February 15, 2011

James Turk: Silver is Approaching Stage Two of its Bull Market

Back in April 2007, I wrote about the three stages that appear in every bull market, and more to the point, that gold was approaching the end of stage one. Gold back then was still trading around $690, and therefore well below its then record high of $850 reached in January 1980. My view was that 'gold looks ready to make a new all-time high. When that happens, stage two begins. There will not yet be widespread excitement about gold in the next stage, because that won't occur until stage three. But when gold makes a new record high, and particularly after it breaks into a 4-digit price, people will begin paying attention.'

I wrote a follow-up article in November 2009 entitled Welcome to Stage Two of Gold's Bull Market, just two months after gold broke above $1,000. Focusing on the change in prevailing sentiment, I noted how differently gold was being treated. "During the first stage of a bull market, the media and most investors alike focus on past issues, rather than future potential. Over the past decade one consequently heard all the reasons not to own the gold'But there is a notable difference in this stage compared to stage one.

Look how many people are writing and talking about gold. Gold has moved from apathy and neglect ' stage one characteristics ' to growing attention. But importantly, instead of embracing gold and analyzing it to determine relative value, today's attention is one of widespread disbelief and skepticism that gold can climb higher. These are exactly the responses one should expect to emanate from stage two." I concluded by noting that at some unpredictable point in the future, gold will enter stage three "when gold no longer is relatively good value."

I did not make any mention of silver in the above two articles. It too has three stages, but silver is still mired in stage one, which began in February 1991 after silver had collapsed to $3.50. It was an astounding 93% decline from its January 1980 peak of $50. But as we can see on the following chart, $3.50 was silver's low, and its price has been rising ever since.



This chart shows a massive accumulation pattern, marked by the green lines. This pattern is a story of strong hands and weak hands, specifically, of silver moving to the former from the latter.
From its $50 high in January 1980 to its $3.50 low in February 1991, the weak hands were shaken out. At that point, the accumulation by strong hands ' who were buying because the recognized that silver was an exceptional bargain ' became the dominant force. Their buying power was stronger than the selling pressure of the weak hands, and the price of silver responded by starting to climb. It was classic stage one action, but here's the important point.

Silver is still in stage one. It won't advance into stage two until $50 is exceeded, just like gold did not enter stage two until its previous high of $850 was hurdled.

I expect that silver will exceed $50 this year, which is a point of view I first mentioned in my outlook for 2010.

Admittedly, I was a little early with my forecast about when gold would enter stage two. So perhaps I will again be early by forecasting that silver will enter stage two of its bull market this year. Regardless of the accuracy of my timing, one thing is clear. Because it is still in stage one, silver remains good value.

March 5, 2011

Jason Hommel: silver going to US$500/oz

Here's an excerpt from Jason Hommel's newsletter, where he argues on why the metal is eventually going to hit US$500/oz...
"Recently, I've been hammering the point that there are two major reasons why silver is headed to $500/oz.
First, silver hit $50/oz. in 1980, and money creation has increased 10 times since then, so the true inflation adjusted price of silver will be $500.
Second, when 1% of money in US banks buys silver, it will be 1% of about $18 trillion, which is $180 billion. If you divide that by 700 million, you'd get $257/oz., which would leave no silver for industry or the rest of the world, which implies a silver price of at least about $500.
So, here then is the problem.
How will they prevent silver from going to $500/oz.? They can't. They can only slow down the rise, or let it rise fast. (while increasing volatility, and creating temporary price dips) And how will they prevent the implications of such a massive rise to $500?
See, the problem is twofold.
If they let silver run fast to $500, say over 6 months, the dollar will be perceived as collapsing, and could continue to collapse to zero.
But if they let silver continue to go up "slowly" at only 30% per year, for the next ten years to take us to $500, this would create a worse problem. See, after nearly 20 years of precious metals only going up, people will begin to notice -- more than notice. They will begin to say, "precious metals only go up, they never go down". And that's how price bubbles begin to form, making silver go from fair value to over valued.

And if silver were to become over valued, that would drive the price from $500 to $5000, and could continue and ultimately collapse the dollar to zero value.
So that is quite the problem for the people who are trying to prevent the silver price from rising.

The silver storm is coming. Prepare.

People ask some interesting questions when I point out that silver is headed to $500. They ask, "Gee, who will buy it when it's that expensive?" Did they not comprehend the argument? Only 1% of people will be buying silver when silver is $500/oz., (a hundred times more than today, when only 1% of 1% of people are buying silver) but yet, 99% of people won't have bought any silver in the recent year, at $500/oz.

Some analysts today say that silver is going to go down, because "everybody loves silver". Such analysts don't know anything about the fundamentals, which trump any kind of other analysis! Silver might hit the news due to new highs, but the facts are clear. Only about 1% of 1% of money is buying silver each year. That's one dollar out of 10,000!

Silver's not a popular investment. Not yet. But it will be. IT WILL BE! Prepare for it. Get it now. Anywhere below $50 to $100/oz is cheap..."

For more from Jason Hommel on silver you can visit his web site "Silver Stock report"
resource : copied from Silver-owl's blog.

TEH