As of: 2026-08-22
Each bar shows the individual value of an indicator (0--100). The percentage on the right indicates its weight in the overall score.
Red values signal fear, green values signal greed. The overall score is the weighted average of all indicators.
The chart shows the Fear & Greed Index over time. The colored zones mark the sentiment areas: Red = Fear, Yellow = Neutral, Green = Greed.
Navigation: Select the time period using the buttons (1M to Max). Hover over the chart to see the score on a specific day.
The calculation runs daily on current closing and spot prices, six technical indicators feeding a weighted score between 0 and 100. Silver serves as both raw material and investment, and that split personality shows in the numbers: the index travels further into fear and further into greed than gold does, and it gets there faster.
Data sources: daily closing prices, spot prices, EUR/USD exchange rates. Updated daily on trading days. This index is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
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We pour our heart into keeping preciousmetalprices.com fast, clean and free — no paywalls, no clutter, just reliable facts and live prices. If it helps you, the nicest way to say thank you is to pass it on. Every share helps a fellow investor discover us and keeps the project going. 💛
How the Index Is Calculated
The silver reading aggregates six technical measures into a single picture. Every one of them is normalised onto the same 0-to-100 scale before being weighted, and the weightings are set for silver rather than borrowed from gold -- the two markets do not behave alike.
Calculation Formula
Score = ∑ (Indicatori × Weighti)
Each Indicatori ranges between 0 and 100, and the sum of all weights equals 1.0.
The 6 Indicators and Their Weights
Momentum
25 %Compares the current price with the 50-day moving average (SMA50). If the price is significantly above the average, greed prevails. If below, fear dominates. A distance of more than 10% from the SMA50 indicates an exaggeration.
Volatility
25 %Compares short-term volatility (10 days) with long-term volatility (60 days). A sharp increase in short-term volatility signals nervousness and fear. Stable volatility indicates composure.
Ratio Signal
15 %Analyzes the gold/silver ratio and other metal ratios. A rising ratio (gold gains relative to silver) signals a flight to safety = fear. A falling ratio shows risk appetite = greed.
Acceleration
15 %Measures whether the current price trend is accelerating or decelerating. Increasing upward acceleration signals greed -- more and more buyers are jumping in. A slowdown may indicate a trend reversal.
ATH Distance
10 %Measures the distance to the all-time high. The closer the price is to the ATH, the greedier the sentiment. A distance of over 20% indicates resignation and fear.
USD Strength
10 %Tracks the EUR/USD trend over 20 trading days. A weakening dollar is positive for precious metals (greed). A strengthening dollar depresses prices (fear).
Note: For copper, the ratio signal is omitted (weight 0%) since no meaningful reference ratio exists. The remaining indicators are weighted more heavily accordingly.
What the Values Mean
Silver runs through the same five bands as gold but at a different pace and a different amplitude. Being both an industrial input and a store of value, it drops further when the fear is economic and climbs faster when the greed arrives.
Extreme Fear
Silver sells off hardest when two things coincide: recession fear knocking out industrial demand, and a cash squeeze forcing indiscriminate liquidation. Both hit silver at once, which is why it falls further than gold in these episodes and why the gold-silver ratio spikes upward as it happens.
Fear
Caution takes hold: higher rates or soft industrial data keep a lid on the price. In practice this band often marks the handover from outright panic to tentative stabilisation, with the first value buyers beginning to establish positions.
Neutral
The two halves of silver demand are balanced against one another and neither is winning. Something seasonal often breaks the deadlock: the Indian wedding season, or a fresh round of solar manufacturing orders.
Greed
Momentum builds as industrial output picks up and investor interest returns. Silver's volatility then draws in the speculative crowd, which magnifies the advance and simultaneously makes it considerably less stable.
Extreme Greed
Prices go vertical and the historical parallels come out: the Reddit squeeze of 2021, the Hunt brothers in 1980. The reliable tell is the physical market, where premiums on coins and bars balloon far beyond anything justified by fabrication cost. That is the point at which the rally is running on its own momentum.
Historical Patterns
If you want to see how far a sentiment reading can travel, watch silver. Nothing else in the complex moves between panic and euphoria as quickly, and the historical record makes the point better than any description:
Silver at the Point of Panic
By the summer of 2022 silver had fallen beneath $18, a level at which a good many mines were producing at or below cost, and the index sat at extreme fear. March 2020 was briefly worse still, with a spike below $12. Neither lasted: on both occasions the price came close to doubling over the following twelve to eighteen months.
