Topic: Commodities - Bull or Bubble? (1 of 1), Read 65 times
Conf: Gold & Silver
From: Argantonius of Tartessos lemetrocafe@yahoo.it
Date: Wednesday, April 26, 2006 08:43 AM
Hello:

I'm posting this article by GATA contributor/collaborator Frank Veneroso. He persistently sustains we are in a commodities bubble (except, maybe, for gold), the prices of which will revert to their means. This view is diametrically opposed to others, such as Adam Hamilton, who believe we are in a true demand-driven commodities bull, driven especially by China's voracious appetite.

In another paper I will post, Veneroso states:

"When the hedge fund mania for metals abates — which it will, for they are traders, in the end — silver is likely to crash, and it may visit once again the sub $5.00 zone for an extended period. Even if the gold price holds."

I'd like to hear cafe members' take on this. Real demand, or a bubble?

Best,
Arg.


 Veneroso’s View 1 March 16, 2006
Blanco Research, L.L.C. For the week of March 1, 2006

Long-Term Look: 256 Years Of Commodity Prices

Commodities:
The Long View
March 16, 2006
1.) Look at this chart. In the last two-and-a-half centuries there have been only nine big moves in commodity prices.
2.) They have almost all been associated with war-related inflations in the general price level. They have been due more to such inflation than to an increase it the relative price of goods.
3.) They have always reverted to the mean in real
[i.e., inflation-adjusted] terms. And usually with alarming speed, as they tend to spike.
4.) The rise in commodity prices this time has been as large in nominal
[i.e., "money of the day"] percentage terms as any single cycle move.
5.) But it has had no discernable impetus from war-related inflation. It is anomalous in that it is a persistent rise in real terms.
6.) We are either in a new “Chindia Era” or investment and speculative flows are responsible.
7.) I argue the latter. Financial flows have created historically unprecedented “overshooting”.
8.) History suggests we will mean-revert...and quickly...from this spike top.

My Case for a Speculative Bubble in Commodities...Revisited
I have made this point again and again: the current cyclical bull move in commodities is, in percentage terms, the largest amplitude and longest duration super cycle bull move in commodities in a half century. It is as large or larger in real terms as any in history over a single “cycle”.
There have been very few cyclical bull moves in commodities that can even compare — at most perhaps nine over a period of 250 years. Almost all of them have been associated with wartime inflations. That makes the current cyclical bull move in commodities anomalous indeed.
In nominal terms, this cyclical bull move exceeds, in percentage [nominal, evidently] terms, the move from 1968 to 1974 and the subsequent move from 1976 to 1981. To be sure, the entire move from 1968 to 1981 exceeds that of this cycle — but the time period involved was twice as long. Also, there was a huge increase in the general price level from 1968 to 1981. Then almost all indices of general price inflation increased by almost three times. So most of that overall increase in commodity prices was due to inflation in the general level of prices and not to the relative price of commodities.
By contrast, inflation has been minimal since late 1999 [??], making the increase in the real price of commodities in this cycle greater than that of the 1968-1981 super cycle.
If you look across this chart, you’ll see that most of the big moves of commodities were due to inflations related to wars. That was true for the bull move at the time of the Vietnamese War from 1968 to the mid-1970s. It was true of the increase in commodity prices from 1939 to 1951 — a period that spanned the Second World War and the Korean War. The bull market in commodities that ended in 1920 resulted from the monetary issuance associated with the First World War. Again, the bull move that ended in 1864 was associated with the inflation of the Civil War.  And the moves that ended in 1815 and in 1781 were associated with the War of 1812, the Napoleonic Wars, and the aftermath of the United States’ Revolutionary War.
What this look back at history tells us is that price spikes in commodities have always been due in some way or other to the onset of generally inflationary conditions, usually as a result of wartime finance or its aftermath. Inflation adjusted or real commodity prices simply do not have long and lasting bull markets.
Let us apply that historical lesson to today’s quite extraordinary commodity price boom. In real or inflation adjusted terms it has been huge and persistent. That makes it different from any commodity bull market in history.

Some argue that this totally unique dynamic in commodity prices is due to the dawn of a new era of resource scarcity and a unique economic event — the “Chindia Boom”. Others like myself, attribute it to a bubble created by institutional and hedge fund speculation.
“In earlier papers on this commodity cycle, I believe I demonstrated that the Chindia Boom has not created a super cycle in industrial commodity demand.”
As to a new era of resource scarcity, perhaps a case can be made for oil. (The peak oil thesis).
And something of a scarcity case has always applied for gold. But I find it hard to make a comparable case for other commodities: supply responses may be lagging demand right now, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t on the way.
The odds are that this commodity boom is all about financial investment and speculation. I have argued that pension and endowment fund investment is overstated and that hedge fund speculation is understated.
In the end, for all such investors and speculators, past trends drive current positions. Rising relative prices of commodities will — and, in fact, already are — driving these markets into surpluses. [Hamilton & others say this takes 5-10 years.]
When obvious supply excesses finally change the price trend, the investment and speculative flows will reverse.
Unless the supply side of oil is different this time from the supply side of all commodities in all of the history of the industrialized era, as long as generalized price inflation remains low, commodity prices will mean-revert. History tells us we should see once again the nominal commodity prices of the late 1990s. It tells us that commodity prices spike, even when there has been a significant rise in the overall level of all prices — which has not been this time. And history tells us that when commodity prices mean-revert, it should happen very quickly.



