Silver traded at $66.40 per ounce at 6:30 a.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2026, putting the metal at its highest levels in over a decade. The price was up $1.44 from the same hour yesterday and more than $28 higher than it was 12 months ago.
That move is why investors in silver are watching the market closely today. Silver has surged more than 150% over the past year, a pace that puts a hard number behind its appeal as a store of value when inflation worries build.
The appeal is not hard to understand. Silver is prized for its stability and for its power to hedge against inflation, and investors can gain exposure either by holding the metal directly or through silver-backed exchange-traded funds. For retirement accounts, the bar is stricter: IRA-eligible silver coins and bars must be 99.9% pure and kept with an IRS-approved custodian.
But the same metal that draws buyers for safety also tends to move more sharply than gold because of industrial demand. That is why silver can look like a calm refuge one week and a volatile trade the next. It also helps explain why the long view is mixed: since 1921, silver has underperformed the S&P 500 by about 96%.
That gap is the part investors cannot ignore. Silver can protect against inflation, but it has also delivered swings that are much larger than the steadier story its reputation suggests. Many advisors still counsel restraint, often suggesting no more than 10% to 15% in silver and keeping total precious metal holdings under 20%.
The immediate question now is not whether silver has moved enough to get attention; it clearly has. It is what keeps this run going from here, and whether the next leg comes from inflation fears, industrial demand, or simply momentum carrying a metal already trading at levels not seen in more than a decade.
