A Look Back at Silver Trends 2016

Silver prices surged this year after a tough 2015. The ongoing deficit, political announcements and concerns worldwide, and a weak US dollar have all impacted the precious metal’s market.

Here, INN looks back at the major developments that happened in the silver market in 2016.

Price: A Generous Rebound

After a troubled 2015, the white metal prices had a strong start in 2016. The gold-silver ratio was at its highest in the first two months of the year since February 2008. According to Commerzbank at the time, the silver price per ounce had benefited from a weaker US dollar, strong ETF inflows and purchases from speculative investors.

Silver hit $15.90/oz on March 1 after the Federal Reserve announced to leave interest rates unchanged. By the end of that month, the precious metal had gained over 8 percent from the beginning of the year.

In April, silver prices saw an impressive rebound and hit an 11-month high reaching $17.85/oz, outperforming the gold price, but dip back to $15.93 in June.

After the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, silver prices jumped over $20 an ounce for the first time in roughly two years and outshined gold in the post-brexit precious metal’s rally.

Brexit wasn’t the only political development that had an impact in silver prices this year. During 2016 the run for the White House kept the precious metal’s market expectant. After Donald Trump’s win and his announcements of infrastructure plans, metals rallied, but silver lost roughly 10 percent by November 25.

Political Concerns and Uncertainty

Political announcements and developments worldwide brought uncertainty in the markets and turned investors to gold and silver as a safe haven.

The UK voted to leave the European Union, in a decision that was unexpected by many, and silver made year-to-date gains of 44.74 percent, as of July 4th.

That week, PureFunds CEO Andrew Chanin told CNBC: “Silver is a metal that most people don’t really think about when they think about precious metals, but it does have this dual property towards both an industrial metal and a precious metal.

“So many of the reasons that investors chose to invest in gold, silver has many of those properties, at the same time as having a lot of demand coming from industrials,” he said.

Another major political development that drove markets was the US Presidential election. Once the winner was announced, metals rallied, supported by the proposed infrastructure plans that could be implemented by the incoming US President Trump.

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