After squeezing hedge funds shorting GameStop stocks, the online mob is now hoping to do the same with the silver price. But this time, things aren’t quite so simple. Never, in the history of financial markets, has there been a commodity with as much potential as silver. And yet, never has a commodity disappointed its investors so consistently, for example, it is trading at the same price today as it was 40 years ago. Silver is affectionately known to commentators as ‘the metal that always lets you down’. Like gold, silver is a monetary metal. A pound was once a pound of sterling silver; one US dollar was once an ounce of silver – and, perhaps as a result, the metal has a tendency to arouse a certain patriotic sentiment in some quarters. One investment case for silver is the same as the case for gold – it is an inflation hedge in an era of monetary debasement, it is nobody else’s liability. Meanwhile, silver has a plethora of exciting industrial uses, especially in multiple new technologies, from medical to electrical. Every smartphone has silver in it; every computer; every jet engine; every solar panel (demand for silver on photovoltaic cells has gone from one million ounces in 2000, to around 50 million ounces last year – about 5% of silver’s annual supply). It finds widespread use in battery technology and in 3D printing. The question is not so much which modern technologies contain silver, as which don’t. Most silver is produced as a by-product of lead and zinc mining, which has suffered dramatic underinvestment over the last decade, leading to a paucity of major new discoveries. There are some pure silver mining plays, but, with two or three exceptions, most have struggled to make money in recent years, either through inept management or a flawed business model. The result is perennially disappointing share price performance with most trapped in a perpetual cycle of disappointment. Silver seems to have so much going for it. And yet, silver’s all-time high was $50 in 1980. It re-tested that level again in 2011 and failed. And here we are today at $30. The silver story has been about for as long as anyone can remember. It just never seems to deliver on its potential; not for any extended period anyway. For years it doesn’t move; or, worse, it sinks. But when it runs, it really runs. And now this “it’s the next GME” narrative is out, it looks like another run has got started.

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