Gold vs silver: Which precious metal offers better shield during market volatility? What 26 years of data reveals
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- Gold delivered negative returns in just 4 of 26 financial years (FY01, FY14, FY15, FY17), with its steepest decline at 10.8% in FY14, according to the HDFC Mutual Fund NFO presentation.
- Silver posted negative returns in 11 of the 26 financial years — more than double gold's count — with its steepest fall at 23.2% in FY14.
- Silver recorded the strongest single-year gain among the three assets at 127.5% in FY26, followed by 114.4% in FY11, while gold topped out at 63.3% in FY26.
- Nifty 50 TRI fell in 8 of 26 financial years, and in FY09 — its worst year at -35.4% — gold gained 26.8%, the clearest example of gold's hedge behavior.
- Only in FY01 did both gold and the Nifty 50 TRI decline together, with gold falling 1.2% against the Nifty's 24.2% drop.
- Gold had a correlation of -0.04 with the Nifty 50 TRI from January 2000 to July 2026, while silver registered +0.08, making gold's inverse tilt slightly stronger though both are near zero.
- Silver showed no consistent pattern of rising or falling during Nifty 50 TRI down years, unlike gold, which tended to hold or gain value in those periods.
Why it matters: For Indian investors constructing portfolios against equity drawdowns, the 26-year data shows gold posted positive returns in 7 of 8 years when the Nifty 50 TRI fell — including a 26.8% gain during the index's worst year — while silver's lack of a uniform pattern and 11 negative-return years makes it a less reliable shield during sustained equity downturns.
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