Detailed Explanation to a Good Question from "The Golden Truth"

One of the blogs I follow, The Golden Truth, received a comment in the form of a question today.  I thought it should be shared, and I hope Dave does not mind.

The comment:
Dave,
Any thoughts as to why gold and silver have been moving in opposite directions to each other the last couple of days?

Dave's reply:
Good question. Primarily because this is what is known as "roll" week in the futures market. The last day you can hold May silver contracts is tomorrow, unless you fully fund your account for delivery. Since most long positions are speculative funds who have no intention of taking delivery, there is usually heavy selling in the week prior to "first notice" which is this Friday.

Typically the gold/silver manipulators (JPM, HSBC, GS, etc) will try to force the market lower during "roll" week, because they know they have a large amount of natural sellers. In fact, it can be argued that silver is performing much better than usual right now and I think because it seems that a large number of the longs are rolling forward to the next front-month, which is silver. Typically in the past, on a day like today during roll week when you wake up and silver is getting hammered, it just stays down. Silver has been bouncing back all during the last trading week.

The Golden Truth can be accessed at: http://truthingold.blogspot.com/
Go there and read today's post: Physical Gold Buying vs Paper Fraud

In it Dave states "It is becoming more readily apparent to anyone observing and participating in the trading/investing of gold and silver that the physical market is beginning to overwhelm the fraudulent, fractional bullion practices of the Big Wall Street Banks. This is a scandal that ultimately looms much larger than anyone realizes and will take gold and silver to prices that will shock even astute, long-time precious metals market participants."

The Top 20 Silver Producing Countries in 2008

Top 20 Silver Producing Countries in 2008 (in millions of ounces)

1. Peru - 118.3

2. Mexico - 104.2

3. China - 82.8

4. Australia - 61.9

5. Chile - 44.9

6. Poland - 38.9

7. Russia - 36.1

8. United States - 36.0

9. Bolivia - 35.8

10. Canada 21.5

11. Kazakhstan - 20.2

12. Turkey - 10.1

13. Argentina - 9.9

14. Sweden - 8.4

15. Indonesia - 8.0

16. Morocco - 7.8

17. India - 7.1

18. Guatemala - 3.2

19. Iran - 3.2

20. South Africa - 2.7

Source: The Silver Institute. 2010. http://www.silverinstitute.org/supply_demand.php#supply

Precious Metals Trader Blows Whistle on Market Manipulation

Many people in the precious metals (PM) market have long suspected market manipulation by JP Morgan and other large banks. These firms have allegedly been keeping down the prices of gold and silver. I personally believe there is more manipulation on the silver price because of the many industrial applications of silver; however, it would not surprise me if both markets were heavily manipulated.

Today, Andrew Maguire, a former Goldman Sachs trader blew the whistle on gold and silver price manipulation. According to an article by Michael Gray of the New York Post, Maguire explained JPMorgan's role in the metals pits in both London and the US, and how they can generate a profit either way the market moves. Of course JPMorgan denies the allegations and says that no one in the firm is familiar with Andrew Maguire.

Despite gold's rise each of the last 10 years, Bill Murphy, chairman of the Gold Antitrust Action committee believes the price of gold today would be closer to $2,300 an ounce if the price just moved with inflation, but Maguire believes the price should be even higher given the fear trade that would have sent prices spiking during the financial crisis in 2008-09. Both PMs have seen a recent spike since Maguire's e-mails became public

According to e-mails that Maguire sent to Commodities Futures Trade Commission (CFTC) regulators, he was uncannily accurate in his predictions of how the PMs would trade on release of the January jobs report. Maguire stated that The prices of gold and silver have been allegedly suppressed by JPMorgan and HSBC. Maguire laid out the banks’ plan in e-mails to the CFTC prior to trading on the Comex on Feb. 5, 2010 by contacting the CFTC via e-mails. On February 3, 2010 he sent an e-mail giving them a heads up for a manipulative event signaled for Friday, Feb. 5th, 2010. Then, on the 5th, Maguire sent an e-mail to confirm that the silver manipulation was a great success and played out precisely as he had predicted.

