iShares SLV Silver ETF Short Interest Is Cooking Higher
The Stove Is Hot
‘Shorting’ of an equity typically occurs when a trader borrows shares from a broker or fund and sells them into the market in anticipation that the price will fall in the future. If the price of the share falls, these shares can then be bought back in the market at a lower price and returned to the lending source thereby generating a profit for the trader.
Brokerages are required to report short interests twice a month and short interests are publicly disclosed with a 10-day lag.
The latest short interest data for the largest silver exchange traded fund (ETF) iShares Silver Trust ‘SLV’, holding 454 million (M) oz. of silver, are dated March 31, 2025 and show a growth of shorts now to 69.6M shares or 14% of the total 499M shares issued - the largest short interest in 2025.
Figure 1 - SLV Short Interest Of Total Shares Outstanding At March 31, 2025 (Gray Shaded Area); Source: chartexchange.com
The cost to borrow SLV shares currently stands at 1.8% which is 3x the average SLV borrow fee that was typical before February 2025.
Figure 2 - SLV Share Borrow Fee; Source: GoldChartsRUS.com
The next reporting date for the SLV short interest is April 25, 2025.
It will be interesting to see at what point the shorts are able to cover or are forced to cover their short position.
The risk managers are watching.
Best regards,
David Jensen
Well David: I have to say that this does not "compute"? If short interest is unusually high and the Lease Rate has fallen back, that would have to suggest some sort of Trap has been set for the Shorts???? I've noticed a similar discrepancy with the Margin and Maintenance deposits for gold on the Comex (2.5% is unusual for a 'Commodity' whose price is hitting historical highs?) Therefore, there must be a lot of 'Higher Price Expectation".
Not sure David. It seems as though the logical fact pattern points to the ever-imminent collapse of the promissory note trading system. Then the market unwinds and delays that endpoint each time. Each cliff is avoided, like magic. There must be an offramp/pressure release that we can’t see. Reminds me of the casino machine where you can feed it a coin - to hopefully have your coin push many more coins over the edge (and into your winnings). But this machine never seems to operate as my two eyes indicate that it should. It’s because there is a hidden release off-ramp for some coins. See link. Is there something like that happening in the AG market? Love your work. But it’s worth considering that there’s more than we’re seeing in the reported data. https://easy.vegas/games/flipit