Some of us have been following an interesting story that picked up at the start of the millenium: the rise of gold. The older ones among us remember gold spiking up to over 800$ US an ounce in 1981, only to drop back to a low of around 250$ at the turn of the millenium. Of course, gold's history is far richer and ancient than this, but that would be fodder for another post entirely. Most of us who have followed gold recently missed out. It is now trading close to 600$ an ounce and will most certainly finish the year above that level. Why did we miss out? Well, the definition of a good investment is one that no else wants! (buy LOW sell HIGH).
What even less people have been following is the story of silver prices. To pique your interest a little. The largest silver investor in the world now is Warren Buffett who holds I believe 180 million ounces... of course that's likely less than 1% of his portfolio, poor guy... but you might want to take a look at it for yourself. Here are a few charts.. one of the last month outlining a quick rise which I will explain, and the 5 year chart which shows how the price evolved parallel to gold, but actually at a faster pace.
So, what is going on with silver? Like gold, silver has been the target over the last few decades of a world conspiracy to discredit the ancient forms of money, backed by a store of value, to be replaced by fiat money, which is only backed by the full faith of the government (hence, greenback for US dollar.. there is nothing backing it). Silver has not been traditionally stored in government vaults like gold, but has been used for money over a few millenia. An edge of silver over gold is that it actually has quite a few industrial uses which destroys (as much as it can be destroyed... let's say rather makes it go away in an unusable form) whatever silver you use in the process. One of them, which is as we know in decline, is for photography (the old kind, not digital).
Recent Comments