To read the Post's article in it's entirety go here.

Learning Corner: Silver in Other Languages

Language		Language		Language		Language
Afrikaans:	Silwer	Finnish:	Hopea	Latin	Argentum	Scottish Gaelic:	Airgead
Albanian:	Argjendi	French:	Argent	Latvian:	Sudrabs	Serbian:	Сребро
Amharic:	ብር	Friulian:	Arint	Limburgian:	Zèlver	Serbo-Croatian:	Srebro
Arabic:	فضة	Galician:	Prata	Lithuanian:	Sidabras	Sicilian:	Argentu
Armenian:	Արծաթ	Gan:	銀	Lojban:	rijno	Slovak:	Striebro
Asturian:	Plata	Georgian:	ვერცხლი	Low Saxon:	Sülver	Slovenian:	Srebro
Azeri:	Gümüş	German:	Silber	Luxembourgish:	Sëlwer	Spanish:	Plata
Basque:	Zilar	Greek:	Άργυρος	Malay:	Perak	Swahili:	Agenti
Belarusian:	Серабро	Guarani:	Itatĩ	Malayalam:	വെള്ളി	Swedish:	Silver
Bengali:	রূপা	Gujarati:	ચાંદી	Manx:	Argid	Tajik:	Нуқра
Manipuri:	প্রাটা	Haitian:	Ajan	Maori:	Kawata	Tamil:	வெள்ளி
Bosnian :	Srebro	Hakka:	Ngiùn	Marathi:	चांदी	Tatar:	Kömeş
Bulgarian:	Сребро	Hebrew:	כסף	Min Nan:	Ag	Telugu:	వెండి
Catalan:	Plata	Hindi:	रूप्यम्	Nahuatl:	Iztāc teōcuitlatl	Thai:	เงิน
Cebuano:	Silver	Hungarian:	Ezüst	Norman:	Ergent	Turkish:	Gümüş
Chinese:	銀	Icelandic:	Silfur	Norwegian :	Sølv	Ukrainian:	Срібло
Chuvash:	Кĕмĕл	Ido:	Arjento	Occitan:	Argent	Urdu:	چاندی
Corsican:	Argentu	Indonesian:	Perak	Persian:	نقره	U.S.A :	Silver
Croatian:	Srebro	Irish Gaelic:	Airgead	Polish:	Srebro	Uzbek :	Kumush
Czech:	Stříbro	Italian:	Argento	Portuguese:	Prata	Venetian:	Arxento
Danish:	Sølv	Japanese:	自然銀	Quechua:	Qullqi q'illay	Vietnamese:	Bạc
Dutch:	Zilver	Javanese:	Perak	Ripuarian:	Silber	Welsh:	Arian
Erzya:	Сия	Kapampangan:	Pilak	Romanian:	Argint	Yiddish:	זילבער
Esperanto:	Arĝento	Korean:	은	Russian:	Серебро	Zhuang:	Ngaenz
Estonian	Hõbe	Kurdish:	Zîv	Sanskrit:	रूप्यम्	Zulu:	Isiliva

http://www.mindat.org/min-3664.html

 

The Most Dangerous Man in the Mid South: The-moneychanger.com

I cannot take credit for finding this unbelievable article.  Kirsty Hogg, author of Gold Wars gave me the reference. This article should be required reading for anyone who barters or is thinking of bartering with PMs.  Since there is a demand for such legalized bartering, or paying for goods and services with silver and gold, everyone should read what happened to this man when he tried to do that very thing.   The article is entitled "The Most Dangerous Man in the Mid South?" and can be found at the-moneychanger.com/articles_files/dangerous.phtml.

Silver Predicted to Outperform Gold This Year

Investors were buying PMs today seeking the safety that the shiny stuff brings over a pandemic of struggling currencies. The EU's multibillion-euro bailout for Greece is sketchy on details and now Spain is at risk for losing its triple-A credit rating from Moody's along with the U.S., U.K., France and Germany. If the EU continues to follow the precedent that no member of the eurozone can be allowed to default, many analysts are anticipating further euro debasement and subsequent inflation.

