Most Popular
1. Banking Crisis is Stocks Bull Market Buying Opportunity - Nadeem_Walayat
2.The Crypto Signal for the Precious Metals Market - P_Radomski_CFA
3. One Possible Outcome to a New World Order - Raymond_Matison
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
5. Apple AAPL Stock Trend and Earnings Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
6.AI, Stocks, and Gold Stocks – Connected After All - P_Radomski_CFA
7.Stock Market CHEAT SHEET - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.US Debt Ceiling Crisis Smoke and Mirrors Circus - Nadeem_Walayat
9.Silver Price May Explode - Avi_Gilburt
10.More US Banks Could Collapse -- A Lot More- EWI
Last 7 days
Stock Market Volatility (VIX) - 25th Mar 24
Stock Market Investor Sentiment - 25th Mar 24
The Federal Reserve Didn't Do Anything But It Had Plenty to Say - 25th Mar 24
Stock Market Breadth - 24th Mar 24
Stock Market Margin Debt Indicator - 24th Mar 24
It’s Easy to Scream Stocks Bubble! - 24th Mar 24
Stocks: What to Make of All This Insider Selling- 24th Mar 24
Money Supply Continues To Fall, Economy Worsens – Investors Don’t Care - 24th Mar 24
Get an Edge in the Crypto Market with Order Flow - 24th Mar 24
US Presidential Election Cycle and Recessions - 18th Mar 24
US Recession Already Happened in 2022! - 18th Mar 24
AI can now remember everything you say - 18th Mar 24
Bitcoin Crypto Mania 2024 - MicroStrategy MSTR Blow off Top! - 14th Mar 24
Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - 11th Mar 24
Gold and the Long-Term Inflation Cycle - 11th Mar 24
Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - 11th Mar 24
Two Reasons The Fed Manipulates Interest Rates - 11th Mar 24
US Dollar Trend 2024 - 9th Mar 2024
The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - 9th Mar 2024
Investors Don’t Believe the Gold Rally, Still Prefer General Stocks - 9th Mar 2024
Paper Gold Vs. Real Gold: It's Important to Know the Difference - 9th Mar 2024
Stocks: What This "Record Extreme" Indicator May Be Signaling - 9th Mar 2024
My 3 Favorite Trade Setups - Elliott Wave Course - 9th Mar 2024
Bitcoin Crypto Bubble Mania! - 4th Mar 2024
US Interest Rates - When WIll the Fed Pivot - 1st Mar 2024
S&P Stock Market Real Earnings Yield - 29th Feb 2024
US Unemployment is a Fake Statistic - 29th Feb 2024
U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - 29th Feb 2024
What a Breakdown in Silver Mining Stocks! What an Opportunity! - 29th Feb 2024
Why AI will Soon become SA - Synthetic Intelligence - The Machine Learning Megatrend - 29th Feb 2024
Keep Calm and Carry on Buying Quantum AI Tech Stocks - 19th Feb 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

140 Years Of Silver Price Volatility

Commodities / Gold and Silver 2011 Sep 06, 2011 - 08:10 AM GMT

By: Professor_Emeritus

Commodities

Best Financial Markets Analysis ArticleAn interview was published on July 6, 2011, with the title Eric Sprott - Paper Markets Are a Joke: Prepare for Bullion Prices to Go Supernova. Interviewer: Chris Martenson, Ph.D. (See: www.financialsense.com/node/5777) One of the questions Martenson asked was gold versus silver as an investment. Sprott came out on the side of silver that should trade at the hallowed gold/silver price ratio of 16 to 1. His argument is that gold and silver coins are destined to come back and circulate, so while the gold coinage will take care of large, the silver coinage will take care of small purchases - just as they did when the monetary system of the United States was established at the turn of the 18th century.


Gold at $1900 and silver at $45 gives you a gold/silver price ratio of 46. This suggests that in spite of the fast appreciation of silver for the past year, it has to keep appreciating faster still in the future to meet the target ratio of 16 to 1. Let's accept, for the sake of argument, that Sprott's figure 16:1 is where the gold/silver price ratio will ultimately stabilize. We may as well admit that Sprott's theory is intellectually seductive. However, it is strewn with pitfalls tempting investors to their downfall.

To get a perspective on the gold/silver price ratio, look at the following table showing the interim highs and lows for the past 140 years (previous to that, the ratio was very stable at 15:1, as shown by the chart from which our table was digested, see: www.measuringworth.com). Note that gold/silver price ratio marked 'hi' means an interim low silver price, and one marked 'lo' means an interim high silver price, that is, the relationship is inverse.

1871 lo 15
1913 hi 40
1919 lo 17
1933 hi 85
1939 lo 50
1943 hi 100
1971 lo 17
1991 hi 90
2011 lo 30

Even if the ratio will continue to fall from here, as it has for the past twenty years, it could have violent reversals of longer or shorter duration, as it has for the past 140 years. Incidentally, the above table shows the unprecedented long-wave volatility in the history of prices driven by pure psychology unrelated to any supply/demand fundamentals.

We may expect volatility to increase, and psychology to continue to reign. Reversals will happen when least expected, often based on nothing more than a crude hoax. For example, a joker could start a rumor on the Internet that new Federal Reserve notes denominated in gold units are already being printed in Washington, including fractional notes, suggesting that the need for subsidiary silver coins has been eliminated. Or a rumor, later denied, that all the gold looted by the Japanese in Asia during World War II has been found in the Philippines, and turned out to be far greater than any previous estimate. Or a rumour that the Chinese are buying all the silver and gold properties in the United States.

