SILVER v USD

[peat]

Silver has passed the 17.70 level at which EWI had stated previously as being the killer for their bearish case
I must admit I've taken a few off the table at this level -


interest.co.nz linked
http://www.interest.co.nz/ratesblog/...s-out-of-gold/

into this press release from the usmint saying they cant keep up with demand.....

http://www.usmint.gov/pressroom/inde...elease&ID=1070

their (interest.co.nz) implication is sinister but when I read the article it seems they've just switched from one format to another

what do others think?

[arco]

.

EW has touted their bearish scenario for some time, but the PA looks strong ATM.

I see silver getting at least into the blue boxes overhead. If it can break through those then theres an even higher possibility. Ahead Kumo is bullish on the W.

[CAM]

interest.co.nz linked
http://www.interest.co.nz/ratesblog/...s-out-of-gold/

into this press release from the usmint saying they cant keep up with demand.....

http://www.usmint.gov/pressroom/inde...elease&ID=1070

their (interest.co.nz) implication is sinister but when I read the article it seems they've just switched from one format to another

what do others think?

Demand is increasing and they are rationalising their product line.
I think they are just switching to the products where the greatest demand (and possibly profit) is.

[arco]

Sometimes I get lucky going the other way

[JBmurc]

just brought another 64oz package form Moms just before the recent rises paid $28nzd per oz I notice when I was looking just how low her inventory has become I brought all of here Obama's an A-mark 10oz bar Have been keeping an eye on her stock prices etc for a good few months now has the buying pressure of investors starting to strain stocking levels of other bullion sellers I recently also purchased 2 5kg bars 4200ea from ABT refining auckland In talking with the guys their getting less silver to refine than demand so there having to import silver now.

[peat]

TradeMe prices now 33 and above for physical silver.

And with silver USD rising the whole month and yet NZD/USD falling in the second half there was a good rise in silver in NZ terms during November
, see chart



Gold may be relatively a better performer than silver but silver is still relatively a good performer compared to different asset classes. One must accept a certain volatility.

[JBmurc]

NIA Declares Silver Best Investment for Next Decade
National Inflation Association

We are less than three weeks away from entering the next decade. The most important thing you need to know entering 2010 is that silver is the single best investment for the next decade. In our opinion, investing into silver is the only sure way to tremendously increase your purchasing power over the next ten years.

Throughout world history, only ten times more silver has been mined than gold. If you go back about 1,000 years ago between the years 1000 and 1250, gold was worth ten times more than silver worldwide. From year 1250 to 1792, the gold to silver ratio slowly increased from 10 to 15 and the Coinage Act of 1792 officially defined a gold to silver ratio of 15. The ratio remained at 15 until forty-two years later when the ratio was increased in 1834 to 16, where it remained until silver was demonetized in 1873.

The gold to silver ratio remained between 10 and 16 for 873 years! It is only over the past 100 years that the gold to silver ratio has averaged 50. History will look back at the artificially high gold to silver ratio of the past century as an anomaly, caused by the dollar bubble and the world being deceived into believing that fiat currencies are real money, when in fact they're all an illusion. Next decade, the fiat currency experiment will end badly in a currency crisis. The wealthiest people will be those who bought silver today and were smart enough to research and pick the best silver mining stocks.

While the vast majority of the gold ever produced remains sitting in vaults, 95% of the silver produced has been consumed by industry for thousands of applications in such tiny amounts that most of it will never be recycled and seen on the market again. Nobody knows the exact above ground supply of silver today, but most likely it is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 billion ounces. That's a total worldwide market value of only $17.4 billion, when the world has over $7 trillion in foreign currency reserves, mostly in fiat currencies that they will need to diversify out of due to rampant inflation.

Besides the fact that the world has been ignoring the monetary value of silver, silver prices are artificially low due to a large concentrated naked short position. It's not a coincidence that the day silver reached its multi-decade high of over $21 per ounce in March of 2008, was the same day Bear Stearns failed. Bear Stearns was a holder of a massive short position in silver. In our opinion, this was likely a naked short position because there is nobody in the world who owns such a large amount of silver for Bear Stearns to have borrowed.

The reason why we believe the Federal Reserve was so eager to orchestrate a bailout of Bear Stearns, is because Bear Stearns was on the verge of being forced to cover their silver short position. Because the silver market is so small and tightly held, if Bear Stearns was forced to cover their short position, silver prices could've potentially rose to $50 per ounce or higher overnight. The world would've seen how economically unstable our country is and confidence in the U.S. dollar would've rapidly deteriorated.

