Gold and silver have fallen after yesterday’s
gains due to the very poor consumer confidence data and Federal Reserve
murmurings of further monetary easing. Gold is trading at USD 1,792.50, EUR
1,245.10, GBP 1,098.30, CHF 1,471.50 and JPY 137,624 per ounce. While silver
is trading at USD 41.21, EUR 28.53 , GBP 25.31, CHF
33.33 and JPY 3,155 per ounce.
Silver Spot $/oz - G1 Daily
8/31/09-8/31/11, Bloomberg Finance
Gold’s London AM fix this morning was USD
1,826.00, EUR 1,264.19, GBP 1,121.14 per ounce. Gold
fix was higher than yesterday’s AM Fix which was USD 1,791.00, EUR
1,243.49, GBP 1,097.56 per ounce.
Gold remains less than 5% from its record nominal high
of $1,913.50 per ounce while silver remains nearly 20% below its record
nominal high just below $50/oz.
Gold has stolen the limelight from silver in recent
weeks with gold reaching a series of new record nominal highs.
But silver has been quietly consolidating after the
sharp falls seen at the end of April and in early May when many claimed the
silver ‘bubble’ had burst.
Media coverage of silver remains nearly nonexistent
which is bullish from a contrarian perspective.
Technically silver is looking better by the day and is
now trading not far above its 50 and 100 day moving averages (see chart
above).
Today the 50 day moving average is trading at $38.70/oz and the 100 day moving average is trading at
$38.74/oz. The 50 DMA is rising after recent price gains and looks set to
cross the 100 DMA in the coming days. This will be a bullish technical
signal.
Silver’s sell off was very sharp but volatility
and a correction was expected and warned of once silver reached the nominal
inflation adjusted high of $50 per ounce.
Value buyers continue to accumulate silver bullion. Jim
Rogers, one of the most prescient investors of recent times and who arguably
has a better track record than Soros in recent years, remains bullish on gold
and particularly silver.
A tiny minority of retail investors has begun to look
at silver, but it remains largely the preserve of the smart money, a very
small amount of people in the United States and Europe concerns about
currency devaluation and store of value buyers in Asia.
There are many factors that strongly suggest that
silver remains a prudent buy and diversification today.
But there are three key metrics which strongly suggest
that silver remains far from a bubble if not undervalued.
The first is silver’s real price today adjusted
for the inflation of the last 31 years. Silver’s real high in 1980 was
$130 per ounce – more than double the price today (see chart above).
The second is the gold silver ratio which has averaged
15 to 1 throughout history due to geology and the fact that there are 15
parts of silver to every 1 part of gold in the earth’s crust.
Gold Silver Ratio – 40 Year (Quarterly)
Silver, unlike gold, is an industrial metal and a very
significant amount of all the silver that has even been mined has been
consumed, like oil, since the dawn of the industrial revolution in the 19th
century.
Most analysts with a long term view believe that the
ratio is likely to revert to the mean of 15 to 1 in the coming years.
The third metric is comparing silver’s current
bull market to that of the 1970s.
Silver has risen by a factor of 10 in the last 9 years
– from near $4 in 2001 to over $41 today.
In its bull market from 1971 to 1980, silver rose by
over 3,199% or by a factor of more than 32 in just 9 years culminating in the
blow off top in 1979.
Today, the physical supply of silver bullion is much
less than in the 1970s. Also there is the ‘Asian factor’ and 3
billion people with growing incomes, many of whom see silver as a store of
value against currency depreciation.
Demand for silver in Asia has been increasing and in
China alone silver demand is increasing from a near zero base. The demand was
not present in the 1970s.
Were silver to replicate the performance of the 1970s
it would have to rise 32 times or to $130/oz (32 X
$4.05).
Interestingly, $130/oz is
also silver’s real high from 1980.
Our long held belief that silver could reach the real
high, inflation adjusted, of $130/oz remains.
However price forecasts should always be taken with a pinch of salt and
silver’s value is as financial insurance and a store of wealth that
cannot be debased.
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SILVER
Silver is trading at $41.31/oz,
€28.60/oz and £25.34/oz.
PLATINUM GROUP METALS
Platinum is trading at $1,848.75/oz, palladium at
$779/oz and rhodium at $1,800/oz.
NEWS
(Gallup)
Americans Choose Gold as the Best Long-Term
Investment
(Reuters)
Gold edges down; eyes on Fed cues on stimulus
(Bloomberg)
Gold May Drop as Rally on Federal Reserve Minutes
Prompts Investor Selling
(CNBC)
Italian Town Mints Own Money to Fight Austerity
COMMENTARY
(Forbes)
U.S. Elites Begin To Confront The Paper Dollar
(Money Morning)
Why Gold Will Replace U.S. Treasuries as the World's
Last Risk-Free Investment
(Business Insider)
Gerald Celente Disses Roubini After Moving 100% Into Gold
(GoldSeek)
Can we Trust Government Statistics on the Economy?
(King World News)
Stephen Leeb - Gold Skying Because of Bernanke Desperation
(Speculative-Investor)
Steve Saville - Gold: The
Big Picture
(The Standard)
China punters sway gold market
(Wall Street Journal)
Gold’s Just Going to Run on Ahead and Price in
QE3 for You
Mark O’Byrne
Goldcore
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