With a 1-for-10 Split Behind It, WisdomTree’s Triple-Leveraged Silver Fund Faces Its Toughest Test Yet

The WisdomTree Silver 3x Daily Leveraged ETC has completed a 1-for-10 stock split, effective May 8, just as the underlying metal careens from supply deficits to geopolitical brinkmanship. The restructuring, designed to keep the €330 million fund tradable after months of sharp price moves, landed at a moment when silver itself is flashing warning signals from multiple directions.

At the close of the first session after the split, the ETC settled unchanged at €22.14. But the metal backing it – currently trading at $86.58 an ounce – is anything but static. Monday saw a more than 7% surge in the spot price, far outpacing gold, as investors positioned for the start of the Trump-Xi summit in Beijing. The meeting, running from May 11 to May 15, pits the world’s two largest economies against each other on trade, technology, and access to critical raw materials – a list that puts industrial metals like silver front and centre.

Around 60% of annual silver demand comes from electronics and solar manufacturing, supply chains that are acutely sensitive to US-China tensions. The gold-silver ratio has compressed to 55.46, underscoring silver’s dual identity as both a monetary asset and an industrial workhorse. That industrial dependency is one reason the metal’s fate is so tightly tied to the outcome of this week’s diplomatic poker game.

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Yet the silver market is also wrestling with its own structural strains. The fifth consecutive annual deficit exceeded 40 million ounces in 2025, and the Silver Institute expects a still larger gap this year. Declining ore grades and a shortage of new mine projects are curbing output, even as solar manufacturers try to trim silver usage to control costs. Into this supply squeeze comes an oil shock from the Iran conflict, pushing US consumer prices to 3.8% – the highest since May 2023 – and forcing a hard reset of Federal Reserve expectations. Core inflation at 2.8% has extinguished any near-term rate cut hopes, with futures markets now pricing a 70% probability of a rate hike by next spring.

Higher inflation traditionally burnishes silver’s appeal as a store of value, but the macro backdrop is far from uniform. The rally has already pulled the metal well above J.P. Morgan’s full-year average forecast of $81, leaving leveraged bets exposed to any reversal. The WisdomTree ETC, which uses swap contracts to deliver three times the daily return of silver futures, carries a total expense ratio of 0.99%. Its daily leverage reset means that in the volatile environment likely to persist through the summit and beyond, long-term compounding can deviate sharply from the spot price.

Adding to the uncertainty, Donald Trump has described the Iran ceasefire as “extremely fragile.” If the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked, another supply-side shock could slam physical silver markets already operating on thin margins. For holders of the WisdomTree Silver 3x, the split may have tidied up the balance sheet – but the real test lies in how the metal navigates a week of inflation data, trade talks, and a powder keg in the Persian Gulf.