Added some silver to my portfolio today through SLV. I was stopped out of GLD earlier and think it may be time to give it a rest. I like Silver though. As a precious metal, it should rise if inflation picks up. As an industrial input, it should rise if GDP picks up. In fact, both inflation and production may go up. It’s under its historical relationship with gold (though I’m not sure that point is as strong an argument as it normally is). Things can always go wrong, so I have a trailing stop if it drops more than 6%. I don’t think central banks are likely to be piling up on silver, so I will probably add GLD again at some point, but it’s an interesting moment.
I haven’t looked into this matter a whole lot but there are ETFs that hold both … gold and silver… example: CEF (Central Fund of Canada), it has shares on AMEX as well as TSX. So you could get exposure to both… but of course you have to agree with their proportions of silver and gold that they hold.