Tag Archive: Basic Reports

Gold Outlook 2024 Brief

This is a brief preview of our annual Gold Outlook Report. Every year we take an in-depth look at the market dynamics and drivers and finally, give our predictions for gold and silver prices over the coming year.

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Silver Fever, or Silver Fading?

We finally had a resolution, of sorts, in silver. Since April 13, we have had a falling price of silver (indicated as a rising price of the dollar, as measured in silver). And along with this price trend, a growing scarcity of the metal to the market (i.e. the cobasis, the red line). Indeed, the price (of the dollar) and silver scarcity move with uncanny coordination. Almost as if they are linked.

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Silver Update: Scarcity Gets More Extreme

Since our last silver article, the price of silver has dropped. With due respect to Frederic Bastiat, the price is the seen. The basis mostly goes unseen. We will take a look at the market data, revised for a few more days of trading.

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The Silver Phoenix Market

Listen to the audio version of this article here. The price of silver hit a peak over $26.50 on March 8. It spent about a month and a half breaking down, and then the bottom fell out. It’s currently down from that peak almost 8 bucks. Breaking Down Fundamental Silver Prices However, the opposite has been happening to silver’s scarcity. First, let’s look at a chart of the silver market price and the silver fundamental price.

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Buy Gold, Because…

It’s pretty, isn’t it? Gold, Liquid Gold, and Inflation. Gold has a unique appearance. It is also astonishingly heavy—much heavier than it has any right to be. It’s just an inch and a quarter in diameter yet weighs 0.075 pounds. Everyone should hold one in his hand (and own a few).

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What the Heck Is Happening to Silver?!

The dollar rose this week, from 17.87mg gold to 18.24mg (that’s “gold fell from $1,740 to $1,705” in DollarSpeak), a gain of 2.1%. In silver terms, it rose from 1.61g to 1.67g (in DollarSpeak, “silver dropped from $19.24 to $18.64), or 3.7%. As always, we want to look past the market price action. Two explanations are hot today. Let’s look at them first, before moving on to our unique analysis of the basis.

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Rare Gold-Silver Crystal Sighting

Something has happened which has not occurred since 2009. The silver basis—our measure of abundance of the metal to the market—has gone way under the gold basis. This means silver is less abundant to the market than gold. Here is the picture.

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Will Interest Rate Hikes Fix Inflation?

Senator Elizabeth Warren and President Joe Biden claim that inflation[i] is caused by greedy corporations. And they propose to solve this problem by making the corporations pay. Whether it’s extracting a “windfall profits” tax, crushing them under even more regulation, or attacking them with antitrust enforcement, the idea is the same.

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The Silver Chart THEY Don’t Want You to See!

On Thursday May 12, the price of silver fell about a buck. As with every one of these big price moves, the question is: what really happened? Below is a chart of the day’s action, with price overlaid with basis. Basis = future – spot. It is a great (i.e. the only) indicator of abundance or scarcity of metal to the market.

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Forensic Analysis of Fed Action on Silver Price

The last few days of trading in silver have been a wild ride.  On Wednesday morning in New York, six hours before the Fed was to announce its interest rate hike, the price of silver began to drop. It went from around $22.65 to a low of $22.25 before recovering about 20 cents.  At 2pm (NY time), the Fed made the announcement. The price had already begun spiking higher for about two minutes.  As an aside, we wonder a bit about how they keep...

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Time for a Silver Trade?

The price of silver has been going down, and then down some more. From over $28 a year ago, and over $26.50 a month ago, it’s now at a new low under $22.50. Four bucks down in a month.

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Oil, the Ruble and Gold Walk into a Bar…Part III 

Part III – Gold Standards, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Gresham’s law and gold. Is it even possible to return to a gold standard today? Is Russia leading the push, or do we need something else?  

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Oil, the Ruble, and Gold Walk into a Bar… 

Part I – Unpacking the narrative of how Russia is going to change the global monetary system. There is a Narrative about Russia and how it will change the monetary system. Many analysts in the gold community are promoting this story. There’s just one problem with this Narrative. It is like how Michael Crighton described the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect, stating that the newspaper is full of stories explaining how “wet streets cause rain.” 

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Human Action in the Silver Market

We have recently seen an increase in social media posts about the big increase in short positions by the bullion banks. What would motivate them to short a commodity during this period of inflation, much less a monetary metal when central banks are printing money with reckless abandon? And doesn’t their shorting of silver push down the price? 

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This is Not The Silver Breakout You’re Looking For!

Every once in a while, one regrets not acting sooner, or not acting soon enough. In our case, we did not publish this Tuesday evening. We should have. Today the price is down, and others may also call for lower silver prices.

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Inflation and Gold: What Gives?

Listen to the audio version of this article here! In the last Supply and Demand update, we discussed some different theories which attempt to explain what causes the gold and silver prices to move. We mentioned the: “…attempt to hold up a famous buyer of metal, while ignoring the thousands of not-famous sellers who sold the metal to said famous buyer.”

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What’s In Your Loan?

“Real estate is the future of the monetary system,” declares a real estate bug. Does this make any sense? We would ask him this. “OK how will houses be borrowed and lent?” “Look at this housing bond,” he says, pointing to a bond denominated in dollars, with principal and interest paid in dollars.

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Perversity Thy Name is Dollar

Breaking Down the Dollar Monetary System If you ask most people, “what is money?” they will answer that money is the generally accepted medium of exchange. If you ask Google Images, it will show you many pictures of green pieces of paper. Virtually everyone agrees that money means the dollar.

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Rising Fundamentals of Gold and Silver

 Prices move up and down, in the restless churn of our irredeemable monetary system. There are several schools of thought whose theories attempt to describe, if not predict, the next price move.

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Why a Yield on Gold Matters

Picture, if you can, a world in which gold circulates as the medium of exchange. People pay for everything, from groceries to rent, in gold. Employers pay wages in gold. Productive enterprises borrow gold to finance everything from food production to constructing apartment buildings. In other words, picture a world where there’s abundant opportunities to earn a yield on gold and finance productive businesses in gold.

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