Precious metals have curiously rallied hard in the past two or three sessions, after GLD (SPDR Gold Trust, Expense Ratio 0.40%) actually briefly traded at multi-week intraday low just last Friday.
To put it in context, we saw GLD with a $112 handle briefly last Friday, only to quickly rally above $116, and is now within shouting distance of its 200 day MA up at $117.85. GLD, and related ETF IAU (iShares Gold, Expense Ratio 0.25%) are off a bit this morning which is another curious move given the U.S. Dollar tanking in the early going.
But let’s forget about Gold for a second and analyze the short term move that Silver has had, evident in the rally in SLV (iShares Silver, Expense Ratio 0.50%) which is up over 5.4% just in the past five trading sessions, while SLV has pulled in >$94 million in new assets in the month of April.
The fund is solidly on top in terms of Silver Bullion trackers in ETF land, with more than $5.2 billion in assets under management currently. Opportunistic commodity oriented traders have no doubt noticed the move here in Silver as trading volume in a triple leveraged long product in the space, USLV (VelocityShares 3X Long Silver ETN, Expense Ratio 1.65%) has spiked recently on the move up in the ETN and of course the underlying metal.
Likewise, AGQ (ProShares Ultra Silver, Expense Ratio 0.95%) which is a two times leveraged long play in the space, has also seen an uptick in activity in recent sessions on the Precious Metals strength but what we have not seen, at least yet, are substantial inflows in either product this month as the asset flows in general in these two offerings is flat to say the least.
Also worth watching at this juncture given the immense strength in Silver in the short term are of course the Silver Miners, which as an ETF category remains small and immature in terms of asset size and visibility, but this can all of course change at any point suddenly.