Credit: Flickr / Mark Herpel / CC-BY 2.0

There has been a lot of fanfare over gold in the global economy as a safe haven investment. Equity markets worldwide fell while the US struggled to rear its head above debt in the last month.

The price of gold in the last three months soared by almost 22 %. However, gold abruptly dropped down in mid-August, leading investors to think twice before investing in gold. It also raised the question of how safe is gold as a safe haven investment. This scenario could lead investors away from gold to other precious metals.

Silver plays out similar to gold in the stock market. Silver can rise and also fall below gold. Critics argue that there is no comparison between gold and silver as gold is mainly used only for jewellery while silver is used for many purposes. Silver performed really well on the Exchange trading commodities in the first half of this year.

Despite the volatility of silver, investors are looking forward to investing in the market and gain exposure to precious metals with expectations of making gains. ETC’s and ETF’s allows the investors to gain profits without actually storing the physical silver. Moreover, ETP’s offer broad exposure to the precious metal market. The precious metals have shown steady gains from the year 2008.

While gold has traditionally been touted as a safe and high gains investment, statistics state the silver has performed far well than gold for investors.