What in the Sam Hill is going on with precious metals?
As of the time I am typing this silver is trading at a spot price of over $76 and that just jumped since last I looked a few minutes ago (it closed near $80). The chart is crazy (courtesy of J.M. Bullion) ….
One year ago it was trading at just under $30, $29.81 to be exact. That is a more than 250% return in one year with most of that coming in the last couple of months.
Gold is trading at over $4500 as of right now….
That is versus $2,634 a year ago. While gold is up $1,866 as a percentage return it is only around a 70% increase. Pretty snazzy but nowhere near silver.
When conversation turns to precious metals it is common for some people to get pretty riled up like King James Only fanatics. For some reason it is an intensely personal thing.
It seems that there are two possible scenarios here.
- The metals market is being bought up like crazy because the financial system is teetering on the brink thanks to massive debt and inflation.
- People are driving up the price of silver and gold because they are spooked and it seems like the thing to do.
After decades working in financial services, I know this: most people are sheep when it comes to making investment decisions. I used to watch people buy into stocks when they were trading at record highs and then selling when the stocks bottomed out. Most individual investors are not rational and just do what they TV/smartphone tells them to do. I made a decision a long time ago to not invest in anything I didn’t understand after an ill fated decision to buy shares in Enron (“What do they do? Don’t know but the stock can’t go any lower!”).
What am I doing in my role as a blogger and absolutely not a financial adviser and definitely not giving investment advice? I am holding my silver not primarily because I think it is going to endlessly go up but for the same reason I bought it before, as a means of buying when the SHTF. I don’t like gold for that purpose, what are you going to trade a one ounce gold coin you paid thousands of dollars for, a can of SPAM? Investment returns aside you can buy something like 60 one ounce silver coins for the same you could buy one gold coin for and the silver will be far more tradable.
Of course if it really goes tits up, no one will be trading anything of real value for gold or silver. Firearms to protect your stuff, shelf stable foods, medical supplies, etc. are more critical than precious metals.
My only advice is generic: in investing, it is almost always a bad idea to chase the latest fad. That’s all I have to say about that.
My 401k had evaporated when I got the statement in January 2009. This was the second time it happened the first in 2000-01 with dot com and 9/11. I was 48 and broke for retirement and hold and it will come back did not seem to be sound advice. This old man stopped putting money in 401’s, I left what was still in them but never added a dime. I bought my first computer and went learning. Jim Rodgers said to invest in what you know and understand, so I have lots of antique firearms. Second, I learned about money. All unbacked fiat currencies fail. Every one, every time, 100% perfect failure rate. I followed advice from Bill Holter, Jim Sinclair, Egon Von Gryerz and a whole host of others including the US constitution and the bible. I have bought nothing for my retirement account but gold and silver since mid 2009. Dollar cost average has been one paycheck a month until April of this year. I bought real money, money I can hold and could not be happier. I have 1 once silver and junk for trade and barter. And 1 ounce gold to buy expensive things like land or houses. What goes up can come down but considering 38 plus trillion in debt and counting I consider the risk small.
Keep stacking brothers and sisters. Kitco closed silver at $79.27 an ounce Friday. GloboHomo is bankrupt and insolvent.
The East is rejecting the transfaggot, weaponized dollar and demanding physical against the paper derivatives.
Derivatives are not only fake and gay, they are how (((The Bankers))) have suppressed metals for the last 45 years. There hundreds of paper ounce futures for every physical ounce held in Londonistan and Jew York.
This gay porn stag flick is finally cumming to an end. The East is willing to spread the arbitrage up to $9 per ounce to tell Uncle Sambo to fuck off.
Keep stacking. It’s gonna keep skyrocketing. Protect yourself. I am not a nigger or a financial advisor.
It IS going to keep skyrocketing for silver, since it’s an essential element in the modern digital/electronic age… I really can’t think of one item that DOESN’T require silver or gold or both to be manufactured for our Internet Of Things. And the paper sliver is just about all that’s left in actual reality. When it’s just paper left, the modern world of production stops.
The real value of junk silver-dimes, quarters, etc. is that they are legal tender. I can buy needful things with them after the debt buck goes full Weimar. I hope.
Yes, and those “junk” silver coins are conveniently weighted and stamped with their face value.
For decades my family has been ragging on me to dump my coins and invest in things of “real value” (equities, REITS, bonds, etc.). “You can’t EAT those coins in a SHTF scenario, right?”
Sure. I agree. Beans before coins, every time.
But, once prepped up (& continuing to do so every day) that farm stand down the road may trade for bullets rather than dimes, but as commerce rekindles after the SHTF cools off, having a portable, trusted medium of value exchange will be priceless.
There’s good reason why G&S were valued throughout human history!
Can’t eat equities, bonds, or REITs either. Likely the first two are only in electronic form in some brokers’ computer. And can you prove what properties exactly you are invested in? Can you access the value in any of those if the system crashes?
Great questions–with answers obvious to all on this site.
Which is who we stack. And why we collect beans as well!