Speculative Manias in Silver
Reddit and the wider social media apparatus drove silver from $25 to over $30 in early 2021. The 2011 episode was larger still, carrying the price to nearly $50 on post-crisis inflation fear. Both ended in sharp reversals, and both illustrate the same rule: silver euphoria arrives faster than gold euphoria and departs faster too.
When Gold and Silver Disagree
Gold in greed whilst silver sits at neutral describes a selective flight to safety -- buyers want the refuge, not the industrial exposure. That divergence has repeatedly preceded silver rallies, because once fear subsides and risk appetite returns, silver has more ground to make up.
Conclusion: Silver registers market emotion the way a seismograph registers tremors -- larger amplitude, sharper reversals. The extremes are usable, provided you can hold your nerve and your horizon is measured in years.
Contrarian Investing
The contrarian case in silver is the same as in gold, only harder to sit through. The drawdowns are deeper and the recovery frequently takes longer than the argument suggests it should.
Buy When There Is Fear
A silver reading below 20 usually coincides with a gold-silver ratio above 80, and the two together make a considerably stronger case than either alone. The summer of 2022 offered both: silver at $18, index at the extreme, price close to doubled eighteen months later. The caveat is the oldest one in the book -- silver can stay cheap for longer than you can stay solvent.
Be Cautious When There Is Greed
Silver euphoria escalates faster than gold's, and the physical market is where it shows. Once the retail crowd arrives, premiums on coins and small bars can reach 30 to 50 % over spot. Buying physical silver at those premiums is the single most reliable way to lose money in this metal: the spot price mean-reverts, the premium simply evaporates.
Conclusion: Silver rewards contrarians with strong stomachs: the lows go lower and the recoveries are more violent. Adding the gold-silver ratio as a second confirmation improves the timing markedly.
Limitations & Pitfalls
Silver's double life as industrial input and investment asset creates blind spots that are worth knowing about:
- ◆ Industrial demand cannot be isolated — More than half of silver consumption goes into solar cells, electronics and medical applications. Working from price data alone, the index has no way of separating an industrial move from an investment one.
- ◆ A higher baseline of volatility — Silver moves roughly 50 % more than gold as a matter of course. A reading of 30 may be unremarkable for silver whilst representing a genuine signal in gold, so direct numerical comparison between the two is misleading.
- ◆ VAT on silver in the UK — Investment gold is exempt from VAT under VATA 1994 Sch. 9 Group 15, but silver carries the full 20 % standard rate. No margin scheme reduces it: HMRC excludes precious metals (VATMARG02100) and VAT Notice 718 was withdrawn on 23 December 2021, so the 20 % falls on the whole price for a second-hand coin as much as for a new bar. What a UK buyer actually pays therefore does not track spot cleanly -- and the index knows nothing about it.
- ◆ Seasonal distortion — The Indian wedding season and Chinese New Year generate recurring demand spikes that can tilt the reading towards greed without any underlying change in sentiment.
Conclusion: The silver index is a capable instrument, but silver additionally demands attention to industrial data, to the gold-silver ratio and to the state of the physical market -- premiums and inventories tell you things the score cannot.
Frequently Asked Questions About the Fear & Greed Index
When is the silver reading refreshed?
Daily, after the close, as with every metal here. Silver trades more actively than gold in the spot market, so consecutive daily readings can differ more than they would for the gold index.
Why is the silver reading so much jumpier than gold?
Three reasons compound: a much smaller market, the dual industrial-and-investment demand base, and a heavier presence of speculative traders. Silver's volatility runs about 50 % above gold's, and the momentum and volatility components respond accordingly.
Where does the gold-silver ratio come into it?
The ratio is one of the six inputs and carries a weight of 15 %. When the ratio rises -- silver cheapening relative to gold -- that component moves towards fear. Reading the score and the ratio together gives a considerably more nuanced picture than either provides alone.
Is solar demand reflected in the score?
Only through the price. Solar manufacturing is silver's largest industrial customer, but its demand reaches the index indirectly and with a delay. Anyone analysing silver seriously should be following industrial production data and solar installation forecasts separately.
Is any of this useful to a private investor?
Arguably more so than for institutions. Private investors are the ones most exposed to emotional decision-making, and an external, objective reading is precisely what helps identify one's own fear reflex during a sell-off and one's own greed during a rally.
How does the reading behave during a squeeze?
Momentum spikes, volatility rises with it, and the composite score reaches extreme greed within days. Every historical squeeze of that kind has been followed by a sharp correction, which is a reasonable endorsement of the contrarian reading.