Both gold and silver are precious metals and both are often mentioned as some kind of safe haven – especially in a financial crysis. On the other hand both the application and the production of silver and gold are more or less different.
However risk and potential return carried by them were also different in the past 5 years, as it can be seen on the charts below.
- Gold vs. silver price chart about the past 5 years
- Silver risk-reward chart about the past 5 years
- Long term outlook?
Gold vs. silver price chart about the past 5 years*
Changes of price in case of silver or gold carry more meaning if we compare them to each other.
The chart below shows by how many percents the price of precious metals have increased or decreased, as compared to the date on the left side of the screen.
Usually it is true, that silver carries higher risk as it’s price usually changes more volatile.
Gold vs. silver risk-reward chart*
In the risk-reward chart (see below) one can see the 1 year average return (reward) on the vertical axis and on the horizontal axis you can find the standard deviation showing the risk of each investment for long period of time. (Standard deviation measures the average deviation of return from the average return.)
This chart also reflects that silver yielded higher profits but it also carried higher risk, since its average return and its standard deviation are both higher than in case of in the past.
Long term outlook?
People often say that long term investments carry less risk than short term ones. You can decide if that is true either for gold or silver from the charts above.
On the other hand, for the deeper fundamentals of both precious metals we recommend gold’s and silver’s historical analysis here.
*charts are updated monthly and they have been created by using Chartoasis Sesame. If you feel like analyzing silver’s historical price, you can do that for free at www.chartoasis.com/sesame .
- You can download gold historical data following this guide.
- You can download silver historical data following this guide.