Silver futures, traded on the CME Group's COMEX division under the ticker SI, are the global benchmark for institutional silver price discovery. The standard SI contract is sized at 5,000 troy ounces of silver, priced in USD per ounce — so one full contract represents roughly $200,000 of notional exposure at typical current prices. Smaller micro silver (SIL) and e-mini silver (QI) contracts exist for retail-scale exposure.

Silver has a dual personality: it is partly a precious metal (about 25% of demand is investment/jewellery) and partly an industrial commodity (about 50% of demand is industrial — solar PV cells, electronics, batteries, EV motors). This makes silver more volatile and more cyclical than gold; silver tends to outperform gold during reflationary expansions (when industrial demand surges) and underperform gold during recessions. The 'gold/silver ratio' (gold price / silver price) is a popular relative-value indicator: historically around 70 in the modern era, with peaks above 100 in deflation scares and lows below 50 in reflationary periods.

Silver futures launched on COMEX (then independent) in 1969. Silver's most famous historical episode is the Hunt brothers' 1979-80 attempt to corner the silver market, which drove the price from $6 to a peak of $49.45 in January 1980 before regulatory intervention crashed it back to single digits. Silver remained range-bound until the 2008-2011 bull cycle that pushed it to a peak of $49.81 (essentially unchanged from 1980 in nominal terms — a 31-year zero return). The post-2011 era has seen silver trade in a $14-30 range with intermittent rallies.

Long-run silver underperformance: gold has gained roughly 8% CAGR since 1971, silver only ~5% — reflecting silver's higher volatility and recurring industrial-demand cycles. Silver miners (Pan American, First Majestic, Hecla) generally have higher operating leverage than gold miners.

Silver futures trade essentially the same Globex schedule as gold. In IST:

Read silver alongside three signals. First, the gold/silver ratio — when the ratio rises above 85, silver is historically cheap relative to gold (often a reflationary mean-reversion setup). Second, solar-installation data and industrial PMI — silver's industrial demand is heavily concentrated in solar PV (roughly 17% of total demand) and electronics. Third, the COMEX silver open interest and net non-commercial positioning (published by CFTC) — extreme net-long positioning often precedes corrections.

Silver is notably more volatile than gold (annualised vol of 30-40% vs. 15-20% for gold). Position sizing should reflect this. The MCX Silver contract in India is a popular domestic proxy, settled in INR.