SLV has suffered one of its worst weeks in recent memory, dropping 12% to close at $55.73, with the borrow market and options positioning both telling the same story: the selling has been sharp but shorts aren't piling in to chase it.
The most striking feature of this week's tape is the rapid loosening of the lending market — a signal that short sellers are actually covering rather than adding. Availability has risen to 117%, up from roughly 76% just five days ago, and well above the 52-week trough of under 10%. That trough earlier in the year represents the tightest the borrow pool has been; current levels are far more relaxed. Cost to borrow has collapsed in parallel, falling 60% on the week to just 0.30% — the lowest reading in the 30-day history. When borrow gets cheaper and availability improves into a falling price, it indicates shorts are reducing exposure, not building it. Short interest itself has edged lower too, down about 2.3% on the week to 5.4% of the float — still meaningful for an ETF, but drifting lower since its mid-June peak near 6.3%.
Options positioning reinforces the same read: this looks more like a shakeout than a coordinated short attack. The put/call ratio has actually dropped to 0.50, running about 1.4 standard deviations below its 20-day average of 0.53. For a vehicle that just lost 12% in a week, that's a notable absence of defensive hedging activity. The 52-week PCR range runs from 0.37 to 0.85, putting current positioning comfortably in the lower half — call-heavy relative to recent norms. SLV's short score has also drifted marginally lower over the week, from 57.2 to 55.6, consistent with a cooling rather than an accelerating short thesis.
The institutional picture adds an important layer of context. As of the end of March, the largest disclosed holder — Morgan Stanley — cut its position by nearly 5.9 million shares in the quarter, while Jane Street trimmed by an even larger 11.8 million shares. Those are significant reductions from two of the most active market participants in ETF arbitrage. On the other side, Susquehanna International added 5.7 million shares and Citadel initiated a new position of 2.2 million shares. The net picture from Q1 filings is one of rotation rather than wholesale exit — active market-makers adjusting around volatility rather than fundamental sellers fleeing the asset class.
The price decline itself has been severe across every timeframe that matters: down 5.4% in a single session Monday, 12% on the week, and 18.5% over the past month. For context, SLV's most recent significant price event in the history data — a May 7 spike that produced a 4.1% one-day gain and a 7.7% five-day follow-through — was the exception in an otherwise muted earnings-reaction history. The metal is now decisively below the levels where that momentum built. The ORTEX combined score of 55.6 places SLV roughly in the middle of the universe, neither extreme, suggesting the data is reading this as transition rather than crisis.
The question now is whether the collapse in borrow costs and the easing of availability signal genuine short capitulation — or simply that bears are pausing at a support level before reassessing. With no earnings catalyst ahead and the price having broken multiple near-term ranges, the next directional cue is most likely to come from macro data: real yield movements, Fed tone, and any shift in industrial demand signals for silver.
See the live data behind this article on ORTEX.
Open SLV on ORTEX →ORTEX Market Intelligence content is generated by AI from a snapshot of ORTEX's proprietary data. Content is informational only and does not constitute investment advice.
