Silver prices have lagged gold prices since 2017 which has pushed the gold-to-silver ratio close to the all-time high. Silver prices are also significantly below what is predicted by our pricing model. We think that the reasons for this subdued performance are transitory and that silver will outperform gold again as the next precious metals cycle continues to rapidly unfold.
In spring 2017, we introduced a framework for understanding the formation of silver prices (Silver price framework: Both money and a commodity, March 9, 2017). In this report we are going to use this framework to analyze the recent performance of silver and give an outlook for where we think silver is heading over the coming months. In our framework piece, we concluded that silver is both money (store of value) and an input commodity and thus the impact of both industrial and monetary demand needs to be taken into consideration:
On the one hand, silver is a counterparty-risk-free form of money where replacement costs set the lower boundary for prices – the same energy proof of value that underlies gold prices. Thus, silver should be impacted by the same drivers as gold prices: Real-interest rate expectations, central bank policy, and longer-dated energy prices.
On the other hand, silver is a commodity with extensive industrial applications. Hence, changes in industrial activity should impact the price of silver as well.
In our framework note, we also discussed the two main reasons why we think that silver tends to outperform gold in bull markets and underperform in bear markets:
Because the value of global silver stocks is much smaller than that of global gold stocks – which is the result of silver being used in industrial applications – a rise in monetary demand for silver has a disproportionally large effect. In other words, when demand for metals increases as an alternative to fiat currency, there is simply less silver around to change hands.
A large part of global silver production is a by-product of other mining activities such as copper production. This base production is usually enough to meet industrial demand and “normal” monetary demand for silver. Because much silver is mined as a by-product, the silver cost curve has a discontinuous shape, meaning that base production is relatively cheap -- but to meaningfully ramp up supply, much more costly “pure” silver projects need to become economically viable. Hence, when a sharp increase in monetary demand leads to a shift on the cost curve, prices tend to increase sharply. This is illustrated in Exhibit 1. On a smooth continuous supply curve, an increase in expected future demand leads to a shift on the supply cost curve from A to B. However, for silver, the cost curve is different – it has a “kink” (an abrupt, discontinuous change in the first derivative) as a lot of silver is produced as a by-product, meaning it is produced almost regardless of the silver price. As such, small shifts in expected future demand lead only to very small changes in marginal costs. However, a sharp increase in monetary demand for silver leads to a sharp increase in the marginal cost of future supply (C to D), as an increase in future supply can only be achieved by sanctioning high-cost pure silver projects.
Silver prices have peaked in early 2011 at close to US$50.00/ozt and subsequently gradually declined to a low of US$13.70/ozt in late 2015, around the same time when gold prices hit their low. This silver price decline was in line with the findings of our model: Monetary demand for silver slowed down significantly as USD real interest rate expectations (10-year TIPS yields) rose from close to -1% to almost +1% (see Exhibit 2) which tends to be strongly negatively correlated with precious metals prices, silver more so than gold. As we have highlighted before, the decline in gold prices over that time-period was exacerbated due to a repricing in longer-dated energy prices, which has most likely negatively impacted silver prices as well. However, unlike gold – which since then has been on an upward trend and is up 40% from the lows – silver prices have been largely stagnating (see Exhibit 3).
Moreover, silver prices have not just detached from gold, they have detached from the predicted levels in our pricing model as well (see Exhibit 4). Our model predicts that prices should currently be roughly at US$25/ozt – US$8/ozt higher than they are. Importantly, when silver prices bottomed in late 2015, prices were exactly in line with the predicted levels from our model. Subsequently, our model would have predicted prices to rise on the back of slowly declining real-interest rate expectations and a modest growth in industrial output. The decline in real-interest rate expectations did lead to rising gold prices, but silver prices did not follow...