That is thought to cause today's silver price jump.  Silver increased $0.23 per Troy ounce to close at $17.34.  Also, today there was  a very interesting video on TheStreet.com that I recommend everyone watch.  In this video, Alix Steel reported that David Morgan, founder of Silver-investor.com expects that silver will outperform gold by as much as 30% this year.  The link to the video is here.



A book on silver investing by Harvey Snyder
Investors which way to go, silver: Truly one of the best hedges against inflation

How and to Whom Should You Sell Your Scrap Silver?

I thought long and hard about even writing this article. Since I buy scrap silver, and I have other friends in the business. I hope this educational piece does not come back to bite me on the rear. The answer to that question should be no one, unless you are using the proceeds to buy a better grade of silver.  I understand that most of the people who follow this blog have an understanding of the way buying and selling precious metals works. This post is not really aimed at them although it might help them if they are not familiar with the pennyweight (dwt) portion of the Troy system. This post is primarily aimed at the visitor who does not understand how to trade in precious metals. I am particularly adamant about this for two reasons. One may seem a little bit selfish, but I assure you those who know me know I am not selfish. I do believe in capitalism, and I believe that everyone who has a business is entitled to make a profit. However, when the taking of profits becomes so excessive at the expense of others who are less experienced in the business of precious metals, I just call it greed. By now I am sure you are saying to yourself “is he gong to get reason number one. Well, here it is.

I buy scrap silver and gold. I prefer silver and anyone who has read my blog knows why, but I will also buy gold. When I buy scrap silver, I will offer what I believe is a fair price for both parties. This leads me to my second reason. I do not like to see people getting ripped off by the “Cash 4 Gold” dealers or the “Gold Parties” like the Tupperware parties my mom used to host. I did market research when I got into this business to see what the competition would offer a customer for gold or silver. The first time I checked a dealer for prices, silver spot was around $18.00 a Troy ounce. There are 31.1 grams (g) in a Troy ounce. That means .999 silver was $0.58 per gram and Sterling (92.5% pure) would be around $0.54 per gram. The dealer told me that he paid $0.25 per gram, less than half price. I do not remember what his prices on gold were but similarly they were about half of the melt value for that karat. At that time I was paying anywhere from $0.41-0.45 per gram for Sterling. I figured 20-25% of the melt value was enough for me.

To make things worse, I did a little investigative reporting last nght by going into a dealers store. I took a few piece of 14k jewelry with me. To start off, they do not use grams as a unit of measurement, they use pennyweights (dwt). I am sure this is purely to confuse the customer. Few people that are not in the business know how many grams are in a troy ounce, but even less knows how to use pennyweights. A pennyweight is measurement in the Troy system equaling 24 grains or the twentieth part of a Troy ounce (there are 12 ounces in a Troy pound. One dwt is equal to 1.55517g. The price they were paying for gold was $14.00 per dwt of 14k gold and like wise10k gold wad $10.00 per dwt. The spot price for gold was $1101.50 per Troy ounce for .999 or 24k, which mean 24k gold melt value would be $35.42 per gram rounded up, and 14k gold melt value would be $20.66 per gram or $32.13 per dwt. This means that they are paying a good bit less than half of the melt value; they are paying 43.6% of the melt value.

Now, I am not telling you this to get you to sell your gold and silver to me. I am just trying to help you make an educated decision. Just because the “gold man” has a nice office in a strip mall does not mean you are going to get a good price for your PMs. Imagine what the rent on that office must be, you are paying all of his overhead expenses. You are better off finding an independent (like me) that has very little overhead expenses and can pay 70-75% of the melt value. I may even be shooting myself in the foot here but if you cannot find someone willing to pay you a fair price, sell it on Ebay. I buy scrap silver very often on Ebay, and many times I will lose an auction because, regular folk are buying up all the PMs they can, and paying very close to melt value.

I am going to leave you with one more piece of advice. Before you part with that piece of scrap silver of gold, think about our current administration that is spending us into a black hole of debt that we will never be able to get out of. The fiat currency we use now will one day be worthless, and that gold ring or silver spoon you hold in your hand may one day buy your groceries. That is all. Buy silver, buy soon!