← The silver notebook

/ SILVER NOTES

How to read the silver desk

Read the units, the observation date and the calculation together. A fresh page can contain an older price.

Quotes and the opening session

Reference data for people who follow silver. None of it is advice, and none of it is a SHIL price. The Silver board uses FMP’s SIUSD futures based quote in USD per troy ounce, with its supplied net change, percent change, prior close, day range and volume. It is not a spot quote. Gold API spot appears separately beneath it. Without FMP, the board falls back to that spot reference and its labelled recorded 24 hour change. Nasdaq supplies SLV in dollars per share. Unavailable bid, ask and spread remain unavailable.

SLV net change is last minus prior close. Prior close is recovered from Nasdaq’s last minus its supplied net change, with daily history as a fallback. Percent change is 100 times (last divided by prior close minus one). Bid and ask are the quoted prices on each side; sizes reproduce the source size fields without assuming a unit conversion. Spread in cents is 100 times (ask minus bid). Spread in basis points is 10,000 times that difference divided by the midpoint, (ask plus bid) divided by two. Missing or crossed prices leave the spread unavailable.

Volume is the source’s reported share volume. Its reference average is the arithmetic mean of the previous 20 completed sessions. Volume as a percent of average is 100 times current volume divided by that mean; it is not adjusted for elapsed session time. Open, high, low and close come from daily history. If today’s row is absent, the desk identifies the prior session and its date. Current opening gap is 100 times (today’s open divided by prior close minus one); it remains unavailable without today’s open. Market status comes from Nasdaq: Open, Closed, Pre market or After hours. Session dates use New York time.

Averages, ranges and variation

The Silver / SLV control changes the daily chart, Trend, Levels and 52 week range together. Silver is the default: Polygon C:XAGUSD daily spot OHLCV supplies its calculations. Distances use Gold API spot; futures prices never replace spot closes. Polygon timestamps become UTC dates, and completed silver sessions exclude today in UTC. A DELAYED response remains labelled as such. SLV retains Nasdaq history and New York session dates.

SMA 20, 50 and 200 are arithmetic means of the most recent 20, 50 and 200 daily closes. Distance from an average is 100 times (last divided by the average minus one). Above, below and at describe only that comparison. EMA 9 and 21 begin with the first nine or 21 closes’ mean, then update as previous EMA plus 2 divided by (period plus one), multiplied by (new close minus previous EMA). The finite history determines the seed.

For SLV, while Nasdaq reports Open, a live quote dated today replaces today’s daily close, or is appended if absent. Close-based calculations and the chart then include that provisional value. No live quote is substituted for a different session. Daily history is requested at most every six hours, so a completed close can take time to arrive.

The 52 week high and low are the highest daily high and lowest daily low within the trailing 365 calendar days of available history, with their dates. Percent off the high is 100 times (last divided by high minus one). Range position is 100 times (last minus low) divided by (high minus low), limited to zero through 100. A flat range has no position figure. The range excludes an unrecorded intraday extreme.

RSI 14 uses close-to-close gains and losses. Seed each average with the first 14 changes, then update with (13 times the previous average plus the new gain or loss) divided by 14. RSI is 100 minus 100 divided by (one plus average gain divided by average loss). No losses gives 100, no gains gives zero, and a completely flat series gives 50. The desk prints only the number.

True range is the greatest of high minus low, absolute high minus previous close, and absolute low minus previous close. ATR 14 seeds with the mean of 14 true ranges and then uses the same Wilder update: (13 times previous ATR plus new true range) divided by 14. It uses completed sessions with known ranges, never an invented provisional high or low. Its date is shown separately. ATR percent is 100 times ATR divided by last.

Realised volatility uses 20 daily log returns, each the natural logarithm of close divided by previous close. The sample standard deviation, using a denominator of 19, is multiplied by the square root of 252 and by 100 for an annual percentage. At least 21 closes are required.

Performance is 100 times (latest calculation close divided by comparison close minus one). One week, one month, three months, six months and one year use 7, 30, 91, 182 and 365 calendar days. Year to date uses the last available close before January 1. Comparisons use the observation on or before that date, allowing at most seven days for closures. Insufficient history gives Unavailable.

