Silver has been a roller coaster ride lately with ups and downs and in betweens. No one can figure out this market. And if you can, you’re kidding yourself.

Buying silver, which historically, buying gold and silver has been done when the markets or dollar is down, is even a risky investment. Investors in precious metals have seen both of the major metals swing more than 15% in a months time. Going from 52 week highs to lows within a week.

However, the latest news from Wall Street, that Goldman Sachs beat estimates this quarter, comes as a boost to all commodities. Not because it’s finally good news from the investment banking world, or the banking world in general. But because the reports say that Goldman has had better than average returns in the commodities world or it’s investments.

To some this may seem obvious. Oil is up, way up, and buying things like gold and silver is just safe plays on a weak dollar and a strong commodities market. Traders don’t even have to buy just mining companies. They can get in by investing in silver ETFs like SLV.

But to others, just jumping on the bandwagon, it’s not that obvious and can still be a strong play in their investment portfolio, even in this run-up. As Blog Silver has said before, the demand is high and people are hesitant to dump their money into a volatile stock market. So they go looking for safer investments. Safer investments like gold and silver ETFs that can get large boosts from earnings reports that boast about commodities earnings.

The iShares silver trust ETF, SLV is holding strong amid all this up and down buying and selling of silver and gold. The silver trust may be the best way to get into a silver market that some say is going to go even higher.

As oil continues to rise, gold and silver are tending to follow the trends set by the market. When there’s a sign that the economy could rebound and the dollar could be on the rise, the precious metals fall. But as the market shakes with rising oil prices, people are back buying silver and gold. A big way they buy these precious metals is to buy into the silver or gold ETFs (Gold, IAU).

These funds are easier to trade and cost an investor less in the long run than buying silver or buying gold directly in the form of bullion bars or coins. The two trusts are holding strong, fluctuating with the price of gold and silver as they should since they are backed by the precious metals.

The stock market is rebounding, the dollar is showing signs of strengthening, and banks may be doing a little better. A little. So should you be taking your money out of commodities like silver and gold?

The recent drop on silver prices may be a little premature but everyone new it was going to happen sooner or later. There wasn’t really a huge drop in production or spike in demand because of some discover about silver. It was a run up because the price of most commodities was increasing such as oil and especially gold.

So is this run-up done? Well that depends on a few things. Sure there will be price increases based on the economies emotion to financial news. But if you believe what many feel, that the huge growth in countries like China and India will keep demand on all the worlds resources, including silver, then investing in silver is still a smart bet for the long term.

Buying silver bullion isn’t your only option and may not even be the best one because of the tax implications of owning it. You may be better off buying ETF’s like iShares SLV Silver Trust ETF. You can trade it easily online and can hold it for the long term and take advantage of lower taxes should the price of silver keep increasing.

So that begs the question of Blog Silvers readers. Are you still investing in silver?

Are you wondering how to get in the precious metals “gold rush” that’s going on right now? Should you run out and buy as much gold, silver, and platinum jewelry as you can? Should you surf the pages of EBay and buy up bricks of silver and gold?

Although these options may give you something to hold in your hands, they aren’t very practical for the average investor. Buying physical silver and gold might require you to get insurance on your pieces, that can wipe out your profits. And buying physical gold and silver also puts you into the collectible tax category where taxable gains are at your normal tax bracket, not the possible long-term investment tax breaks you could get if you invested in other methods.

One way to get in on the silver rush is to buy an Electronically Traded Fund (ETF). The main silver trading fund is SLV, the i-shares silver trust. This fund is backed by silver and trades relatively close to the price of silver on a day to day basis. Doing so can keep you the long-term investment tax situation if you keep the fund for longer than a year. And buying and selling the fund is as easy as trading in your normal trading account. Unlike silver bars where you have to go and find a dealer or other collector who wants to purchase them.

Get into trading silver with SLV if you want an easy in on the latest “Silver Rush.”

Silver, per troy ounce, is up to $18 a share, surpassing highs that it hasn’t seen for more than 25 years. Shares of the ETF, SLV, is up 20% this year to $179 a share. Silver is on the rise following golds all time highs.

We here at Blog Silver have been tracking silver for a while, and have been very bullish on silver both with the dollar declining, and with China expanding with the rest of the world, silver is looking like an easy way to get into the precious metals market. It might be tough to get into the gold market, with the price of gold being over $900 per ounce, silver is much easier being under $20.

With silver being included in a lot of computer parts, and the rest of the world catching up to America in terms of technological advancements, the world will need a lot of metal to keep up with all those advancements. One of those metals, easy to get into, is silver.

It happened, with all this writing about silver heading past $17 and ounce it finally happened. Although it did retreat back below $17 to the high $16 per troy ounce, silver saw 17 and it’s only a matter of time before it creeps back above, or so you would think…

With the economy showing strong signs of not knowing what the heck it wants to do, you’ll begin to people pulling their money out of the stock market and putting it into safer investments. One of those investments, as it has historically been, is precious metals like gold and silver.

With China and other developing nations gobbling up commodities lowering the available supply out there, with ETF’s like SLV making it easier for individual small investors to buy precious metals, one would think the price of silver would rise.

We think it’ll go to $20 soon enough, and if you’re looking for a good play outside of the world of stocks and bonds, you may want to look into buying silver.