NEW YORK, December 29, 2025, 10:30 ET
- Spot silver hit a record $83.62 an ounce on Monday before turning lower on profit-taking
- Silver-tracking funds SLV and PSLV were each down about 8% in late morning U.S. trade
- Investors are watching Fed minutes due Tuesday and shifting geopolitical signals that can swing safe-haven demand
Silver-backed funds slid on Monday after the metal reversed from fresh records. iShares Silver Trust (SLV) fell to about $65 and Sprott Physical Silver Trust (PSLV) traded below $24, each down about 8% by 10:18 a.m. ET, according to market data.
The move matters because silver’s surge has pulled more investors into exchange-traded vehicles that track bullion, compressing the trade into products that can swing sharply when the metal turns. SLV and PSLV are among the most widely used U.S.-listed routes for silver exposure without storing bars.
Traders were also reassessing safe-haven demand after weekend headlines and ahead of the Federal Reserve’s December meeting minutes due Tuesday, which investors will parse for clues on the 2026 interest-rate path.
Spot silver was down 5.1% at $75.15 an ounce by 8:21 a.m. ET, after touching an all-time high of $83.62 earlier in the session.
Gold slipped 1.7% to $4,455.35 an ounce in the same window, pulling back from Friday’s record high. Platinum and palladium also fell after hitting peaks.
“The price decline is mainly traders taking profits ahead of the year-end,” said Ricardo Evangelista, an analyst at ActivTrades, referring to gold’s pullback. Reuters
President Donald Trump said on Sunday he and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy were nearing an agreement to end the war in Ukraine, a development that traders said was one factor weighing on safe-haven buying.
Even after Monday’s slide, the broader run-up has been dramatic. Silver has gained about 181% so far in 2025, outpacing gold’s roughly 72% rise, supported by supply tightness and strong industrial and investor demand, Reuters reported.
SLV seeks to reflect the price of silver bullion and charges a 0.50% sponsor fee, iShares said. The trust reported about $38.0 billion of net assets as of Dec. 26.
PSLV is structured as a closed-end trust that holds fully allocated silver bars, Sprott said. Unlike many ETFs, closed-end funds can trade away from the value of the assets they hold.
Sprott’s pricing page showed PSLV ended Friday at $26.04 versus a net asset value of $27.20 — a 4.26% discount — with about 208.8 million ounces of silver held by the trust.
Net asset value, or NAV, is the per-share value of a fund’s underlying assets after expenses. A discount means investors are paying less than the stated value of the silver in the vehicle; a premium means they are paying more.
A rival physically backed product, the abrdn Physical Silver Shares ETF (SIVR), also fell about 8% in late morning trading.
The pullback follows a string of record highs late last week, including Friday’s jump above $77 an ounce.
With traders still pricing in two U.S. rate cuts next year, investors will look to Tuesday’s Fed minutes for any sign of a tougher stance that could pressure non-yielding metals and the silver funds that track them.
