Silver

We humans like shiny things, especially silver. Silver’s not only shiny though. Silver takes the gold in metal conductivity (take that, gold), making is really useful for many modern-day amenities. Besides electronics and jewelry, we’ve used silver for coins, and even photography.

Since silver is so embedded into our lives, it’s not surprising that it was once used to back some currencies (along with gold). For instance, if the U.S. dollar was on the “silver standard,” that would mean you could exchange your U.S. dollars for actual bars of silver from the U.S. government.

We used to think that money had to have this backing...this promise for exchanging worthless “money” for something of actual value, like silver. Today though, we’ve abandoned all notions of backing the U.S. dollar by silver or gold, so...yeah. Just so you don’t go demanding bars of silver when your next paycheck comes in.

Still, silver being so embedded and useful still has modern-day uses. While most eyeballs are watching gold prices go up and down, many watch silver’s prices. Gold and silver are thought to be indicative of wider market trends, so many traders and investors watch them, even if they aren’t buying or selling them.