Price Of Silver

See topic " gold hot ...wear a glove or drop it "

"wonder how far silver will go up?"

Good question. I expect silver to track gold, and eventually become the "poor man's gold". A big shift is underway in China right now, and they will ramp up buying gold. Note that the Chinese do not have any state or employer sponsored pension plans, which encourages them to save. And gold and silver is a natural choice. Even now, physical gold is hard to find, and very little in the form of 1 ounce coins is available on ebay. As gold rises, I expect folks to buy silver. Right now the ratio of gold to silver is about 60 to 1. If that ratio holds, silver will track gold. But, as gold becomes unafforadable, presumably the ratio will narrow. When gold reached $850 per ounce in 1980, world GDP was about $9 trillion US, and all the above ground gold reached a peak value of about $2.7 trillion US that year. Today, world GDP is about $55 trillion US (6 times more in just 30 years), and all the above ground gold is worth about $5 trillion US. With the continued devaluation of the US dollar and all the currency being added around the world, it may be possible for world GDP to double within a just few short years. In a "healthy environment" it would double in about 12 years. Should that happen and should the same ratio of total gold value to world GDP hold again, gold could reach $5k to $6k per ounce. And if silver is at 50x gold, then silver could reach $100+ per ounce. Of course, a US gallon of gas will probably be about $10 or so by then... prices European's are already familiar with...

Numbers like this may look ridiculous NOW, but even $1,000 gold looked ridiculous a few years ago....

I am a precious metals fan and off and on own significant amounts of silver, gold and palladium. I am holding off buying right now because so many people believe precious metals are going up. One of the few absolutes in investing is that most people are wrong most of the time. The time to buy is when people are spitting on something, which makes me wonder about buying $US right now. I am up in Canada and can go back and forth between currencies to an extent.

Where's Gxseries, because he always has very good insight on the long-term supply/demand of precious metals against current market prices. From what I gather, prices for metals are driven by much larger factors than individual investors. Unless you're in that loop, it's not easy to predict the trends--despite all those sales pitches out there. So I don't even try to time the market...I sold my gold/silver a few weeks ago.

People in developing economies like India, China and others are actively buying up gold.
When there is not enough gold out there, silver becomes the next best option.
Silver has doubled in less than a year.
Silver was going for $8.50 / ounce last November, it is at $17.03 this Friday.

SHAFTA9a, they are worth 7.698 cents each (154% of face). The lowly copper penny still has the best cost / value ratio at a value of 1.946 cents (195% of face), but it just seems like too much work to sort copper one cent at a time (at least to me).

Over the last few years copper peaked at around $4/lb US and is now at almost $3 again. Nickel peaked at just under $25/lb, but has only come back up to about $7.80.