- MarketBeat (WSJ Blog) – Silver ETF Unshockingly Sets Volume Record
ETF Securities USA announced today that its silver ETF, ETFS Silver Trust, ticker SIVR, experienced record one-day trading volume of 5.25 million shares on May 5 and a record week of volume during the week of May 2. The average daily volume increased 18.5 times. Not too shocking: That was during the time the froth was being blown off the silver market. Nymex silver lost 23% that week alone. You could argue that having ETFs easing trading in silver helped speed the decline along, though to be fair the silver market has always been volatile, and you could also argue that ETFs made it easier for people to jump out of the way. “The transparent and liquid nature of the product provided investors who were sellers or buyers that week with the ability to access liquidity in an orderly and efficient manner, against a highly volatile market backdrop for silver prices,” marketed William Rhind, head of sales and marketing for ETFS Marketing, in a marketing press release.
Comment
Not only are silver ETFs experiencing their highest trading volume ever, but the SLV fund even surpassed the S&P 500 ETF (SPY) on a handful of days in terms of number of shares traded. As we detailed at the end of April:
Volume of the silver ETF (SLV) topped the volume of the S&P 500 ETF (SPY), making it the first commodity ETF to claim the distinction. Although the NASDAQ 100 ETF (QQQ) often traded more shares than SPY prior to the financial crisis, SPY is often considered the benchmark for broad domestic index ETFs since it is the oldest (started in January 1993) and currently trades more on a dollar volume basis than any other ETF.
Excluding other domestic broad market indices, a quick review of some of the most popular foreign, sector, commodity, and fixed income ETFs (GLD, SLV, EEM, XLF, EFA, SKF and TLT) shows that the SPY fund has been the most traded ETF on all but a handful of days since its inception. Below is a table highlighting these days.