Since the start of January the price of Gold and Silver have risen nicely as both metals are seen as a hedge against inflation and purchasing power over time. With continued low interest rates in the U.S., the announcement of QE in the Eurozone, debt issues in Greece, and the Swiss playing games with their own currency, many investors have begun looking for safe havens.
With Gold and Silver being the most trusted safe havens by many, and gold and silver ETF's making it easy for investors to quickly get in and out of owning the metals, we are seeing some interesting actions in two ETF's that actually own bullion itself. The SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) ETF owns actual gold bullion while the iShares Silver Trust (SLV) ETF owns actual silver bullion. The fact that these ETF's own actual bullion is key because their underlying assets are based on the price the metals are trading for at any given time, not futures contracts, miners or any other way to play the metals.
As it would be expected, with what is happening around the world, these ETF's have risen substantially year-to-date; iShares Silver Trust is up 9.83% while SPDR Gold Shares has climbed 8.69%. These move come while the S&P 500 has actually lost 3.1% year-to-date.
But here is what is interesting about these moves; net flows, or the amount of cash moving in or out of these funds are wildly different. iShares Silver Trust ETF has seen $175 million flow out of the fund since January 1 while the SPDR Gold ETF has seen $1.93 billion flow into the fund, according to etf.com data. So why is this happening? Continue reading "Precious Metal ETF's Seeing Interesting Action"