JP Morgan still holds the silver short position they inherited from Bear Stearns. The concentrated naked short position in silver today is the largest short position in the history of all commodities, as a percentage of its market size. Eventually, JP Morgan will have to cover this short position or it could jeopardize their existence.

The best evidence that the short position in silver is naked and not backed by real silver, is the differential between what silver trades for on the Comex and what real people are willing to pay for physical silver on eBay. Every hour on eBay, there are dozens of one ounce silver coins selling for approximately $25. That's about a 43% premium over the current spot price of silver. With so much demand for physical silver, we doubt the silver shorts in the paper market will be able to manipulate prices downward for much longer. A major short squeeze could be right around the corner and silver could take off in a way that shocks even those who are most bullish.

We will soon be releasing our unbiased report reviewing all of the major online sellers of gold and silver bullion. If you would like your friends and family to receive our special upcoming report, please tell them about NIA and have them subscribe for free

[JBmurc]

In 1999, investors started buying 90% "junk" USA silver coinage dated 1964 or earlier, to prepare for Y2K, in case the banks crashed from computer failure, or bank runs. Prices for on those silver coins soared from about 5% over spot, to 50% over spot of $5/oz., in just a few months. We got a bit scared at that, and held on.

My grandmother had some bonds. My father next suggested that we try to convince her. So, I wrote up a small report about what I learned. I detailed that silver mine supply was about 500 million ounces, recycling was about 200 million more ounces, and government selling was about another 50 million ounces. Recycling included "investor selling".

Demand consumed it all, all 750 million ounces produced or recycled each year. Demand consisted of about 45% industrial demand, mostly in electronics, 25% jewelry & flatware demand, and 25% photography demand, and about 5% coin/medallion production.

The shocker was the relative numbers. At $5/oz., the size of the annual silver market was a tiny $3.7 billion, world wide.

In monetary terms, that was nothing. The money in US banks stood at $4 trillion, 1000 times as large.

She seemed a bit convinced, but where would she get silver, and where would she put it? She was too old to guard it, she was nearly 80. Sigh.

Very little has changed in 10 years.

Photography demand has dropped by about 10%, and investor demand has increased to about 10%, effectively replacing it, creating no new significant investment buying pressure.

Silver Eagle production has increased from 10 million coins to 20 million coins per year. In a 600 million oz. annual mining market, it's almost an insignificant change, this increase in coinage of 100%.

Silver has gone from $5 to $17.

M3, money in the banks, has gone from about $4 trillion to about $15 trillion.

The increase has been at about the same rates. Silver is just keeping pace with the inflation.

No significant money has yet flowed into silver, which is the event that will cause silver to vastly outpace in value all other investments or real property.

Popular press that writes about how much silver the ETF's "have obtained", have no clue about how much the ETF's have, since their silver is not able to be audited.

JP Morgan is the custodian of the silver for SLV.

JP Morgan has the largest short position in silver at the COMEX.

SLV's silver cannot be audited, as JP Morgan has the right to have sub custodians and sub sub custodians hold silver for the SLV. READ THE PROSPECTUS!

This means they can back up the SLV with long positions in futures, since "someone else" has the silver. So, SLV is backed by futures, and futures can now be backed by SLV.

It's now fraud backing fraud. But business as usual for the banks!

JP Morgan has $80 trillion in derivatives exposure, while the next largest banks have only $35 trillion, and the 4th largest has only $4 trillion.

What has changed significantly is that the fraud of "holding silver for investors", silver that was never purchased, and does not exist, has vastly increased.

Creating "paper silver" is similar to inflation. The effects of rising prices for REAL silver are not seen right away, there is a delay. The delay will one day manifest itself in silver rising much faster than it did in 1980.

The 1980 peak saw silver rise to $50/oz.

You can adjust for inflation in many ways.

1. If you go by government CPI numbers, the former peak would be about 2.5 times higher, or $125/oz.

2. If you go by the increase in M3, the increase in the paper money creation, which is the real inflation, then the increase is about 8 times higher, from about $1.8 trillion to about $15 trillion, so silver's "inflation adjusted" high would be $400/oz.

Silver moved up $10/day back then. We could see silver thus move up by $80 day sometime in the future, when things "blow up" in the financial world, or even more per day.

3. The third kind of inflation is the derivatives. There are a notional $1000 trillion of derivatives, mostly interest rate derivatives, or bets on the change in interest rates. People don't really buy very much gold in this era, they mostly place bets on the way they think interest rates will go, using highly leveraged bets. Mostly interest rates are flat. I suspect most of the bets thus fail. You need a change in rates for people's bets to pay off.

The comparative numbers are that the world's annual mine production of gold is about 2400 tonnes, or about 75 million oz., worth about $85 billion.

