SIL enters the final days of May with a notable split between bullish price action and a lending market that has swung from tight to comfortable in a matter of weeks.
The price story is the headline. The Global X Silver Miners ETF gained 3.7% on Tuesday alone and is up 5.6% for the week to $91.33. That bounce follows a difficult month — SIL shed 3.7% across May — suggesting the weekly rally is a recovery from oversold levels rather than a continuation of a prior trend. Silver miners have drawn renewed interest as precious metals attract inflation-hedge flows and industrial demand signals improve, and SIL has tracked that bid closely.
The shift in short positioning tells a more cautious story about bears. Short interest fell 16.4% over the past week to roughly 3% of the free float — a meaningful retreat from the elevated readings seen in late April and early May, when SI was running closer to 4–5%. The drawdown in shorts is sharp: from a peak near 2.5 million shares borrowed in late April, estimated short positions have nearly halved. Cost to borrow has followed suit, dropping nearly 30% over the week to just 0.43% annually — among the cheapest levels of the past six weeks. Availability has tightened relative to mid-May peaks (when it reached nearly 1,000% of short interest) but at 494% it still points to a well-supplied lending pool with plenty of room to add short exposure. There is no squeeze pressure here; the borrow market has moved firmly in the direction of ease.
Options positioning reinforces the bullish tilt. The put/call ratio of 0.33 is slightly below its 20-day average of 0.34 and roughly 1.4 standard deviations below the mean — the options market is carrying more calls than usual relative to recent norms. At the 52-week extremes, the PCR has ranged from 0.18 to 0.42, so the current reading is towards the more constructive end of the spectrum without being extreme. Taken together, the options and short interest data paint a picture of positioning that has rotated from cautious to modestly bullish over the past fortnight.
The ORTEX short score of 43 is broadly neutral, though it has drifted higher this week from 39 to 43. The mid-May spike to 48.6 — the highest recent reading — corresponded with a brief surge in short interest around May 18 that quickly reversed. That pattern suggests any renewed short-selling interest has been absorbed and faded quickly, rather than developing into a sustained conviction trade. The combined score of 43 puts SIL in the middle of the range, with no strong directional signal from the ORTEX composite.
On the institutional side, the most recent 13F filings (as of March 31) showed Morgan Stanley as the largest holder at 7.8% of shares. Several managers added meaningfully in Q1 — Profuturo AFP added 434,000 shares, Two Sigma added 370,000, and Goldman Sachs nearly quadrupled its position by adding 238,000 shares. Susquehanna and Meitav trimmed aggressively, but the net picture from the top-15 holders leans toward accumulation. Those flows predated the recent price weakness in May, so how those positions have moved since is the open question heading into mid-summer filings.
The setup heading into June is therefore less about whether there is appetite for silver miners and more about whether the weekly rally holds and whether short sellers re-engage above current levels or remain on the sidelines.
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