Incidentally, the name of the perpetrator of the funniest hoax ever, Toilet Paper King Johnny Carson, was recently connected to the name of Eric Sprott by Bob Moriarty, see his article Facts on Silver, www.321gold.com, April 25, 2011, from which the quotations below are taken. In 1971 Johnny, presumably in fulfillment of a wager, suggested to his audience on the syndicated TV shows he hosted, that the United States was facing an imminent toilet paper shortage. Of course, it was a hoax.

"Next day millions of rolls of toilet paper flew off the shelves of every store and by noon there was no toilet paper to be had anywhere in the United States for a whole month...

"Eric Sprott seems to have done something that hasn't happened since the days of Johnny Carson.

"On October 28, 2010, Eric Sprott started his own closed paper silver fund PSLV with an initial public offering of 50 million Trust Fund Units.

"It's still paper silver like SLV or the CEF fund. It has some unique features, not benefits, just features. He has done a brilliant job of promoting it.

"He went on to purchase $300 million worth more physical silver to put in the closed fund. As a result of his excellent promotion, as of last Wednesday when silver was selling for $46, if you bought the CEF silver fund, you had to pay $47.88 (a premium of $1.88) - but if you bought PSLV, the Sprott Silver Trust, then you had to pay an incredible $57.73 (a premium of $11.73 or 25%) for just one ounce of silver!

"I'd say that Eric Sprott's buying $300 million worth more silver at the top was incredible timing. He pocketed probably $60 million in profits.

"Is Eric Sprott bullish on silver? You bet. He has 60 million reasons to be bullish. He could buy right at the top and watch silver fall 30%, while still making money!

"How wise was it for investors to pay a 25% premium for silver? I'd leave it for you to figure out. Eric Sprott is both rich and brilliant."

As for his customers, paying 25% premium, you can certainly say that they are neither. At the time of this writing the price of silver is still falling from $43 as gold is slicing through the $1900 barrier with the flying colors.

Bob did not say that it was unconscionable for Eric to whet his customers' appetite, put them into silver at the top, and make them pay 25% over spot.

What Eric realized, to his customers' chagrin, was that it is so much easier and certainly more profitable to hustle silver around its highs than around its lows, especially just at the time when then price is about to break.

What is the lesson from the 140-year volatility of silver? Wise investors should not touch the highs with a ten-foot pole. Even if the gold/silver price ratio went to 16 today, there is no guarantee that it will not bounce back to 40 tomorrow.

Prepare for supernova bullion prices, as Eric says? I'd say you had better prepare for the zig-zags before we get there.

Beware of the fund manager, crying from his rooftop that the paper silver market is a joke, while down there under the roof he is selling paper silver at a 25% mark-up.

DISCLOSURES: I own no Sprott Trust Fund Units, nor do I intend to buy any during the next 72 hours - nor ever thereafter.

Calendar of events
The New Austrian School of Economics course in Munich has just been completed successfully. The next course is tentatively scheduled for March/April, 2012. For details, consult: nasoe@kt-solutions.de

The Seminar in Hong Kong has been cancelled. There will be a Seminar in Auckland, and a Conference in Wellington, New Zealand, in November. Stay tuned for details.

"GOLD STANDARD UNIVERSITY" - Antal E. Fekete aefekete@iisam.com

For further information please check www.professorfekete.com or inquire at GSUL@t-online.hu .

We are pleased to announce that a new website www.professorfekete.com is now available. It contains e-books, archives, news about GSUL, and material of current interest

Copyright © 2011 Professor Antal E. Fekete
Professor Antal E. Fekete was born and educated in Hungary. He immigrated to Canada in 1956. In addition to teaching in Canada, he worked in the Washington DC office of Congressman W. E. Dannemeyer for five years on monetary and fiscal reform till 1990. He taught as visiting professor of economics at the Francisco Marroquin University in Guatemala City in 1996. Since 2001 he has been consulting professor at Sapientia University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. In 1996 Professor Fekete won the first prize in the International Currency Essay contest sponsored by Bank Lips Ltd. of Switzerland. He also runs the Gold Standard University on this website.

DISCLAIMER AND CONFLICTS - THE PUBLICATION OF THIS LETTER IS FOR YOUR INFORMATION AND AMUSEMENT ONLY. THE AUTHOR IS NOT SOLICITING ANY ACTION BASED UPON IT, NOR IS HE SUGGESTING THAT IT REPRESENTS, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, A RECOMMENDATION TO BUY OR SELL ANY SECURITY. THE CONTENT OF THIS LETTER IS DERIVED FROM INFORMATION AND SOURCES BELIEVED TO BE RELIABLE, BUT THE AUTHOR MAKES NO REPRESENTATION THAT IT IS COMPLETE OR ERROR-FREE, AND IT SHOULD NOT BE RELIED UPON AS SUCH. IT IS TO BE TAKEN AS THE AUTHORS OPINION AS SHAPED BY HIS EXPERIENCE, RATHER THAN A STATEMENT OF FACTS. THE AUTHOR MAY HAVE INVESTMENT POSITIONS, LONG OR SHORT, IN ANY SECURITIES MENTIONED, WHICH MAY BE CHANGED AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON.

Antal E. Fekete / Professor_Emeritus Archive

© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in