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General Precious Metals
Silver just had its best week since 2016 but gold or bitcoin are better bets, traders say
Silver could be about to lose its shine.
The precious metal just wrapped up its best week since 2016, sparking renewed interest in the precious metals market after hitting a new 2019 high on Thursday. Gold, which had been steadily rising, followed suit, climbing to a six-year peak on Friday before cooling off.
But not everybody’s betting that silver’s boost will hold.
“I think it could fade,” Jim Iuorio, a veteran futures and options trader, said Thursday on CNBC’s “Futures Now.” “It does have a history of lagging behind gold and then catching up all at once. This is obviously one of those instances, but I think something fundamentally has to change for it to chew through those old highs, in my opinion.”
Iuorio, who is managing director at TJM Institutional Services, had his eye on the $16.20 level, which he said would be key in determining the viability of silver’s recent rally.
“If it goes back below it and trades [at] $16.15, it will have rejected those highs,” Iuorio said. “I think that’s the spot to stop in with a short with a target down to $15.85. I think one of the reasons that silver’s rallied like it [has] is because bitcoin’s kind of been taken off the list of safe havens with its recent volatility, so something had to replace it. ”
But for some, including Equity Armor Investments’ Brian Stutland, bitcoin seems like an even better investment than silver.
“Typically, if we’re going to enter a period of lower growth [and] lower demand, silver will tend to underperform, like we saw over a year ago when China trade tariffs kind of took place,” Stutland, who is chief investment officer of his firm, said in the same “Futures Now” segment.
“I’d short this,” he said of silver. “I’d even throw in a long gold and play the long-short on it. I still like gold better ... longer term, or even bitcoin after this big pullback here.”