Retail investors are piling into silver, as individual investors poured about $171 million into the iShares Silver Trust (SLV) on Monday alone, according to VandaTrack. Importantly, that was the largest single-day inflow into the fund on record, and nearly double the peak it saw during the 2021 “silver squeeze.” The surge came as silver prices jumped almost 6% in one session to push 2026’s gains above 52% after an already massive rally last year.
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According to Vanda analyst Ashwin Bhakre, silver has now overtaken technology stocks as retail investors’ favorite trade. In 2025, popular names like Nvidia (NVDA), Tesla (TSLA), and Palantir (PLTR) dominated retail buying, but silver has since surpassed them. Bhakre noted that silver’s trading momentum has surged to more than 11 times its normal level, far higher than Nvidia’s. That intense activity has spilled over into mining stocks as well, with Hecla Mining (HL) and Coeur Mining (CDE) seeing sharp inflows and share price gains of roughly 40% or more since the start of the year.
However, retail enthusiasm is not one-sided. In fact, Vanda found unusually high inflows into the ProShares UltraShort Silver (ZSL), which shows that many traders are also making leveraged bets that silver prices will fall. In addition, some market veterans remain skeptical of the rally. For instance, Tom Sosnoff, founder of LossDog, said on CNBC that silver’s recent move looks more like a meme trade than a fundamental shift, and noted that the price action seen over the past few weeks would normally take years.
Is Silver a Good Buy?
Using TipRanks’ technical analysis tool, the indicators seem to point to a positive outlook for silver. Indeed, the summary section pictured below shows that 15 indicators are Bullish, compared to one Neutral and six Bearish indicators.
