Silver mutual funds present another risk diversified dimension of silver investing to add to your portfolio apart from silver bullion investment that focuses mainly on purchasing physical silver and silver ETF that deals with “paper silver”. By definition silver mutual fund is a pool of investor funds that makes its objective to invest into shares of various silver mining companies and is considered less volatile compared to investing in a single silver mining company.

You can choose from a multitude of silver mutual funds that differ by many basic parameters like no load and load mutual funds, investment objectives, aggressive and conservative investment strategies. You as an investor can choose from this variety and single out a silver fund that better represents your investment goals and long term objectives. Investing in silver or any other precious metals mutual funds takes the personal guesswork and necessity to analyze individual silver mining stocks and have professional mutual funds managers do it for you.

Due to the volatile nature of the stock market and precious metals in general, most silver mutual funds hold other alternative precious metals instruments like physical gold, platinum and silver in their portfolio allowing them to spread the risk across the board. In addition, it helps to know that only 35% of total silver is mined directly, the rest comes as a by product of other precious mining industries. So majority of silver mutual funds hold mixed equities, they are not investing in silver bullion or silver stocks exclusively.

Among many silver mutual funds, it’s worth noting several mutual funds like Vanguard Precious Metals and Mining with a symbol VGPMX and Permanent Portfolio with a ticker PRPFX. It’s important to study each silver fund asset allocation for risk diversification purposes. Vanguard Precious Metals fund is comprised mostly by mining stocks, while Permanent Portfolio is presented by alternative assets like bonds, stocks and physical precious metals bullions.