While silver's "big brother" gold is mainly used as an investment, to maintain value and in the form of jewelry, silver has a kind of "hybrid function". This means that most recently around 50% of total silver demand came from industry (including photography), while the remainder was mainly demanded by investors in the form of bars and coins and by the jewelry industry. Almost all relevant demanders increased their demand for the silvery metal last year. First and foremost, the investment sector, which grew above all thanks to high growth in physically deposited exchange traded products (ETPs for short), which are becoming increasingly popular and have recorded a total of around 560 million ounces in net inflows over the past three years. To put this in perspective: This represents about two-thirds of the total annual production in 2021! At the same time, there is more and more demand from (future) boom sectors such as electromobility and photovoltaics. Silver is therefore clearly becoming one of the metals most in demand in the current decade, whereby production has long since been unable to keep pace and de facto an ever-greater supply deficit has prevailed on the silver market for three years.
No wonder, since in the years 2009 to 2021 alone, an average annual return of almost 11% could be achieved with physical silver in Euro terms. In US$ it was still 9.5% appreciation - mind you per year! In view of the fact that in 2020 alone there was a supply deficit of 250 million ounces, the question arises as to why the silver price did not fully explode with this. The answer is simple: it was artificially depressed by means of paper contracts on the COMEX futures exchange! How long this can be practiced in view of the real (opposite) development - both on the supply and on the demand side, depends above all on the extent to which larger contract quantities must be physically delivered in the future. Big players such as Canadian commodity mogul Eric Sprott have recently positioned themselves strongly and bought massively into silver mines.
This report provides a wealth of information on the silver sector and offers insightful interviews with exclusively selected experts from the industry. The presentation of a number of interesting companies that are suitable for speculation on rising silver prices completes the report.
