The physical market has seen a consistently rising premium and its a better gauge of the real price of the physical metal.
The paper silver market is constantly shorted by the big banks. What they like to to is short the market when there a rise, then the price drops and then they buy back and the price goes to the previous level.
They make much more money on the sideways fluctuations than if the price shoots up all at once. The idea for these banks is to exploit sideways volatility and suppress the upwards prices so they can keep using their silver over again for shorting.
It's almost like it's rigged.