Prior prices and other metals

Reference levels computed from prior prices use the previous completed session’s high H, low L and close C. The classic floor pivot P is (H plus L plus C) divided by three. R1 is 2P minus L; R2 is P plus H minus L; S1 is 2P minus H; S2 is P minus H plus L. Prior day high and low repeat that session’s range. Prior week high and low cover the previous Monday through Sunday, using available sessions. Each level states whether last is above, below or at it.

Gold API supplies the spot comparisons for silver, gold, platinum and copper. The Gold tile and strip use FMP GCUSD when available, explicitly labelled as a futures reference; the gold to silver ratio always uses Gold API spot prices for both metals. Gold and platinum use dollars per troy ounce. Copper is shown as the HG source price in dollars, with its source unit left explicit as unspecified because the response does not include a unit. It is not treated as a troy-ounce comparison. The gold to silver ratio is gold spot divided by silver spot. Its historical range is the minimum and maximum ratio in the locally recorded fifteen-minute observations, retained for up to 400 days. At least two records are needed; dates and count show the actual coverage.

Silver’s recorded 24 hour change divides current spot by the last record at or before 24 hours earlier, subtracts one and multiplies by 100. That earlier record must be within one hour of the comparison time. Implied silver ounces per SLV share is SLV last divided by spot silver. It is an implied figure from quotes that may have different timestamps, not the trust’s published number.

Macro and weekly positioning

Silver is often watched alongside real yields and the dollar. FRED provides the ten year real yield (DFII10), ten year nominal yield (DGS10) and broad dollar index (DTWEXBGS). Each displays its latest valid observation and date. Weekly and monthly changes subtract the observation on or before seven or 30 calendar days before that latest date. Yield changes are percentage points; dollar changes are index points. A dot in the source CSV means missing and is skipped.

CFTC’s disaggregated futures-only report uses COMEX silver code 084691. Contracts represent 5,000 troy ounces. The report observes Tuesday positions and is published Friday. Open interest counts outstanding contracts; its weekly change is supplied by CFTC. Managed money long and short are reported separately. Net is long minus short; weekly net change is reported long change minus reported short change. Net as a percent of open interest is 100 times net divided by open interest. Producer and swap dealer net use the same long-minus-short subtraction.

The one year managed money percentile is 100 times the count of valid net observations less than or equal to the latest net, divided by the number of valid observations within 365 days of that report. The request retains up to 60 reports; the actual percentile sample count is displayed. The small bar chart shows the latest 26 reports, with positive net above zero and negative net below it. Missing fields remain unavailable rather than becoming zero.

Charts, time and failures

The daily chart offers one, three, six and twelve months using the same calendar windows, with SMA 50 and 200 computed before trimming the view. Solid, dotted and dashed lines distinguish them. The recorded SLV and silver views preserve intraday observations from the separate market feed. Lines connect available observations across gaps, and vertical scales follow the visible values. Hover over the chart, or focus it and use left and right arrows, to read an observation. Home and End reach the first and last. Each chart also supplies a text summary and an accessible data table.

The page polls every 60 seconds. The refresher runs every two minutes and requests FMP quotes each run. Daily history, FRED and CFTC are fetched at most every six hours, including after a failed attempt; CFTC itself is weekly. The separate cron refresher writes the reference file; page requests never contact upstream sources. Quotes and metals older than 30 minutes are marked stale, including closed sessions. Slow sources are checked at most every six hours. Source failures retain their last good values and original timestamps, marked stale with an error class. A retained quote field carries its own date. If a page refresh fails, the last response remains visibly stale. Without any known value, the desk says Unavailable.

Green, brick red and slate chips mean a positive, negative or unchanged comparison. Arrows and explicit signs carry the same meaning without colour. A changed figure catches a silver highlight for 700 milliseconds. Only the two large prices roll between values; reduced motion disables flashes, rolling and the brief status-dot pulse. LIVE requires a quote under three minutes old and a source reporting an open market. Other readings show DELAYED or CLOSED; FMP supplies no open flag here. The update clock counts seconds since the file refresh, not the quote time. Hover or focus reveals exact UTC time. The ticker scrolls manually, and ticking figures are not announced individually.

The recorder continues to produce one numerical note from the first accepted silver and gold record per UTC day. Optional platinum and copper failures do not prevent that record. Missing days remain missing. The smallest timestamp remains part of the reading.

Sources

Not endorsed by Robinhood Markets. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Pons.

Back to The Silver Shilling ↗