jrf30 said:
This was in an article telling people to BUY silver. <<When this Gold bull market ends, everything except Gold and the dollar will crash. Gold will be locked to debt/dollars. Not Silver. Silver is poised to end the bull market with a worse crash than 1980.>>
Odd statement to make.
I'm MUCH more bullish on silver than on gold long term. the usage of silver will make it scarcer than gold over time, and I think someday we may even see silver hit parity with and then surpass gold. Not for many years, and maybe after I'm gone, but I think silver, with its industrial uses and such, will surpass gold someday in price. (For now, I'll take a 20:1 ratio with a big smile if it gives me that! HA!)
JRF,
My interpretation is that he meant that when the bull market finally ends, gold will hold up much better than silver, much like it did in 1980. I agree with that view. In 1980 to 1985 gold dropped from 850 to 300 roughly. In the same time period silver went from 50 to 5, which is a much greater decline percentage wise.
Silver is widely used in industry as you mention, but there is plenty of inventory for such use. People keep talking about a silver shortage, and yes when you are talking about heavy hitter speculators seeking delivery on their Comex contracts all at once (like what is supposedly going to happen in March), then there could be a "shortage" with respect to enough silver being around to satisfy their contracts in the warehouse. But this does not mean there is an actual shortage of supply on the planet regarding what is necessary for use in industry. At some price holders will sell to make their profit if they are speculators or even collectors. Is that number 35, 40, 50 or 100? At that time there will be a supply glut and price could fall greatly, even in the face of a bad dollar situation.
Further, since the price has gone up over the past years more mines are getting up and running and I feel supply will be more than necessary each year for industry and investment demand from what I have read. As cost of production of an ounce is roughly 1/3 or less per ounce of the going rate, more miners are going to get into the action. In other words there is still plenty in the ground from what I have read in mine reports, etc. That does not mean though that in the next few years speculators cannot drive the price past 100+ in a bull market frenzy like you see at the end of a bull market (a greater version of what we have seen over the past week), but every bull market ends at some point, and it would be bad to be the one left holding the bag when that happens.
But if we finally end up in a depression situation someday, the demand for such items using silver will drop-consumer products, etc. If the dollar drops and we have a depression, gold will hold up better than silver, based on what happened in other countries in the past that had similar situations occur, such as the hyperinflationary depression in Weimar republic, etc.
All just my opinion. Wish I had a crystal ball to know for sure.
Jim