A specialist fund manager has revealed SMSF trustees have implemented greater diversification when looking to include precious metals in their fund portfolios.
“If I look at the SMSF market specifically, if we were to run the data five or six years ago, we would have seen 80 to 85 per cent of the money going into gold and only around 15 per cent going into silver,” ABC Bullion Australia general manager Jordan Eliseo told smstrusteenews.
“The allocation is probably like 70 per cent to gold and 30 per cent to silver now. So silver is gaining in popularity, but gold is still the dominant asset that SMSF trustees, and really precious metal investors as a whole, are putting into their portfolios.”
Eliseo pointed out the shift in sentiment toward silver has been driven by several factors over that time period.
“Probably the number one thing was gold had outperformed as an asset and people were looking at silver relative to gold and saying: ‘I want precious metal exposure, but silver looks cheap, but it would be the smarter play to have some of my precious metal allocation in silver,’” he noted.
“Also with silver, because it’s got that industrial story and there’s a supply deficit now that’s been running for years, there is a good reason to be quite bullish on the silver price and say: ‘Well, over time that supply challenge really can only be met by higher prices.’
“So people are more inclined, particularly with SMSFs because generally speaking they have a longer-term timeframe, meaning they can stomach a bit more volatility as typically they are in the accumulation phase, which more and more trustees are these days, to consider an investment in silver.
According to Eliseo, all of those elements have justified a jump in allocations to silver in SMSF portfolios from that investor segment.
Jordan Eliseo will be discussing the trend in precious metal investments at SMSF Trustee Empowerment Day 2026. Please click here to register for the event.