Icarus

Heh, it's got a long way to fall before I make a loss. To be honest I wouldn't mind massive price falls, back down to fifteen dollars or so. One last opportunity to buy in at bargin basement prices. I suppose huge increases in price would be OK too. Volitility like we see at the moment is more interesting to traders than holders of metal.

“The coin sales are an indication of the level of interest in silver,” said James, who oversees $2.4 billion in Xenia, Ohio. “It’s too popular. When the crowd discovers a good deal, it’s usually long over.” So, when lots of people want to buy something so the price must be about to fall. I suppose if lots of people wanted to sell all at the same time prices would soar. Amazing!

Yeah, me too. Central banks around the globe are printing money by the truckload. Governments have huge unpayable deficits. There is around a hundred times as much 'paper gold' as actual metal. Interest rates are at 0%. But if you suggest that people buying a little gold they act like your trying to trick them! And now that the price has risen a little they tell me it's in a bubble

'CME Group announced Thursday that margin requirements are being hiked for silver, copper and palladium futures, effective after the close of business on Friday.' http://www.commodityonline.com/news/CME-Gr...-34662-3-1.html Moves like this make them look desperate. But let's hope this latest attempt to force the price down succeeds and I can buy some cheap physical. It's always nice to be given cheap silver.

'The easiest way for the CFTC to accomplish the silver conspiracy advocates' goal of eliminating the massive short position of JPM would be to up the margin maintenance on silver futures and not let anyone buy any more futures until open interest shrinks sufficiently.' General price discovery works like this. When there are more buyers than sellers the price rises. More people want to buy and less want to sell. When buyers and sellers balance an equilibrium is reached. Conversely when there are more sellers than buyers the price falls. Price discovery on the COMEX silver market works a little differently. When there are more buyers than sellers JP Morgan shorts massively. The price does not rise. It falls instead. Repeat untill most of the world's silver is consumed.

People are asking for the silver so shorts must be covered. You might be suprised to learn that one of the functions of the comex is the exchange of commodities. Strange as it may seem comex contracts are not just gambling tokens. People who own contracts allowing them to buy silver at, say, 15 dollars per ounce might just be tempted to buy silver for 15 dollars per ounce. Radical stuff, I know.

I think he was inspired by Max Keiser's $500 http://goldismoney2.com/showthread.php?110...-for-500-silver

Do you have a version of that chart adjusted for inflation?

The market set the price of silver at around $30 per ounce. The comex then manipulated the price down. There can be no arguments. This was open interference with price discovery. Can you imagine the outcry if this was done to key stocks? But I don't think it will work this time. The huge number of naked shorts shows us that the price rises were not caused by a credit fueled bubble. No, this has all the hallmarks of a short squeeze. In fact it looks like it could turn out to be the mother of all short squeezes.

It's an admission of defeat.

I like it when this happens.

They had a dividend reinvestment scheme that I signed on to. Good divis if I remember correctly. But the capital loss wiped out those gains. Only lost a few thousand, so it wasn't the end of the world. It does show how much prices can fall by, though. If you'd have told someone in '99 that lloy would fall to less than a pound per share they'd have laughed at you. I guess you'd get a similar reaction if you told someone you think house prices could fall by 80% in the next couple of years. Maybe house prices wont fall by so much. But they could.

Price falls in a bear market can be astounding. Back in 2002 I bought some loyds shares at about 4.50 per share. I figured they had crashed by 50% from their peak, so they must be near the bottom. And you can't go wrong with a sound, blue chip shares in a bank, right? You need to remember that this was just after ten years of the media reporting that shares only go up, and how, in the long run, shares outperform al other asset classes. So I held these things for a year or two, waiting for the market to rebound. They never did. Eventually I cut my losses and sold them for about 3.50 per share. Their price now? Seventy five pence. That's a fall of about 90% from their peak, not counting inflation. And when house prices begin crashing properly I can see lloy becoming just about worthless I like to think of my experience as being like a modern day greek tragedy, or maybe an Aesop's fable. And you know how at the end of an aesop's fable there is a little one-line pearl of wisdom? Well the wisdom at the end of mine is 'whatever you do, don't buy a house in 2011.'

'The latest figures from the Bank of England revealed that net lending – which strips out redemptions and repayments – dropped to just £86 million in July, a steep fall from June’s £518 million.' 86 million sounds like a very small amount of lending. How many homes would that buy, a few hundred?

