5 Best Silver ETFs for the Market's 'Runner-Up' Metal

iShares Silver Trust

• Assets under management: $12.7 billion
• Expenses: 0.50%, or $50 annually for every $10,000 invested

For most investors, ETFs are a much better way to play gold, silver and other precious metals than actually owning the metal itself.

Rather than find someone to buy bars or bullion from, then arrange delivery, then find somewhere safe to store the metal, then deal with the difficulty of finding a buyer when you're ready to unload it, ETFs such as SLV allow you to buy and sell silver with the click of a button in your brokerage account.

Apart from being heavy and difficult to store, physical silver can also trade at a large premium to spot prices. Thus, for exposure to silver, "you might be better off buying an ETF or even playing the futures market," Sizemore says.

That includes silver ETFs such as the iShares Silver Trust (SLV (opens in new tab), $21.42).

SLV, as mentioned before, is the largest silver ETF and the most popular publicly traded way to invest in silver.

The fund, which launched in 2006, currently holds 544 million ounces of physical silver in its vaults, located in England and the U.S. Thus, SLV shares are a physically backed representation of the price of silver.

It's clearly not the same as holding physical silver, for those of you worried about truly apocalyptic scenarios. But for most long-term investors, it'll do.

Learn more about SLV at the iShares provider site. (opens in new tab)

Aberdeen Standard Physical Silver Shares ETF

• Assets under management: $1.0 billion
• Expenses: 0.30%

While iShares' SLV is the oldest and largest silver ETF, it's not the cheapest.

Aberdeen Standard Physical Silver Shares ETF (SIVR (opens in new tab), $22.34) is a significantly less expensive physically backed silver ETF, with fees that are 20 basis points (a basis point is one one-hundredth of a percentage point) lower than iShares' offering.

There's precious little difference between SIVR and SLV. Both are backed by physical silver, though in Aberdeen's case, all the metal – in the form of silver bullion bars – is held in London vaults. SIVR shares represent an interest in that silver, minus the fund's expenses. And because the two silver ETFs track the same metal fairly closely, their charts tend to look almost identical – though SIVR has performed better over time thanks to its lower expenses.

So why does SLV hold so much more in assets than SIVR? Part of it is iShares' first-mover advantage, but SLV is also a much more liquid fund, trading 35 million shares daily versus less than 1 million for SIVR. While Aberdeen Standard's fund has decent enough liquidity for buy-and-holders, SLV's superior liquidity is much more attractive to agile traders looking to get precise entry and exit prices.

Learn more about SIVR at the Aberdeen Standard provider site. (opens in new tab)

Global X Silver Miners ETF

• Assets under management: $981.0 million
• Expenses: 0.65%

Global X Silver Miners ETF (SIL (opens in new tab), $33.55) differs from the first two ETFs in that it doesn't invest in silver metal – it invests in the companies that pull the metal out of the ground.

Here's what you need to know about mining stocks: Silver miners extract silver ore and process it – and if they can do that at a lower price than what they sell their silver for, they produce a profit. If you own silver mining stocks that have low production costs while silver prices are increasing, you're typically in a good place.

Global X Silver Miners ETF, which has been kicking around for more than a decade now, holds more than 40 companies involved in mining – some are actual miners, while others hold royalty or streaming interests in mining operations.

Top holding Wheaton Precious Metals (WPM (opens in new tab), 24.9% of assets), for instance, currently boasts streaming agreements for 20 operating mines and nine development-stage projects. (Just note that like some of SIL's other holdings, it has exposure to gold, too, so it's not perfect silver-mining exposure.) No. 3 holding Pan American Silver (PAAS (opens in new tab), 9.4%) is a direct miner with assets throughout the Americas.

Exposure in mining ETFs tends to be fairly concentrated, and SIL is no exception, with more than three-quarters of its assets concentrated in the fund's top five holdings. That includes the nearly 25% in assets dedicated to WPM, which is a massive overweight.

Also understand that silver miners tend to be a bit "jumpier" than silver itself, so when the metal moves, SIL tends to move more aggressively in the same direction.

Learn more about SIL at the Global X provider site. (opens in new tab)

iShares MSCI Global Silver and Metals Miners ETF

• Assets under management: $251.2 million
• Expenses: 0.39%

The iShares MSCI Global Silver Miners ETF (SLVP (opens in new tab), $12.01) offers a somewhat different and less expensive option for investors interested in silver mining companies.

Like the SIL, the SLVP does have some interest in companies that mine not just silver, but gold and other metals. However, the fund's tracking index starts each rebalancing by targeting companies that primarily mine silver, then seeks out companies with gold and other metal interests. SLVP then limits the weight of large- and mid-cap gold companies to 5% of their market cap, then caps all issuer weights at 25%, then ensures all issuers with weights above 5% don't combine to exceed 50% of the fund's entire weight.

The result is a fund that holds Pan American Silver at 18.1% of assets, and Hecla Mining (HL (opens in new tab)) at nearly 10%. Some gold-focused miners, such as Newmont (NEM (opens in new tab)), have floated well above 5% of holdings thanks to their price gains. Wheaton Precious Metals is an SLVP holding, too, but at less than 4% of assets.

Again, it's a different approach toward what nonetheless ends up being imperfect silver-mining exposure. But it is 26 basis points cheaper than Global X's fund, if you value low expenses above all else.

Learn more about SLVP at the iShares provider site. (opens in new tab)

ETFMG Prime Junior Silver Miners ETF

• Assets under management: $728.6 million
• Expenses: 0.69%

One last way to try to squeeze more juice out of silver ore is so-called junior miners.

Traditional miners are exactly what you picture in your head: A team of people and machinery built to extract silver ore from the earth.

But how do they know where to dig?

Junior silver miners help point production companies in the right direction. They're actually tasked with discovering silver deposits, determining how rich their resources are, and sometimes they actually help get mines up and running. But their involvement typically ends there.

It's a high-risk, high-reward business, and that's reflected in the boom-or-bust movement of their shares.

The ETFMG Prime Junior Silver Miners ETF (SILJ (opens in new tab), $11.73), which calls itself "the first and only ETF to target small cap silver miners," does do that … but it also invests heavily in traditional silver miners such as top holdings First Majestic Silver (AG (opens in new tab)) and Pan American Silver.

SILJ's modified free float market-cap weighting makes it so these types of miners carry a lot of heft in the fund, but it does hold some smaller players such as Canada Silver Cobalt Works and Kootenay Silver.

“We like the notion of investing in silver miners through the SILJ ETF as the gold-to-silver price ratio is attractive given historical values," says Karl Pettijohn, Managing Director, Wealth Management at Wedbush Securities. "As an industrial metal silver is also an attractive play given its many uses and increasing demand in solar panels, medical devices and cell phones.

"In addition, stimulus from central banks isn’t going away and low interest rates will be here for the foreseeable future which also plays into the demand for silver as an inflation hedge.”

Learn more about SILJ at the ETFMG provider site. (opens in new tab)