Yesterday we mentioned upside call activity that we have witnessed in the marketplace in leading Silver based ETF, SLV (iShares Silver, Expense Ratio 0.50%), and the ETF has promptly rallied more than 1.2% and has traded as high as $19.14 this morning in fairly short order.
Related “long” Silver funds like USLV (VelocityShares 3X Long Silver ETN, Expense Ratio 1.65%) have traded substantially higher today as well, on decent volume.
Silver however tends to be rather volatile and some investors may simply not be able to stomach such short term volatility and potential whipsaw type moves, so this has us looking at a handful of diversified “Precious Metals” based ETPs that may be attractive to managers whom want some exposure to Silver, but do not want to be tied solely to the fortunes of that metal.
GLTR (ETFS Physical Precious Metal Basket Shares, Expense Ratio 0.60%) is the largest such fund in the marketplace based on current AUM, as it has about $181 million invested presently.
This ETF carries about a 31% weighting to Silver bullion, with the rest of the fund allocated to Gold, Platinum, and Palladium. PowerShares offers DBP (PowerShares DB Precious Metals Fund, Expense Ratio 0.79%) as well, which is slightly smaller than GLTR in terms of asset size ($173 million), but this fund is less diversified than GLTR in that it is about 83% weighted to Gold, and the balance allocated to Silver.
For tax sensitive investors, DBP distributes a K-1 while GLTR is 1099 based, which will likely make a difference to some end investors depending on their specific situation and needs. JJP (iPath DJ-UBS Precious Metals Total Return Sub-Index ETN, Expense Ratio 0.75%) is a much smaller offering in the space, with only about $11 million in AUM and scarce daily trading volume, but still worth mentioning.