Eric Sprott

Founder & Chairman Emeritus, Sprott Inc.

Silver is the investment of the decade — it's the most undervalued asset on the planet.

Background

Eric Sprott is a Canadian billionaire investor and one of the longest-established institutional figures in precious metals investing. He founded Sprott Asset Management in Ottawa in 1981, building it over three decades into Canada's leading resource-focused investment firm and one of the world's premier precious metals asset management companies. The firm manages multiple publicly listed investment trusts — including the Sprott Physical Gold Trust (PHYS) and Sprott Physical Silver Trust (PSLV) — that together represent billions in investor capital in allocated precious metals. Sprott Inc. (TSX: SII) is now the world's largest dedicated precious metals asset manager.

Sprott's conviction in gold and silver as monetary assets developed over years of studying monetary history and observing the Federal Reserve's systematic expansion of the money supply. He began publicly advocating for precious metals investment in the early 2000s, when gold traded near $300/oz, and maintained this conviction through the entire multi-decade cycle. His reputation is grounded not just in commentary but in capital deployment — he personally committed enormous institutional resources to the physical silver market, most notably through the December 2010 launch of the Sprott Physical Silver Trust (PSLV), which raised approximately $575 million in its initial offering and represented one of the largest single purchases of physical silver in modern market history. He is also a major philanthropist, having donated hundreds of millions of dollars to medical research and education institutions in Canada.

Investment Thesis

Sprott's core thesis combines a monetary framework with a fundamental supply-demand argument, making it particularly compelling for silver specifically. His monetary argument mirrors other precious metals advocates: the Federal Reserve and global central banks have systematically debased fiat currencies since 1971, and gold and silver are the only monetary assets that cannot be inflated away. What distinguishes Sprott's framework is his particularly strong conviction about silver as a multi-decade undervalued asset relative to both gold and its own historical monetary role.

Sprott has repeatedly argued that the gold-to-silver mining ratio — approximately 8 ounces of silver mined for every ounce of gold — implies a fair value relationship dramatically tighter than the 70–100:1 ratio at which silver has traded for extended periods in recent decades. When the ratio eventually normalizes, he argues, silver's percentage appreciation potential dwarfs gold's on a per-dollar basis. He has called silver "the investment of the decade" in multiple interviews, citing depleted above-ground inventories, growing industrial demand from solar, electronics, and electric vehicles, and the historical pattern of silver dramatically outperforming gold in the late stages of precious metals bull markets.

His institutional approach to the silver thesis — deploying billions in capital rather than simply advocating publicly — gives his framework a credibility that distinguishes him from most commentators. The PSLV launch in 2010 demonstrated that physical silver could be taken out of the market in institutional scale, tightening the relationship between the futures market price and actual available physical supply. His mining equity investments have also demonstrated deep analytical capability in evaluating gold and silver production companies, royalty structures, and exploration-stage assets across multiple full resource cycles.

Critiques & Limitations

Sprott's track record over decades of precious metals investing is genuinely exceptional, and his institutional deployment of capital gives his advocacy a credibility that most commentators lack. However, critics note that his silver thesis has required extraordinary patience — silver peaked at $49.50 in April 2011 and spent over a decade below that level, reaching approximately $30 by 2024. Investors who followed his silver-heavy conviction at the 2011 peak experienced a decade of underperformance relative to equities. His extremely bullish price targets for silver (implying dramatic ratio normalization) have been directionally correct in bull phases but have proven elastic in timing, testing followers through extended consolidation periods. Some analysts also note that the growth of Sprott-branded investment vehicles creates institutional incentives toward maintaining bullish precious metals narratives that may influence his public commentary.

Notable Calls