Some poetic justice here. Right now,
An ounce of silver: $46.21 (kitco.com, 10:15AM PST US)
One share of JPM: $44.64
From Zero Hedge:
Silver Takes A Sizable Lead Over JPM
And in exclusively silly, but oh so symbolic news, the race track crowd bursts into a frenzy following the ultimate comeback story, as One Ounce Of Silver has now taken a full length lead over One Share Of JPM Stock into the final stretch.
(Kitco News) - Comex gold futures prices ended higher and set a record-high close of $1,438.00 an ounce Wednesday. Meantime, May Comex silver futures set a fresh 31-year high of $37.29. Major world events of late are still underpinning the precious metals markets on safe-haven investment demand, even though the markets, overall, are calmer so far this week. Comex April gold last traded up $9.90 an ounce at $1,437.50. Spot gold last traded up $8.80 at $1,438.00.
Gold spot, which continues to trade, is currently at $1,440. Silver spot is at $37.38, according to Kitco.
As the utterly irrelevant US stock market continues to levitate, the world continues to burn or get irradiated. I guess you could say, on a relative term, the US is the best place to invest..
As you can see in the silver chart to the left: $35.57 right now (Friday 3/4/2011, 1:18 PM PST).
Paper silver (SLV) closed today at $34.69, 2.47% discount compared to physical silver.
Gold also got the bid, US Treasuries, some. Still not many takers for the world "reserve currency", US dollar.
thanks to the sudden, collective saber-rattling by the West over #Libya. Currently (9:33AM PST),
Spot gold: $1,429.10
Spot silver: $34.53
according to Kitco.com.
If you are wondering why gold and silver have been selling off for the past few days while the news of shortage of the physicals is everywhere, here's the answer:
The COMEX hiked the margins on gold and silver again, along with a boatload of commodities that are rising thanks to Ben and the Inkjets printing digital money with abandon which is leaking mightily into M2. The new margins will become effective after the market close on Friday.
From Zero Hedge:
Wonder why the smart money was rushing headlong out of gold and silver over the past few days, and especially today in the AM session? Here is your answer: in tried and true fashion the Comex just hiked margins in gold, and silver by about 6%, and threw in a few other commodities to mask things up. And unlike the last time it did it, when it could at least pretend to justify its actions with the surge in gold price, this time with the PM complex dropping, we wonder what excuse the CME will use this time. Initial and Maintenance margins were just increased in everything from 10 Tr Oz Gold Futs, Comex 100 Gold Futures, Comex Miny Gold and Silver, E-mini Gold and Silver, Comex 5000 silver futures to Silver trade at settle. Also added were Copper, Iron Ore, propane, butane, and other nat gas. Most notably, and confirming that the administration and the money printing authorities are terrified by the surge in crude, the CME also hiked margins in various refined products and coal. The official scramble to "contain" the aftermath of Bernanke's lunacy is accelerating. We wonder when REDI, Prime Brokers and E-trade will comparable collapse purchasing margin for stock trading accounts. Of course, as with all other such superficial market interventions, the impact is shallow and is overrun in a matter of days.
And no...there was absolutely no leak this time. We promise.
Oh but gold and silver are "safe haven" commodities, and since the economy is recovering so fast and everything will be OK, or so our dear leaders are telling us, we don't need "safe haven" any more, do we?
Here's M2, from St. Louis Fed's FRED:
Consider it as buying opportunity, if you have fiat money to spare.
Today's US market was just as expected, a big pump to start the new year, except oil collapsed after the announcement that the Obama admin will allow some offshore drilling, taking silver with it.
Silver??? They both come from under the ground, but other than that, what correlation could there be between oil and silver?
But don't worry overmuch, silver bugs. The world's richest man, Carlos Slim of Mexico, may soon enter the silver market in a big way by buying into Fresnillo, "the world largest primary silver producer and Mexico's second largest gold producer" whose stock price more than doubled last year, outperforming the North American competitors.
King World News Blog reports:
A source in mergers and acquisitions out of Europe has alerted King World News that Carlos Slim may be looking to enter the silver market in a big way. Gold and silver are in big bull markets and this is attracting the attention of some of the smartest money around the globe. James Turk commented, “If this deal does happen Eric, this is going to make the silver shorts choke.” Fresnillo has a current market cap of roughly $19 billion.
The European source commented, “This deal has been floating around for a while, but I think this time it is going to happen. It’s in his backyard. This is the world’s richest man wanting to get into silver.”
I view this as the only way for the richest man in the world to enter the silver market at this point in terms of any scale, is that your take as well?
“Yes, I agree with that. Let me just add that when he buys into it (Fresnillo) he will have the leverage to silver he is looking for. There are very few ways to get into silver with the amount of money he has, this is the most likely option at this point. He has to pay a hefty price or otherwise the deal will not happen. It is beginning to look like the longer he waits, the more he will have to pay. It is a bull market and things to tend to get more expensive, not less.”
King World News reached out to James Turk to get his comments. When asked about the potential buyout Turk stated, “If this is true he is following in the footsteps of John Paulson and his exposure to gold through Anglo Ashanti. In Carlos’s case, when you have billions of dollars to invest, it is impossible to buy physical silver in any significant quantity with the market so tight.
The point I am making is that Paulson ended up buying 30% of Anglo-Ashanti for a few billion dollars giving him exposure to the gold price.
If you have three, five, ten billion dollars to invest, you cannot buy physical gold or physical silver without sending the price sky high. So what can you do? You can buy a mining company.
