17/07/25 09:11:55

Commodities: “Shortage of physical silver”

Precious metal trackers are in focus, silver shines with strong performance and the copper price is politically driven.


17 July 2025. FRANKFURT (Börse Frankfurt). Trading in commodity ETCs continues to be clearly dominated by precious metal trackers. According to WisdomTree, these products attracted 10 billion US dollars worldwide month-on-month. “The sector continues to perform well and investor interest has increased due to growing geopolitical and economic uncertainty,” explains Mobeen Tahir. In June, the top 14 places in Deutsche Börse's turnover ranking were occupied exclusively by ETCs on gold, silver and platinum.

Xetra-Gold remains at the top

Xetra-Gold (DE000A0S9GB0) leads the field by a wide margin. The largest physically backed gold security in the eurozone has increased its assets under custody by 8.4 tons to 174.9 tons since the beginning of the year. “We always see strong turnover for Xetra-Gold,” reports Frank Wöllnitz from ICF Bank. However, there is currently “no clear direction” in buying and selling. At Vontobel Bank, certificate expert David Hartmann is mainly seeing purchases of gold leverage products that are based on rising prices. A highly leveraged open-end turbo warrant (DE000VK0ZJ67) with a knock-out mark of around 3,162 dollars is currently in particular demand.

Since the strong start to the year, the price of gold has been moving sideways between around 3,100 and 3,500 dollars for the past three months. According to Tahir, the “flight to safe investments” and a weaker dollar are tending to support the price. Robert Rethfeld from “Wellenreiter Invest” assumes that gold will continue to defend its 50-day line (currently at around 3,320 dollars). "The upward trend is intact. Only a fall below the 50-day line could cause gold to slide down to the May low of 3,200 dollars."

Robert Rethfeld

Silver with clear outperformance

ETCs on silver are also still in high demand. The “small” precious metal has recently outperformed gold. The gold/silver ratio has fallen since April from around 105 to currently 87. Ulrich Stephan from Deutsche Bank blames this on significantly higher borrowing costs for silver - a consequence of the shortage of physical silver after many investors increasingly bought exchange-traded products with physical backing. According to Wöllnitz, the higher prices led to increased buying interest in the leveraged WisdomTree Silver 3x Daily Leveraged (IE00B7XD2195). According to Hartmann, a discount warrant on silver (DE000VC5QSJ8) that expires in September has also seen high demand.

Trump causes copper rally

The copper price has been extremely volatile in recent weeks. “US President Trump's announcement to impose a 50 percent import tariff on copper triggered a sharp rise in the industrial metal traded on the US commodity exchange CME COMEX,” says Tahir. In his view, the sharp divergence in prices on the COMEX and LME indicates “that the markets are still adjusting to the new reality”. WisdomTree Copper (GB00B15KXQ89) also benefited from the rise and became the most traded copper ETC on the German stock exchange in June. At Vontobel, the long mini-future on copper (DE000VP3KBF5) is currently one of the three most traded products. “The breakdown of trading positions into long and short products shows that investors view copper very positively,” explains Hartmann.

By Thomas Koch, 17 July 2025, © Deutsche Börse AG

Thomas Koch is a CEFA investment analyst, investment specialist for structured products and certified certificate consultant. He has been a freelance journalist covering events on the capital markets since the beginning of 2006.

Feedback and questions to redaktion@deutsche-boerse.com