If you missed out on gold’s record run, take a look at silver

Silver has a lot of catching up to do, he added, and “fundamentals in the market right now are really in favor of igniting a much more serious and powerful run in silver prices over the coming months.”

The global silver market is forecast to record a significant supply deficit for a fifth straight year in 2025, according to the Silver Institute. It expects this year’s global silver supply to reach an 11-year high of 1.05 billion ounces, with silver-mine production projected to reach a seven-year high.

That would still fall short of global demand, which is expected to remain “stable” but, at 1.2 billion ounces, would outpace supply.

Net disinvestment — defined as a withdrawal of investment — from Western silver exchange-traded fundholders had helped to keep silver prices under control despite the years-long structural deficit for silver, said Spina.

Now that ETF selling has flipped into buying, investing in silver is returning, with strong investment demand meeting the historic demand for industrial silver needs. “[The] use of silver is everywhere in our modern lives,” Spina noted, and even more so with increased demand from green-energy applications.

In its report released in late January, the Silver Institute said investor sentiment had improved toward silver early in 2025, largely due to macroeconomic and geopolitical risks which have underpinned inflows into safe-haven assets.

It warned, however, that potential tariffs under the Trump administration and their impact on global economic growth, especially in China, would likely “restrain investor enthusiasm across the broader industrial metals complex.” That, in turn, may be the “key drag on silver investing in the coming months, even though silver’s actual industrial demand is expected to remain robust,” the Silver Institute said.

Against the backdrop of tariff worries, the precious-metal market has not only seen big imports of gold but also of silver into the U.S., Spina observed.

Read: Why there’s now ‘incredible demand for physical gold’ in New York markets

“There is an urgency to get cheap silver, but tariffed silver [would lead to a] significant jump in the final price,” he said. “There is a real rush to get access to untaxed physical silver into the U.S. That places real pressures on existing supplies.”

Spina added that there are short positions that may panic as well, in which case “suddenly a true silver-squeeze scenario occurs.” In such a scenario, the price of silver “could really take off.”

Global X’s Yates said he’s positive on silver and expects it to benefit from any rebound in global industrial and manufacturing activity, while demand for silver in solar panels remains robust.

In terms of opportunity for investors, he said Global X has a preference for metals miners, which offer more leverage to a change in the underlying commodity prices. The Global X Silver Miners ETF SIL provides investors with a “diverse set of holdings, reducing idiosyncratic production risks associated with individual companies,” Yates said.

In terms of silver prices, Spina said that in a more orderly market, without a short squeeze, the price of silver looks ready to “head up to and likely well over $40 an ounce in the coming months, with the price accelerating to and past $50 an ounce under a real rush for supplies.”

There’s also a possibility that a rush for supplies leads to some sort of scenario where a “frenzy of buyers spike the price into a much more dramatic rise” toward $75 to $100 an ounce, he noted. “Real physical-price squeeze potential is building.”

But the more likely scenario, he said, is $40 to $50 by the end of this year.