What Investors Can Find from a Bird’s-Eye View on the Current Silver Price

The price of silver remains in its relative holding pattern in the upper $16-per-troy ounce range, which is completely in line with what we’ve seen on the year thus far. But rather than take this individual snapshot of silver’s price, I thought I would ask a different question today: what can investors find if we zoom out on the current silver price in terms of context? Are there any insights to be learned?

As it turns out, there’s quite a lot you can find out by “zooming out.”

Silver Price: How Has it Been Performing?

First, we lean on the charts provided by APMEX.com for an overall gauge on silver’s prices. I decided to check them out by a monthly, yearly, and then half-decade basis.

On the month, you’ll see a steady and even sharp increase that erased much of the losses we saw after the June announcement that the Federal Reserve would increase interest rates once more. Even as the stock market and economic numbers perform well, precious metals like silver have enjoyed something of a mini bull run of their own.

A Long-Term View of the Silver Price

Now let’s zoom out a year.

Here we see that silver’s fluctuated almost on a monthly basis, with a few exceptions. Silver was strong enough to be above even $20.00 last year before declining to current levels by year’s end. A strong three months to open the year set the stage for another potential rise in silver, but since then, we’ve seen monthly cycles and a steady drop.

Now, the half-decade view.

Puts things in perspective, doesn’t it? There we see the large boost in precious metals that came about as a result of a number of factors—not the least of which was the unprecedented level at which interest rates were kept after the Great Recession.

We see here that silver’s fluctuations aren’t as dramatic as some might believe. Even though it has a smaller price than gold, the overall tendency in the price of silver has been to maintain somewhere between $15 and $20 since its decline back in early 2013. What we haven’t seen yet is what silver will do to break through that barrier.

Silver at an “Important Spot”

DailyFX.com doesn’t see silver at as dramatic price point as gold currently is, but it does see that there’s an “important spot.” Pointing to a trend-line that goes as far back as 2003, the indication is that what happens to silver in August and beyond could be very important in understanding where the precious metal may be headed.

As the Dow Jones has moved above 22,000 points, there’s no doubt that we’re at some intriguing times in the markets. The fact that silver can head just about anywhere for the rest of the year is not without meaning—it could indicate or even trail where the economy is headed. In precious metals, the price of silver is always worth watching both for its short-term insights…and for its long-term trends.