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Scorecard: gold is not the real winner - how other metals ranked this year
Gold has been taking the spotlight as prices set new record highs earlier this week, but by percentage gains, the yellow metal is by no means the winner this year.
Let’s look at gold’s gains against the gains of some of the other metals. The table below shows the price growth, year to date, ranked best to worst.
Silver has outperformed all the other metals on this list, far outstripping the other industrial metals: palladium, copper, platinum.
Silver’s dominance is even more apparent from the table below, which shows percentage gains from their 2020 lows, which happened around the third week of March for all these metals.
Gold is look relatively less impressive here, as it ranks in second to last place in terms of its recovery from its March lows.
Despite silver’s outperformance relative to gold this year, silver and gold miners have seen relatively comparable levels of growth, with Global X Silver Miners ETF (SIL) up 50% year to date, while the VanEck Vectors Gold Miners ETF (GDX) up 48% during the same period.
It’s important to note that unlike gold, silver has not yet reached all-time highs. In fact, it’s still nearly 100% away. Analysts have called for higher silver prices still ahead.
Bart Melek, told Kitco News in an interview that better days are ahead for the white metal.
“I do like silver and have liked it for quite some time, though, I think for now, we consolidate. But silver still may have some more good days ahead,” he said.
He added that physical demand has been a major driving force behind silver.
“Much of the driving force behind this is the massive amount of physical investment we're seeing,” he said. “[silver-backed exchange-traded products] alone are about 250 million ounces higher than they were at the beginning of the year.”
For Melek, $50 an ounce, the previous all-time high, is a possibility.
“[$50] would be quite a number. And in my opinion, probably not sustainable for any length of time, but certainly in this environment, that is possible,” he said. “If we do see if this pressure continue, a price like we've seen at the previous highs is very much possible.”
Keith Neumeyer, CEO of First Majestic Silver, also commented on the tightness of the silver market. Speaking to Kitco News last week, he said that as demand for silver picks up, supply has been unable to catch up due to hampered production as a result of COVID-19.
"I know the tightness of the market. It's only gonna get worse as we go green. When I put this company together, we didn't have solar panels and we didn't have any electric cars to any great degree. Now solar panels are the largest consumer of silver in the space. They're consuming over 10% of the world's supply of metal--one industry which didn't exist 20 years ago," Neumeyer said.
