For nearly a decade, silver miners have lived in the shadows of the very metal they dig from the ground. While silver itself has enjoyed periodic rallies and endured inevitable sell-offs, junior mining equities—the speculative small-cap explorers and producers represented by the SILJ ETF—have consistently lagged.That lag became undeniable between 2016 and 2025. The SILJ/Silver ratio, which tracks the relative performance of silver miners against the spot price of silver, carved out a relentless pattern of l ...