Silver has had a monster run, and traders who wanted to amplify the move reached for the ProShares Ultra Silver (NYSEARCA:AGQ). AGQ promises 2x the daily return of silver bullion, and on paper that should have turned the past year’s rally into a generational trade. The actual numbers tell a different story. The gap between what AGQ should have done and what it actually did reveals the biggest risk this fund carries: beta slippage in a volatile commodity is eating returns even while silver itself keeps climbing.
What AGQ is supposed to do
AGQ is a daily-reset 2x leveraged ETF tied to the price of silver bullion. It uses swaps and futures rather than holding physical metal, and it resets its leverage every trading day. The fund avoids K-1 partnership tax forms, which is why retail traders prefer it to commodity pool alternatives. The cost of that convenience is a roughly 0.95% expense ratio and, more importantly, the math of daily compounding.
If silver goes up 1% today, AGQ targets a 2% move. Stack that over a long rally and the leverage should compound into something extraordinary.
The slippage is the story
Over the past year, the iShares Silver Trust (NYSEARCA:SLV), the cleanest proxy for spot silver, returned 133%. A perfect 2x daily product should have delivered something close to 266% over the same window. AGQ actually returned 197%. The roughly 69-percentage-point gap is the slippage, and it is real money that never showed up in anyone’s account.
Year-to-date in 2026, SLV is up 7% while AGQ is down 25%. A holder who bought silver exposure through AGQ on January 1 is looking at a meaningful loss while the underlying metal is in the green.
The cause is volatility itself. Silver swings of 3% to 5% in a day, common during volatile stretches, get amplified inside AGQ’s daily rebalancing. When the price drops 5% and then rises 5%, the underlying is roughly flat. The 2x product is meaningfully down. Repeat that ten times in a quarter and you get the YTD chart.
Cleaner ways to own the trade
For investors who want silver exposure without the daily reset tax, three alternatives capture most of the thesis. SLV returned 133% over the past year. The Sprott Physical Silver Trust (NYSEARCA:PSLV) returned 125%, holds allocated bullion in Canadian vaults, and carries a 0.45% expense ratio. The abrdn Physical Silver Shares ETF (NYSEARCA:SIVR) charges 0.66% and is fully physical.
For traders who want amplified silver beta without daily reset decay, the Global X Silver Miners ETF (NYSEARCA:SIL) returned 134% over the past year. Mining stocks carry operational risk but offer natural leverage to the metal without the structural drag of swap-based products.
What to watch if you hold AGQ
Two indicators tell you when slippage is doing the most damage. First is realized volatility in silver itself. When daily moves exceed 3%, decay accelerates. Second is the VIX as a broader risk proxy. The 1-year average sits near 18. Sustained readings above 25 are the warning zone for any 2x daily product.
Compare AGQ’s rolling 30-day return to twice SLV’s rolling 30-day return. When the gap widens past 5 percentage points in a month, the structural drag is winning, and holding AGQ for the long-term silver thesis is the wrong tool.
Where AGQ fits and where it doesn’t
AGQ does exactly what it promises: 2x the daily move in silver. The risk is treating a daily instrument like a long-term holding. Silver up 133% over a year sounds like the perfect AGQ setup. The 69-point gap between expectation and reality is the lesson. For a multi-month silver thesis, PSLV, SIVR, or SIL deliver the trade without the daily-reset tax. AGQ belongs in the toolkit of traders working in days and weeks, not the portfolios of investors thinking in quarters.
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