Silver Also Glitters: 3 ETFs to Ride The Precious Metals Surge

Key Points

• Precious metals have rallied to new all-time highs, with silver leading the pack in 2025.
• Buying physical quantities of gold and silver incurs high transaction and storage costs, making it impractical for achieving large-scale exposure.
• ETFs offer exposure to precious metals through various methods, eliminating the hassle of physical storage.

Despite stocks fluctuating in response to the latest trade war drama between the U.S. and China, gold has continued its near-daily upward march. Prices recently topped $4,300 per ounce for the first time in history as investors bet on safe-haven assets over bonds or currencies. But gold isn’t the only shiny metal soaring to new heights.

Silver’s spot price hit $52 per ounce this week, a new all-time high that culminated a 60% rally since April.

Are precious metals the latest target of speculative meme traders, or is the rally in hard assets based on underlying fundamentals?

The answer might be a little of both, but you don’t need to stock your basement with silver and gold bullion to get in on the rally. Instead, consider these ETFs to add precious metals exposure to your portfolio.

Has Speculative Frenzy Reached the Commodities Sector?

Can the commodities sector be memed? The markets for precious metals like gold, silver, platinum, and copper are too vast for retail traders to move drastically, even with coordinated efforts on Twitter or Reddit. Meme traders can create surges in individual stocks or funds (volatile gold miners are often a popular target), but moving the spot prices of these commodities requires more of a dynamic shift. A few reasons investors have been flocking to gold and silver this year include:

• Weak U.S. Dollar: USD is one of the worst-performing major currencies this year, underperforming other commonly traded currencies like the euro and yen. A weak dollar is a boon to precious metals investors, since spot prices are quoted in USD and buyers using foreign currencies get more bang for their proverbial buck.
• Political Instability: Gold and silver are the safe-haven assets that investors flock to in times of uncertainty, and there’s no shortage of concerns on the geopolitical docket right now. Tariffs, trade wars, and the U.S. government shutdown create an anxious investment climate and influence the flight to hard assets.
• Central Bank Buying: Institutions, particularly central banks in China, Russia, and India, have also been buying precious metals at record rates to reduce their reliance on the USD.
• Increased Industrial Demand: Gold and silver aren’t just assets; they’re also commodities used in a variety of industrial processes. The tech sector is especially reliant on gold and silver as electrical conductors for use in EV batteries, solar panels, and 5G technology. Heightened demand has dwindled the existing supply of these metals, which has naturally caused prices to accelerate.

Commodities typically move in cycles, making the outsized rally in gold and silver unlikely to become a multi-year trend. But if you want to add precious metals exposure to your portfolio, using exchange-traded funds (ETFs) is far more practical than owning the physical entities.

3 ETFs Offering a Variety of Precious Metals Exposure

Precious metals ETFs can be purchased in tax-advantaged accounts like IRAs and 401(k)s, and you don’t need to worry about storage fees or high transaction costs. These three funds offer not just a variety of metals, but also a mix of physical holdings and futures contracts (with different taxable obligations).

iShares Silver Trust: Physical Ownership With High Liquidity

When purchasing commodity funds, size matters. Since commodities are frequently volatile, precious metal ETFs usually have higher expense ratios and spreads than typical equity ETFs.

The larger the fund, the lower these costs will be, so the iShares Silver Trust ETF NYSEARCA: SLV is the first entry on our list.

Silver has outperformed gold in 2025, and demand is growing due to its industrial qualities.

SLV holds physical silver in a vault in London and mirrors the spot price with almost no tracking error. SLV charges a 0.50% expense rate, which isn’t the cheapest amongst silver ETFs, but the fund has more than $26 billion in assets under management and trades more than 23 million shares daily on average.

abrdn Physical Precious Metals: Diversified Precious Metals Exposure

The abrdn Physical Precious Metals Basket Shares ETF NYSEARCA: GLTR offers exposure to four types of precious metals in a single fund.

The fund company holds physical gold, silver, platinum, and palladium in vaults in London and Zurich, offering one of the only broad basket precious metals funds that physically holds the assets.

More than 60% of the fund’s holdings are comprised of gold bullion, with silver making up about 28%, and platinum and palladium both under 5%.

The 0.60% expense ratio is surprisingly manageable given the fund holds four different metals and has less than $400 million in AUM.

Invesco Precious Metals Fund: Futures-Backed Exposure to Minimize Taxes

Taxes are always concerned with precious metals since the IRS considers them collectibles, which are charged a 28% long-term capital gains rate. If you invest in a fund holding physical silver or gold in a vault, you’ll pay 28% minimum regardless of your income.

The Invesco DB Precious Metals Fund NYSEARCA: DBP invests in gold and silver futures contracts of differing lengths (along with cash equivalents), intending to minimize contango.

Precious metals futures contracts fall under Section 1256 of the tax code, which means that 60% of profits and losses are taxed at the short-term rate (income), with the other 40% at the long-term rate (capital gains).

A 60/40 split isn’t as efficient as the full long-term cap gains rate on equity ETFs, but it's superior to the flat 28% long-term collectibles rate. DBP has just under $250 million in AUM and charges a 0.77% expense rate.