All the gold in all the world, ever mined in all of human history, stands at about 155,000 tonnes, or about 5 billion ounces, worth about $5.5 trillion.

The $1000 trillion of notional value of mostly "interest rate" derivatives simply dwarfs the gold market.

I write that more for future students of history than for people today. Most fools alive now simply don't get it. Future generations would simply not believe the stupidity of this generation, unless I wrote it down.

4. The fourth kind of inflation is a narrow subset of derivatives, including all the different kinds of "paper silver". This would include futures, options, ETF's, silver pools, silver certificates from Perth or Canadian Banks, and "over the counter" silver obligations.

For ten years, I was told that the "over the counter" silver obligations were unknowable, but probably the biggest kind of fraud.

Last year, I finally got a hold of some data on the over the counter silver derivatives.

The BIS report on commodity derivatives.

http://www.bis.org/statistics/otcder/dt21c22a.pdf

It shows there is $203 billion in "other precious metal" notional derivatives owed by all the world's banks.

That's mostly $203 billion of silver fraud, because the silver market is a $10 billion market, with investors only buying $1.7 billion per year!

We ought to know who the BIS is. The BIS is the Bank for International Settlements.

http://www.bis.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_fo...al_Settlements

"The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is an international organization of central banks which "fosters international monetary and financial cooperation and serves as a bank for central banks." It is not accountable to any national government.

The latest report shows an increase in the "notional amounts outstanding" in the "other precious metals" category, from $96 billion in Dec. 2008 to $203 billion in June 2009. They only report twice a year.

Please note, the entire annual silver mine production is about 600 million ounces, at $17/oz., is $10.2 billion.

Thus, the banks owe 20 times more "other precious metals" than silver is produced per year.

Does the "other precious metals" category include platinum and palladium? Sure. But those markets are as small, if not smaller, than silver!

The world produces about 8 million ounces of each.

Platinum at $1428/oz. x 8 million is an $11.4 billion market.

Palladium at $365/oz. x 8 million is a $2.9 billion annual market.

Few people try to accumulate platinum and palladium, it's nearly zero, less than 5% of those markets physically, nearly no buyers of those metals in our coin shops, and I suspect even fewer derivatives to match. Thus, nearly all of the "other precious metals" derivatives are silver.

I hope I didn't lose you, but here's more comparative numbers.

99.5% of silver investors are being defrauded by paper silver!!!

BIS "other precious metals": $203 billion.

COMEX futures silver contracts, 157,310 x 5000 oz. x $17: $13.3 billion.

Perth Mint gold and silver certificates: $2 billion

Annual investor demand for silver: 100 million oz. x $17: $1.7 billion

Thus, 99.5% of all silver investors, or more, do not have the silver they think they have.

If your silver is a number on a statement or on a piece of paper, I can tell you, it probably does not exist. The math shows it's probably impossible for it to exist.

It would have been impossible for the sellers of paper silver to have gone into the tiny $3 billion to $10 billion annual silver market to buy $200 billion of silver!

The BIS figures show they should have bought $100 billion of silver in the last year! FROM WHERE?!

If you have paper silver, you have to take delivery, or cash out, and buy real silver from a real seller of real silver.

Please tell me your story, on why you bought silver. When? What led you to it? Over how long?

Yes. I'm biased. I'm a bullion dealer. But I've been writing on silver for 10 years, and I've only started dealing last year.

I became one, in part, because too many of my readers were being defrauded, and telling me about the fraud.

Consider this: Why am I one of the most popular silver advocates in the world, when I'm just a tiny little player? There is $5 trillion of gold out there in much wealthier hands than mine. They are not telling you to buy gold. Why not? Maybe because they are trying to keep it a secret, because they want to buy more for themselves! Maybe because they have no intention of selling at these prices.

But gold and silver are mined each year. Miners have huge expenses, they MUST sell, and that accounts for most of new supply, thus, the focus on it for supply/demand considerations.

In other words, bullion holders, 99.999% of them anyway, are not telling you to buy gold, and they are not selling!

My readers tell me it can be almost IMPOSSIBLE to get silver out of the large companies perpetrating the silver fraud and interest rate fraud.

Let's remember, their silver is unauditable.

Gold and silver are as good as they ever were.

[airedale]

Hi JB, CXC trades on the ASX, are there any other silver stocks that you follow? Compliments of the season.

[JBmurc]

Hi JB, CXC trades on the ASX, are there any other silver stocks that you follow? Compliments of the season.

I hold TRY which will be producing a bit of silver soon

CCU-explorer(did hold awhile ago)
SVL-silver lake I don't know if this is the right ticker code but they are silver explorer

Personal my fav silver investment is .999 silver bullion in my safe