“why”
Cold Steel for an Iron Age.
Saving up old wheat pennies and almost have a roll.
Use change at the $1.50 store.
Flooding with the fiat printing press was a great idea.
(not really)
This is the best fit to reality that I have found: https://vblgoldfix.substack.com/p/eric-yeung-the-global-silver-situation
Having 400:1 paper contract ounces for each ounce of physical silver that is unencumbered and available for delivery seems like a bit of a problem for ETFs and such as well…
Plus you can hook up a 9-volt, somewires and a cup of distilled water and make antibacterial and antimicrobial goodness.
Historically gold is worth about 16 times an equal amount of silver.
That ratio has been artificially manipulated at times. With silver’s value at 16:1
silver should be well over $200.00 an ounce currently. I bought mine at $5.00 oz
years ago, but as others have said, I’m in it for the long run. I would not trade it for dollars
as we have more than enough toilet paper already. Absolute worst case scenario, I melt it
down to make bullets for reloading. The Lone Ranger told me it’s good for werewolves and other creatures of the night. I think he meant Somalis.
My comfort zone is simplicity. If metals are spiking I try to look past what is happening to see what it might mean.
Simplistically as it gets, the fiat dollar is becoming worth less as an ever increasing rate.
Trump promises a “golden fleet”, yet of the 500+ large commercial vessels currently being built in the world, THREE are being built in FUSA. Its all smoke and mirrors, made for tv pretending.
Buying metals might or might not be the smart move right now, but getting out of fiat currency is the right move for sure.
True, dat!
Years ago, my CPA brother-in-law said, “The greatest hedge against inflation is OWNERSHIP.”
Thus was launched my prepper mindset!
I admit that I quietly laugh inside as my friends brag about their ETF shares in Precious Metals. Sure, if you actually own it you must defend it, but that was always a given!
One concern is that, if HSBC, JPMorgan, DeutscheBank, etc., begin to lose their shytte, will they make the “Bail-In” play of the century? Will “The Great Taking” become a real thing?
Molon labe!
Keep stacking indeed.
Things get bad enough everything from .22 to freeze dried coffee crystals to salt and pepper to bar soap to tomato seeds will be currency to the right buyers/sellers.
“…fiat dollar is becoming worth less…”
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By definition, fiat currency has zero value.
Fiat currency — aka ‘dollar’, ‘peso’, ‘whatever script they use in India with their shxt-covered hands’, etcetera — merely offers an exchangeable medium based on buyer-seller trust in the issuing organization.
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In fUSA, an increasing number of folks are reluctant to place any amount of trust in Federal Reserve Bankers… a wholly-owned solely-owned subsidiary of that flimsy clumsy house of cards known as ‘irsael inc’.
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Now, nobody is suggesting those inbred half-wits collectively known as ‘NOSE-HATS’ should be nuked from orbit.
However well-deserved and certainly satisfying, some might consider that rude and post-glow call for a time-out until cooler heads prevail.
Other folks might disagree with the concept of a time-out until after the game is finished.
.
keyword : behind every blade of grass
“This time it’s different” are famous last words in the investing world. Thus I’m not willing to discount the people who are saying this is a massive leveraged short squeeze like the last two times silver went parabolic. I’m also unwilling to say that the people who say this is an historic repricing that’s going to go to triple digits are wrong. I just don’t know, and I don’t think anyone who is talking really knows either.
What I do know is that back in 2020 when our government created $4 Trillion in new dollars out of thin air due to the Covid “emergency” it was a predictable as the sun setting in the west that eventually precious metals would reprice to the new reality, and strongly. The fact that the reaction was somewhat delayed (for whatever reason) means the opportunity to arbitrage the difference between devalued 2021 dollars and the repricing event for gold and silver has already largely passed. Now you are playing arbitrage on the 2025 dollar and the current value of gold and silver. In short, retain your cool and don’t let FOMO (fear of missing out) guide your decision making. From here, things are very unpredictable in the short term.
I’m not going to suggest that there’s ever a BAD time to exchange devaluing fiat currency for real money, but there are better times and there are worse times. A better time was anytime 2021 to the beginning of this year. At the present it is difficult to tell.
Well said.
Stacking PMs, mainly silver, began for me back after Obama became pResident in 2009. I did it as a store of wealth, and doing so has served me well since then. When my ex and I divorced in early 2013, I had about seventy six silver eagles saved up. The ex got half and I ended up having to liquidate my share in order to get a place to live, since I had to pay temporary alimony to her on just my income from work. It wasn’t enough to cover two households, but somehow I managed. Silver was trading at around $35.00 an ounce then, and I got about $29-30.00 an ounce at a local jewelry store below the $35.00 spot price. It was enough to pay the security deposit, first month’s rent, and the cost of a rental van to move my belongings. Since then, I’ve managed to rebuild my stash of PMs and I learned a valuable life lesson in turn (Apart from never getting married again). PMs are the ultimate emergency fund.
Agreed. And go physical, rather than paper on the silver if you buy in at this point in the rise (bubble?).