Silver shortage?
 

I sure didn't see this coming

https://www.kitco.com/news/2021-01-31/Unprecedented-silver-demand-forcing-bullion-deals-to-stop-taking-orders-before-market-opens.html

Think Game Time only silver...

Its the reddit mafia. They are doing a pump and dump on silver.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/31/investing/silver-price-squeeze-reddit-wallstreetbets/index.html

.....

Silver companies are heavily shorted, so now they are under same attack as Game Stop.
Nothing to do with silver as a metal. There is enough of that (not as if it is really usable, but at least more usable than gold).

I looked at several silver mining stocks, one was significantly shorted (SI 21% SHO), the others were not. They are all popping but I don't know how much scope there is for a short squeeze, versus a long mania.

I think the more interesting question is physical vs financial silver. Far more silver is traded on paper in the futures market than is immediately available for physical delivery. I think the idea is to squeeze that disparity. I have no idea yet if the r/wsb mob has enough capital or focus to do that. GME was a teeny stock ($2BN mkt cap?), silver market is many hundreds times larger.

I have just superficially read about all this Game Stop business and thought that the volumes / market cap are small enough where people can gang up on it and make it move. I would have thought that something like the silver market would be much larger and not as easily pushed. I guess that's why we only see the needle move 10%?

Plenty of industrial uses for both!

Actually on reddit they are all saying this is a tactic by the hedge fund guys, trying to convince people to jump on the train so they can claw their cash back. It is not a reddit push apparently, just reported as so.

Hunt bros?

The redditors are denying any involvement. They say this is the hedge funds trying to pump up silver before they sell and try to cover losses from last weeks debacle.

Getting too deep for me.


I do know that silver is near 4X what I bought it for and it might be time to sell.

Silver almost hit $30 an ounce today. I’m thinking about selling, but I’m wondering if any of the local coin dealers are even interested in buying knowing that it’s just going to drop back down in a week or two.

I am not sure how this fits into the equation if at all, my own though is that we have enough silver in the ground domestically to meet most any real need. In the late 90s I lived near Park City, UT. Took a trip one day to the silver mine in Park City (that’s right all those ski slopes are over some silver mines). The mines made more money back then selling the melted snow (water) back to the ski resorts to make more snow. - Park City/Deer Valley don’t get as much natural snow as you might be lead to believe by virtue of being on the back side of the mountain range from SLC. At the time our tour guide said silver would have to hit 50+ dollars an oz for the mine to reopen...

Oh yea, the world’s largest open pit mine just south of the great salt lake pulls plenty of silver out of the ground too

I remember it going over 50 about a decade ago ... briefly ;)

One futures contract for /SI is 5000 Troy oz.
324lbs of silver. Last night it was running about $135k.
Today it was $145.

Don’t trade commodities futures - too rich for my blood - but I have a little SLV so I looked for fun.

Well I guess silver is handy for its low specific resistance.

For many decades, if not a century, Eastman Kodak was the largest consumer of silver. Not anymore. Digital photography changed that forever.


I have a stash of silver quarters and half dollars. As a kid I would have gone nuts looking through them and sorting them by dates and quality. Now I know they are really just silver at a known verified quality and worth their silver value only.

when I was a kid in the early 60's you could still find old rare coins in bank rolls
wish I had saved the 1880 CC or O mint marks back then
even in the mid 70's when I had an ice cream truck I got a fair number of silver coins
some rare dates and mint marks are worth 100 times the silver value even for low grade coins if very rare

I remember their attempt to corner silver...they failed. If I recall, got it up to around $32 before it declined..