it now than they have been in years.
The Choice Is Yours
One of the main reasons people have purchased silver in the past is because it’s a way of preserving wealth. That’s still valid logic, but these days buyers purchase it for other reasons, too. For example, there are preppers and dooms-dayers who believe that society will collapse, and that owning silver is an important way to help them survive the coming chaos.
There are a variety of ways they, along with conventional investors and speculators, can purchase silver and they include buying silver ETFs, which track the price of the metal, silver mining stocks, bullion, options and more. All investments have some risk, but some more than others. For example, most of the dozens of stocks tracked on the Silver Seek website are literally penny stocks that trade for less than $1/share, and many of the others trade below $10/share.
For some silver bulls, the most reassuring choice is to not only own the metal but to also have physical possession of it, and this can be done easily enough by purchasing silver “rounds,” coins, ingots, bars, and the like. Those who choose this route should deal with a reputable dealer, so they can feel confident about getting real silver for their money and not getting stuck with “fake” silver, which is worthless. And there really are some who sell fake silver, believe it or not.
Any Time At All
“Silver is a great thing to own in good times and it’s even better in bad times,” says accountant and market commentator Steve Poplar. “It’s a great inflation protection and all around it covers all bases.” And, he adds, aside from having a roof over your head and a stockpile of food, it’s the best way to get through rough times.
Many people are worried that a military or financial crisis could erupt suddenly and if one does expect a major disruption to the economy and a painful selloff on Wall Street.
What might happen? One likely scenario is that investors would initially reach for the safety of cash or Treasury bills. But Poplar believes that subsequently they’d move to silver and gold, which could hold up better than the general market. Moreover, when the decline finally slows, these metals might start to recover sooner than stocks and possibly move higher while the stock market languishes.
Poplar says that even in the worst-case scenario – e.g. World War III breaks out – silver might do a lot better than some imagine because government spending on defense would skyrocket, and silver is a crucial component in many weapons systems.
“Every Tomahawk missile that’s fired, every interceptor that’s fired, every drone and fighter jet that’s built – all of these things require a lot of silver,” he says. The U.S. used to have a strategic silver reserve but no longer does.
Currently the U.S. military buys the silver it needs on the open market, and so do the militaries of other nations. In the event of a major war, spending on defense would soar, increasing demand for silver sharply and likely driving the price up much higher.
Unlike Other Commodities
The prices of most commodities are much higher now than they’ve been in years. One exception is silver which, despite a recent rally, is still trading much lower than its price years ago. In mid-Feb. 2025, silver was trading in the low $32/ounce range, less than two thirds of the all-time high.
Poplar and other commentators believe that silver is dramatically undervalued, in part because the recent price doesn’t reflect the increased demand from numerous high-tech products and important markets. For example, China keeps producing massive numbers of solar panels, and each one uses silver. In fact, industrial demand for silver passed 700 million ounces for the first time in 2024. Meanwhile, China, Russia, and BRICS countries are buying this metal aggressively.
Poplar says there is a “structural deficit of 100 – 200 million ounces per year.” In other words, people are purchasing and using 100 – 200 million ounces more than are being produced. As a result, silver inventories have been declining since 2016, the year of peak production.
There’s another reason silver is undervalued. “U.S. banks and central banks have actively suppressed the price of silver,” he says. While gold has been making all-time highs, silver has not. Why? Because big banks have been shorting it, selling metal they don’t have in the hope of buying it back at a lower price.” If the price of silver goes substantially higher, central banks and others potentially could lose a great deal of money, which gives them incentive to continue shorting it.
All this manipulation has created a situation where now there are 100 ounces of paper silver for every ounce of real metal. “The problem is that the foreign banks and others are calling the bluff of big U.S. banks,” says Poplar. Their attitude is that if major U.S. banks drive the price lower, they’re happy to buy it “on the cheap.”
Peter Schiff, a stockbroker, commentator, and radio personality, follows both gold and silver very closely. Schiff noted that while gold has recently made all-time highs, silver has not followed along. And the gold-to-silver ratio, which measures how many ounces of silver it takes to buy one ounce of gold, has increased to more than 90:1.
“Such a high ratio has often signaled an impending breakout for silver prices,” he says. “It indicates that silver could be undervalued, and we may be on the verge of a major price surge.”
While the bullish arguments in favor of silver may be impressive, they’re not new. In fact, some are the same as they were weeks and months ago, and even much further back than that.
Silver has some strong fundamentals, and at some point could reward its backers handsomely, despite its past disappointments. If silver intrigues you, ask your advisor whether silver is setting the stage for a meaningful rally.
Sources: dailyreckoning.com; poplarreport.com; schiffgold.com; silverseek.com; zerohedge.com
Gerald Harris is a financial and feature writer. Gerald can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