Just so you know, however, TA-wise, a correction may be due for silver (and gold). Technical indicators I use (MACD, slow stochastics, RSI, CCI, etc.) have been showing a negative divergence vis-a-vis the price action.
A one-ounce silver coin bears an image of Max Keiser.
From silverkeiser.com's official press release:
Bid Bullion releases its limited edition silver bullion to commemorate Max Keiser and his efforts in increasing the prices of silver.
Bidbullion.com, a new penny auction selling precious metals at pennies on the dollar, has released a limited edition silver bullion by the name of the Silver Keiser.
This move couldn’t have been taken at a better time. On November 11th, 2010, Max Keiser, a finance critic and former stockbroker, told the listeners of the Alex Jones show that they should start “Google Bombing” the term “Crash JP Morgan, Buy Silver” to increase the rankings of pages that aimed at exposing the obvious short in the paper silver market.
Keiser and Jones’ underground campaign was met with a worldwide success, and went viral. As a result, the value of silver increased more than 8% in value thus far and continues to rise. According to Keiser, people’s efforts should only cease when silver is finally sold for its true value, which is $500 per physical ounce.
With such a historical event unraveling before the whole world, Bid Bullion decided to release the limited edition Silver Keiser. Jeremey Hillsdon, Bid Bullion’s co‐founder said, “We wanted to help capture the moment by commemorating Keiser's life's achievements thus far, by creating a piece of history.” Aside from thanking Keiser for his efforts, the Keiser Silver will help remove 171,250 ounces of physical silver from the global markets and place them in people’s reach.
Bid Bullion has created 25,000 units in 1/10, ¼, ½, 1 ounce and 5 ounce rounds. Each of these has the picture of Max Keiser engraved into its fine, flawless surface, and has the quotes "Global Insurrection Against Corporate Occupation" and also "Crash Banksters, Buy Silver". In addition, each bullion will be marked with its related weight, the dates 2010/2011, and .999 Fine Silver to add more value for silver investors and collectors.
The irreverent Max Keiser is calling for $500 silver (it is $27 today). How is he proposing to achieve that? Everyone go out and buy silver coins.
From Maxkeiser.com:
The Crash JP Morgan Buy Silver Manifesto or: How to Get Hedge Funds To Do Your Dirty Work For You And Drive the Price of Silver to $500
1 – JP Morgan has a huge short position in Silver – estimated to be 3.3 billion ounces – tied to an enormous, extremely precarious derivatives position.
2 – Various exchanges around the world have been caught manipulating the price of Silver using ‘naked’ short sales i.e., counterfeiting.
3 – Of all the actively traded commodities traded around the world, Silver is one of the least plentiful and its supply is shrinking, but its industrial uses are multiplying. The ‘networked’ age of global communications is built with Silver.
4 – Hedge funds are taking physical delivery of Silver – adding substantial demand as well as exposing these exchange’s naked short positions – who are already scrambling to deliver – jacking prices up to multi-decade highs – and inspiring these predatory funds to buy more Silver.
5 – There are billions of people around the world who are aware that banks have been committing fraud and embezzlement who are upset that their politicians seem only interested in helping the banks commit more fraud – who are looking for a cheap way to non-aggressively fight back and decapitalize these banks.
6 – Many of these people have the access and wherewithal to purchase 1 ounce of Silver – thus removing hundreds of millions of ounces of Silver from the ‘paper’ market – forcing additional scrambling by dealers to fill orders by buying back short positions – inspiring the funds to buy and take physical delivery of even more Silver – creating a colossal short squeeze – in which JP Morgan stands to be the biggest loser.
7 – Buying Silver is how the world is monetizing its anger at the banks who stole their wealth.
8 – Crash JP Morgan Buy Silver
It was not just gold, but other precious metals, too. Particularly silver, which hit $29 intraday and ended the day below $27.
Now, we may have a culprit whose mischief on behalf, no doubt, of the major bullion banks known to be very, very short silver caused the damage today not just on silver but across the board precious metals, dragging the stock market down along the way.
All it took was for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, who operates COMEX, to change the margin requirements for silver.
SLV, an ETF that tracks silver, tumbled on almost 6 times the average volume.
From Zero Hedge:
PM Selloff Reason: CME To Raise Margin Requirements For Silver From $5,000 To $6,500
And if that doesn't work, there is always confiscation.
"CME confirmed silver margins raised from $5000 to $6500 (30%) effective 11/10 settl - no other metals effected"
Presumably, this affects the maintenance margin. And is a lovely way to kill paper longs.... but not shorts, of course.
This is also the last remaining self-regulating way for the market to tell the genocidal lunatic in the Eccles building to go fornicate himself, and his excess liquidity.
And that's whatever the fiat currency US dollar does, which is up today. Crude oil is behaving like a commodity (down), but agricultural ETFs that I track are also defying the dollar. Cotton (BAL), coffee (JO) are up, sugar (SGG) just turned green.
Food and gold/silver. We're going back to the medieval era before the central bankers appeared and started fractional reserve banking ...
From Kitco.com page:
Gold that is, and silver is not far behind.
Over the past 10 years, Dow Jones Industrial Average is pretty much flat to slightly down, U.S. dollar has lost about 25%. Gold is up almost 300%, silver is up about 230%.
To be sure, John Maynard Keynes called the gold standard 'barbarous relic', not gold itself.
James Turk, founder of GoldMoney, writing more than 5 years ago in this article, says the real 'barbarous relic' is central banking. I tend to agree.
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