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Silver soared to an all-time high on Friday following an outage on the Comex due to what the exchange operator CME calls a \u201ccooling system failure\u201d.<\/p>\n
Spot prices rose 4% to a new record of $55.66 per oz., surpassing its peak set last month during a historic squeeze in the London market. Three-month futures also jumped 5%, trading within a similar range.<\/p>\n
The rally comes amid erratic price moves and thin liquidity in the silver market, as the Comex recovers from one of its worst outages in years. Trading of futures was halted for over 11 hours prior to resumption in US morning time.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt impacted a lot of the futures markets globally; it certainly had more of an impact on some of the key industrial metals, some of the commodity-linked futures markets,\u201d Christopher Kramer, a portfolio manager and senior trader at Neuberger Berman, told Reuters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe market impact is quite significant because without the CME, spreads on spot gold prices, for example, would typically widen with spot liquidity providers not having much confidence in pricing without the future,\u201d Fawad Razaqzada, market analyst at City Index and Forex.com, also said.<\/p>\n
Silver\u2019s new high comes just over a month after a severe supply squeeze in the dominant silver trading hub in London, which sent prices soaring above levels in Shanghai and New York.<\/p>\n
While an inflow of 54 million oz. into the UK has since eased the squeeze, the global market still remains tight. Silver inventories in warehouses linked to the Shanghai Futures Exchange recently hit their lowest level since 2015, while Shanghai Gold Exchange volumes are back to the smallest in more than nine years, according to bourse and brokerage data.<\/p>\n
Traders are also monitoring any potential tariff on silver after the precious metal was\u00a0recently added<\/a>\u00a0to the US Geological Survey list of critical minerals. While 75 million oz. have left the vaults of the Comex futures exchange in New York since early October, according to Bloomberg, fears of a sudden premium for US silver have caused some to hesitate before shipping metal out of the country.<\/p>\n Supported by uncertainties around US trade policy, the precious metal has risen more than 72% this year, even outperforming its more recognized peer gold<\/a>.<\/p>\n