I'm a stacker. I'm constantly looking at silver and gold prices, the spread, inventories, premiums, derivatives in SLV, etc, etc.
The obvious trend since SVB went down was a move to towards safer assets, let it be a "too big to fail bank (lol)", government securities (lol), and precious metals. Premiums on 1 oz silver rounds (generic) are nearly $5 anywhere you look. My local coin shop (LCS) was charging $4.75 per ounce over spot on generics, which is actually lower than the vast majority on JM bullion and SD bullion.
With silver spot being 24.25 as we speak, a $5+ premium is nearly a 20% premium on the price. Higher premiums almost always mean high demand and low supply. Inventory on the comex is dropping at a pretty staggering rate (277 million oz left) and the entire comex could be drained with a mere $6.6 billion dollars.
My LCS said it's been insane since the banks began to fail. Way more buyers than sellers.
The price of silver specifically has been artificially suppressed by the big banks through derivatives and artificial contracts traded amongst the big banks. As inventory continues to drain, the dollar falls, BRICS grows it's membership, and uncertainty remains, precious metals SHOULD skyrocket.
Ultimately, I don't invest in PMs are a get rich quick scheme, but they really are a great store of value. Not investment advice, but holding silver and gold, while you can still get it, could be an answer to rapidly rising inflation.
Clif high has mentioned $600 an ounce for silver. That'd be the day..
I just wonder what $600 will buy when it gets to that level. 8/1-16/1 should be the difference between gold and silver as a ratio. Not 80+ oz of silver to 1 oz of gold. Silver comes out of the ground as a biproduct of other mining at a ratio of 8 ozs per 1 oz of gold. Silver is the best conductor of electricity and is also a monetary metal. It's honestly a straight up value play.
The same thing that it will buy now, approximately.
At least for gold; if you look throughout history, one ounce of gold today will buy you pretty much the same things it did 100 years ago, 200 years ago, and even further back.
That’s the whole point of precious metals is that they are a store of value; they protect the wealth that you have earned.
At least that’s my humble understanding. :-)
That's what I see people failing to understand. 1oz of gold will always be worth 1oz of gold. It only appears to skyrocket in value when compared to a devaluing currency. It's not the gold going up, it's the value of your wages going down.
This isn't entirely accurate. In the 19th century you could buy a brand new custom house for about $1000 (or less, but its in the ballpark). This was the ballpark cost of a brand new custom house for the entire century (all the way up until 1913ish). That works out to about 40 ounces of gold (by the measure of .0437 oz of gold per U.S. dollar per the constitution).
Gold price today is about $2000. So $2000 times 40 is about $80,000.
Good luck getting a brand new custom home for $80,000.
Looking at silver, in the 19th century it would have taken about 770 ounces to buy a house (which was already substantially undervalued). Today those 770 ounces are worth about $20,000. A few weeks ago it would have been closer to $15,000.
Metal is NOT storing it's value in a straight line. On the contrary, it has been manipulated to all hell. Of course, so has the housing market in the other direction (and other major purchases, like cars, health care, education, etc.), so gold may actually be about right if not for purposeful increase in the cost of life's "major purchases." Silver on the other hand was already undervalued in the 19th century (purposefully, by the bankers who contributed to the constitution which set the value), and is undervalued even more now.
Interesting to use a decreasing in value currency to compare. ...
In my region we have started doing business in silver. Farmers, bakers, that sort of thing, accepting silver. And I do too, for the work I do.
Granted, it is not yet perfect, due to the CB manipulation of money, but we are working on comprehending value for goods and services over historic time, while we move slowly towards loosening ourselves from the system.
And, I hear, quite often, people saying: it feels good to pay with value, instead of monopoly money.
Couldn't get a cell phone for all the gold in the world 100 years ago /js
But yeah, I figured there's say 200K tons of gold that has been mined so what's that about an ounce per person? To be safe, I'd like at least that much but probably more than that. For silver it's more like 7 or 8 ounces per person
It's status as an industrial metal is why it's price is so deliberately suppressed.
colloidal silver is making a comeback, medically...silver cream for burns is the best, too!
My neighbor's kid had a black tooth because it was infected. I thought for sure he would have to hit the antibiotics. I guess he was getting some drops on it every hour or two. Seems like it worked.
Loaf of bread 600 dollars! yay!! My silver is finally worth 600 dollars an ounce!
Gold is useful, but with our current technology, silver is in general more useful because of it's electric and thermal properties which are unmatched by any other element. The value of silver would be, in a truly free market, at worst 8/1 with gold. Possibly more like 5/1, though if it is too expensive, alternative (inferior) products would be forced to take its place in technology (like copper).
Regardless, as for bang for your buck, I can't find any physical asset that is more valuable in potential volume/value/current cost than silver.
historically somewhere between 7 to one to 15 to one. Silver is way too low these days because central banks base their worth on gold not silver. Same reason why platinum is 1/2 the price of gold these days. It always used to be worth MORE! That's why the platinum record mean a bigger thing than gold
The world debt clock has silver pegged above $5k/oz in relationship to all dollars printed.
Thirty thousand gold
That would be an understatement. Even @ 150 an ounce, it would totally wreck everything.