Over the next twelve months to two years I'm expecting big falls. House prices rose to unbelievably high levels. They have a long, long way to fall before they reach depression levels. And we are in a depression. The auctions are a good leading indicator. As more repos go onto the block and fewer people are able to get credit price falls like this one will become common Lot 209 : House, 2 beds, Thamesmead, London Property Status : Sold at Auction 73 Waterside Close, Thamesmead, SE28 0GT Guide Price : £130,000 : Sold Price : £130,000 http://www.mustbesold.com/index.php?option...tus=&live=0 last sold for £229,950 in 2006. http://www.houseprices.co.uk/e.php?q=SE28+...p;s=11&n=10 Why buy now, when you can get the same house for half the price in twelve months?

Seems like some of us need reminding just how insane the UK property bubble is. Remember people saying 'We will be the last generation that will ever be able to afford our own homes'? How about fifty year motgages? People buying houses with people they don't even know, both parties taking out huge, unaffordable mortgages? The frenzied horde are paying hundreds of thousands of pounds for flats in the middle or birmingham, newcastle and manchester. Houses that in the year 2000 were worth so little that they were impossible to mortgage are now unaffordable for all but the very rich. Property shows litter the TV schedules. Mortgages have been given to anyone and everyone. People self certified their own incomes. Just about everyone has a credit card and huge debts. Saving is being activley discouraged and debt viewed as a good thing. The UK government is borrowing 350 000 pounds every minute of every every day. In a vain attempt to keep this madness going the BOE has dropped its base rate to 0.5%. 0.5%!!! A rise of 0.25% would bankrupt thousands and thousands of people. We are living in extraordinary times. People will look back upon the madness of these past few years with wonder. Those who question selling too early may wish to listen to Lord Rothchild's advice - "I have found an easy way and I stick to it. I simply cannot help making money. I will tell you my secret if you wish. It is this: I never buy at the bottom and I always sell too soon."

edit- post was boring and snotty.

Pulled this off a post on GIM. Good chart The chart is logarithmic, which means the trend is exponential. If this contines at some point he price go stratospheric very quicky. BTW, anyone notice the ftse rocketed back over the last couple of days? It's almost as though whenever the imbalances in the economy try to correct someone steps in with a printing press and makes things worse.

Yeah, I remember buying maples off ebay for £9 and feeling ripped off, as the price was so much over spot.

Care to share? In the mean time here are some highlights from a Moneyweek article. 'Silver rose from under $1.50/oz in 1970 to nearly $50/oz in 1980 - more than 25 times. The average price of silver in 2001 was $4.37/oz. A 25-fold increase on that would take it to over $110/oz.... It is estimated more than 90% of all the silver that has ever been mined has been consumed by the global photography, technology, medical, defence and electronic industries. In 1900 there were 12 billion ounces of silver in the world. By 1990, that figure had been reduced to around 2.2 billion ounces, according to commodities-research firm CPM Group. And today, there are less than 1 billion ounces in above-ground refined silver. And that is projected to shrink even more. Industrial demand has been outstripping mining supply for most of the last 20 years. It hasn't resulted in significantly higher prices yet because the world has been able to fill the gap from inventories and official government stockpiles. However, today the US government's stockpile is all but gone, and sales from sources such as China, Russia and India are declining, too. Silver stocks are near an all time low. Very importantly, silver is very unusual as its supply is inelastic...' http://www.moneyweek.com/investments/preci...lver-02011.aspx Nothing we don't already know, but it doesn't hurt to hear it again.

The market views silver as an industrial metal, as well as a store of value. The turmoil in the eu points to a fall in industrial demand, hence the fall in price. In the long term fundamentals will assert themselves, so don't worry about it.

Silver just hit 19.80 paper dollars. 20 today?

We have lift off.

I've never sold any of my stack, but if bullion seems to go for a premium on ebay. Although why anyone would want to buy paper with their silver just before a hyperinflation is beyond me.

I also have a couple silver Buffalos. Nice coin. I find that Silver coins look much nicer when you have them in your hands, as they are so shiney. You can't' really get the effect from a photo. Generally I try to get maples, as they are govenment issued. I have a superstition that they may be more readily accepted in a crisis.