1. Spot silver is more sensitive to economic changes, while spot gold is more sensitive to currency changes.
A large part of the demand for spot silver comes from industrial demand, accounting for about 40%. On the contrary, the demand for spot gold is basically pure investment demand and jewelry demand. Because of the close relationship between silver and industry, silver is very sensitive to changes in economic factors, such as industrial productivity and manufacturing demand.
At the same time, gold is closely related to the changes of monetary factors, such as the trend of real interest rate, inflation and the appreciation or depreciation of the US dollar. For example, based on the annualized data of the past 50 years, the correlation between gold price and inflation is 0.5, while the correlation between silver and inflation is about 0.35.
2. Spot gold and spot silver come from different product resources, which will also have a very important impact on their prices.
Most silver is produced as a by-product of metals such as lead, zinc, copper and gold. In this way, the relationship between silver production and silver price is not as close as that between gold production and gold price.
3. The price of spot silver may fluctuate more than that of spot gold, partly because the price of silver is lower and the market size is smaller.
From the perspective of portfolio structure, this volatility makes silver less attractive to investors than gold.