NEW YORK, December 29, 2025, 10:08 ET
- Silver slid about 5% after hitting a record $83.62 an ounce earlier on Monday.
- CME raised margin on benchmark COMEX silver futures to $25,000 from $22,000, effective after Monday’s close.
- Silver-backed giants SLV and PSLV together hold roughly 736 million ounces of metal, according to their sponsors.
Silver fell sharply on Monday after touching a record above $80 an ounce, a reversal that rippled through popular silver-backed products such as BlackRock’s iShares Silver Trust and Sprott’s Physical Silver Trust.
The pullback matters because silver’s surge has turned the metal into one of 2025’s standout trades, pulling in investors who want liquid exposure through exchange-traded products instead of dealing with coins, bars or futures contracts.
Now, year-end positioning is colliding with shifting safe-haven demand and tougher collateral rules in the futures market, making the rally more vulnerable to abrupt reversals.
Spot silver was down 5.1% at $75.15 an ounce after hitting a record $83.62 earlier in the session, Reuters reported.
Gold also slipped, down 1.7% to $4,455.35 an ounce after a record $4,549.71 on Friday. U.S. gold futures for February were down 1.7% at $4,474.80.
“This morning’s (gold) price decline, which follows record highs, is attributable mainly to traders taking profits ahead of the year-end,” said ActivTrades analyst Ricardo Evangelista. Reuters
The retreat came as markets weighed signs of reduced geopolitical risk, after U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy were “getting a lot closer” to an agreement to end the war in Ukraine. Reuters
Bullion has risen about 72% in 2025, helped by softer U.S. monetary policy, a weaker dollar, geopolitical friction and central-bank buying, Reuters said. Silver has gained 181% so far this year, helped by supply shortages and demand from industry and investors.
Silver exposure has increasingly come through exchange-traded products that hold physical bullion in vaults and let investors buy and sell shares like a stock. Reuters’ silver-trading factbox described ETFs as vehicles where each share represents an amount of metal held in storage.
BlackRock’s iShares Silver Trust is the largest of those vehicles. Its website showed net assets of about $38.0 billion and 526.97 million ounces of silver in the trust as of Dec. 26.
Sprott’s Physical Silver Trust, a closed-end trust, listed 208.81 million ounces of silver and total net asset value of $16.61 billion as of Dec. 26. The trust showed its units at $26.04 versus a net asset value of $27.20 — a 4.26% discount, meaning the shares traded below the value of the metal they represent.
A key difference for investors is how closely shares track the underlying metal. A U.S. securities filing for SLV says the trust issues and redeems shares in large “baskets,” a mechanism designed to keep the share price aligned with the value of its silver after fees.
The futures market remains central to price discovery, and it is also where leverage can amplify moves. CME Group, in a clearing advisory, raised initial margin — the cash collateral required to hold a futures position — for benchmark COMEX 5,000-ounce silver futures to $25,000 from $22,000 across many contract months, effective after the close of business on Monday.
London is the biggest over-the-counter trading hub for physical silver, and Reuters’ factbox said London vaults held 27,187 tonnes of silver at the end of November. The metal’s rapid rise has also fueled debate over how much readily available supply remains.
Markets are now looking to the Federal Reserve’s December meeting minutes, due Tuesday, for clues on the U.S. interest-rate path. Traders are pricing in two rate cuts next year, a backdrop that has tended to support non-yielding assets such as gold and silver.
Other precious metals also pulled back on Monday, with spot platinum down 6.9% after a record and palladium down 11.9%, adding to the sense that year-end profit-taking is hitting the complex after a powerful run.
