How to invest in silver, a precious metal that both diversifies your portfolio and rises with new tech industries

Savvy investors often step outside the comfort zone of conventional paper investments — stocks, bonds, and funds — and into more exotic, hard assets. Silver is one such. Like other alternative investments, it often performs in an opposite way to traditional securities: its price rising when theirs falls, and vice versa. So it can be an invaluable way to diversify a portfolio.

Silver is more than a stock market hedge, though. As a physical commodity, it has an intrinsic value, which means it's immune to inflation — the rise in prices that erodes the value of paper, government-issued currencies. Given its inherent worth, some investors also see it as a safe haven against political and economic turmoil, similar to its more glamorous cousin, gold. 

But silver is much more affordable than its yellow-metal cousin. Also, unlike gold, silver is valued for its widespread industrial uses — including innovative, high-growth tech industries like solar energy and electric autos.