Silver is showing signs that its slide may have found its bottom with the price perking back up towards $23 an ounce.
It is interesting to note that silver has now bounced back on the last two occasions it has flirted with $22 an ounce, first in late June and now again this week, suggesting that this is the floor for a metal that still has an outstanding fundamental case.
While gold, silver’s precious metal peer, looks set to continue its period of downward drift in the face of a strong US dollar and high and rising interest rates, silver’s greater industrial exposure looks to have stemmed its price bleed.
Silver is an excellent conductor of electricity and is therefore used in the connections of a whole host of electrical products, most notably in photovoltaic cells for solar energy and in the batteries of electric vehicles. Given the growth prospects of those two sectors, silver demand looks healthy for a good while to come with mined supply struggling to keep pace.
So while the current macroeconomic environment remains challenging for silver, $22 looks to be the natural floor below which investors’ long-term view on the metal kicks in and pushes it back up. Further gains will be hard to make with the prospect of another Federal Reserve interest rate hike in September to come but for now, at least the price is pointing upwards rather than downwards.
Rupert is a Market Analyst for Kinesis Money, responsible for updating the community with insights and analysis on the gold and silver markets. He brings with him a breadth of experience in writing about energy and commodities having worked as an oil markets reporter and then precious metals reporter during the seven years he worked at Bloomberg News.
As well as market analysis, Rupert writes longer-form thought leadership pieces on topics ranging from carbon markets, the growth of renewable energy and the challenges of avoiding greenwash while investing sustainably.
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