Silver Outshines Nvidia in Retail Frenzy! Silver Becomes the New Retail Favorite — A Massive Two-Way Bet Is Unfolding
With silver prices continuing their explosive surge, silver has overtaken the hottest tech stocks to become the new darling of U.S. retail investors. Retail traders are piling in aggressively, with exceptionally high activity on both the long and short sides.
According to VandaTrack, retail investors net bought roughly $171 million worth of the iShares Silver Trust (SLV) — the world's largest physical silver ETF — on Monday alone. This marked a record single-day net inflow for the fund, nearly double the peak seen during the 2021 silver squeeze.
Vanda analyst Ashwin Bhakre wrote on Tuesday: “Silver has truly become the new favorite among retail investors.”
Spot silver broke $100/oz for the first time last week and hit an all-time intraday high of $117 on Monday. SLV jumped nearly 6% that day, pushing its year-to-date gain above 50% and delivering close to 145% returns in 2025.
Bhakre noted that silver has now eclipsed tech stocks as the epicenter of retail excitement. While Nvidia, Tesla, Palantir, and other big tech names still ranked high among retail favorites in 2025, silver's trading momentum has surpassed even Nvidia — the AI leader that has dominated Wall Street since late 2022.
Silver's turnover ratio has skyrocketed to 11.55 times normal levels, exceeding Nvidia's 7.54 times. Bhakre concluded: “Relatively speaking, the current enthusiasm for silver is outpacing traditional AI trades.”
Per CompaniesMarketCap, silver overtook Nvidia roughly two weeks ago to become the world's second-largest asset by market value: silver at $6.39 trillion, Nvidia at $4.59 trillion, with gold still leading at $36 trillion.
The silver surge has also created a “halo effect” for mining stocks. Vanda data shows inflows into Hecla Mining and Coeur Mining are more than double normal levels, with both stocks up over 40% year-to-date in 2026.
A Massive Two-Way Bet Is Playing Out
Bhakre highlighted that retail investors are engaged in a classic “two-way mega bet” on silver.
On the bearish side, inflows into the leveraged 2x inverse silver ETF (ProShares UltraShort Silver) are unusually heavy — indicating many retail traders are using leverage to bet on a sharp price collapse.
Yet Bhakre believes the current retail behavior has moved beyond a simple squeeze play. Instead, this group appears to be making a “structural shift,” positioning for a longer-term hard-asset bull market.
Tom Sosnoff, founder of the U.S. financial platform LossDog, described silver's price swings in less than a month as comparable to years of prior volatility — calling it a “meme stock-style trade” in terms of volume and intensity.
Despite the froth, some institutions remain strongly bullish. Citi recently raised its silver target from $100/oz to $150/oz.
In its report, Citi stated: “We expect bullish drivers to remain intact in the near term, supporting robust investment and speculative demand and potentially leading to further tightening of physical supply in major non-U.S. trading centers.”