Short Silver ETF (Inverse ETF)

An inverse silver ETF is designed to have price performance exactly opposite of the daily performance of the silver market.  In other words if silver goes down 1% on a given day, the price of the etf would rise by 1%.  At this time there is no unleveraged Inverse Silver ETF available, just the Double Short from ProShares.

Double Short Silver ETF

As with the 2x Leveraged Silver ETF a 2x Leveraged Inverse allows investors to take a short leveraged position in silver in a cash account that would not otherwise be possible.  The aim of these type of funds is to provide the opposite performance of silver times 200% on a daily basis.  You would use purchase this ETF if you were bearish on the price of silver and wanted to profit from falling prices.

ZSL- Proshares Ultra Short Silver ETF  As with AGQ this fund also began trading right at the lows in silver (12/1/08), since silver has rallied  as much as 200% and it's a bearish fund the price performance has been horrible! This however means that the ETF is properly designed and is actually executing it's designated role.

The annual expense ratio is the same as the AGQ double long etf at .95% (95 basis points) as this fund deploys the same derivative strategies using forward contracts and selling silver futures. ZSL trades very heavily so liquidity is not an issue which is surprising since we are in such a strong bull market in silver.

When looking at the performance of the fund you can see that the accumulated loss hasn't been twice as much as the rally in SLV but that's because it's impossible to lose more than 100%. This is why the prospectus on these funds always clearly point out that the goal of the fund is to provide 200% Inverse of the DAILY performance of the silver market. 

ZSL Performance VS SLV Since Inception

 
Chart begins on ZSL first trading day which was 12/1/08

SLV  |  SIVR  |  DBS  |  USV  |  AGQ  |  ZSL  |  SIL