Topic: Silver bubble? - Paper by Frank Veneroso (1 of 11), Read 203 times
Conf: Gold & Silver
From: Argantonius of Tartessos lemetrocafe@yahoo.it
Date: Wednesday, April 26, 2006 08:53 A

Quite a quandary. On the one hand, there are those predicting silver will hit 30, 50, 80, even $100/oz. On the other, here's Veneroso talking about it crashing back down to sub $5.00 levels. What to do?

--------------------------------------

The Lesser Bubble (To Base Metals)
I know. I am a broken record. A Cassandra on commodities for too long and now too wrong.
Well, here it goes again. Same story, except this time it is silver.
April 19, 2006
Introduction
The recent explosion in the price of silver, amidst all the hype about metals and the silver ETF, has led me to review the fundamental background for silver. I’ve ignored silver for a long time for a very simple reason. In the early 1990s, I was a strident silver bull. I did a study on the silver market for Penoles at the very beginning of the decade. My conclusion was that the official statistics – compiled by Jeffrey Christian at the time – understated growth in silver demand in Asia. That implied the silver market was in a much larger deficit than the official
statistics portrayed.
Shortly thereafter Ted Green of GFMS (http://www.gfmsmining.com/) looked into silver demand in the course of his annual survey work on gold demand. He confirmed that global silver demand and its growth, was, in fact, was higher than portrayed in the official statistics. Shortly thereafter, GFMS began to compile statistics on global silver supply/demand. This new data showed a market deficit of somewhere
between 100 to 150 million ounces on total supply/demand of somewhat less than 800 million ounces. In addition, there were government sales of close to 20 million ounces. So the total deficit between fabrication demand, on the one hand, and mine and scrap supply, on the other hand, was as much as 170 million ounces.
It seemed to me at the time that a market deficit of more than 20% of supply/demand was unsustainable. At some point, the liquidation of private and official above ground stocks would abate and the price of silver would rise.
But the price of silver did not appreciably rise. In 1995 a prop desk I knew accumulated approximately 200 million ounces of silver, which it removed from the Comex and other depositories.
To my great surprise this huge purchase did not have an appreciable positive impact on the price of silver. That made me worry that something was wrong with the silver statistics.
(This large purchase was subsequently liquidated). Two years later, Warren Buffet purchased approximately 150 million ounces of silver. The announcement of his silver purchase caused a spike in the price of silver, but it was brief and transitory. The silver price soon fell back to its prior sub $5.00 level. By now I concluded that something must surely be the matter with the official silver statistics. If the silver market was truly in a sustained large deficit, and with sizable private purchases like this, the silver price should by now have exploded. It did not. The odds were that the data was seriously flawed and the silver market had not been in the large physical deficit that I had earlier thought.

Consequently, I ceased paying much attention to the silver data.

Gold & Silver: A Tale Of Two Equilibrium Prices

The recent explosion in the silver price has drawn me back to a supply/demand analysis of silver. What I have found is that, whatever the supply/demand balance in silver was a decade ago, it has greatly deteriorated. From all I can tell, developments over the last decade have been very bearish for silver.
In a nutshell, what have I concluded? A comparison with the gold market is pertinent. The gold market remains in a significant supply/demand deficit (where deficit is defined as the difference between fabrication demand and bar hoarding outside Europe and North America, on the one hand, and mine and scrap supply, on the other). [This is an unusual notion!] I define the commodity equilibrium price of gold as the price that would prevail if there was no liquidation or accumulation of above ground stocks by either private investors in the developed world or official entities.
In the Gold Book in 1998, I estimated that this commodity equilibrium price was on the order of $600 an ounce. I expected that the demand trend in gold would be stronger than the mine supply trend over the coming decade. [1998-2008] Therefore, in nominal terms, this commodity equilibrium price for gold would rise to perhaps $700 or $800 by the middle of the current decade. I believe something like that has, in fact, occurred, since the gold price last year averaged in the mid $400s, even though it was greatly depressed below its commodity equilibrium by still-persisting large scale official selling.
The silver market stands in striking contrast. The silver market was no doubt in a very substantial deficit (as defined above) in the early to mid 1990s. This deficit may not have been 170 million ounces annually, but it was no doubt substantial. This implied that silver’s commodity price equilibrium was well above the average price of about $5.00 an ounce that prevailed at thetime.

In complete contrast to gold, there has apparently been a huge adverse swing in the silver market balance since the mid 1990s. The official GFMS data may be very flawed as to the level of both supply and demand. But, its tracking of the changes over time in the supply/demand components is probably not that bad. These changes show a cumulative swing from deficit to surplus of perhaps 150 million ounces over the course of less than a decade. During this period the real price of silver did not rise. A decade ago, a $5.00 silver price prevailed only because of an extremely large liquidation of above ground stocks. By 2004, a $6.00-plus nominal price (equal to close to a $5.00 real price in 1995 prices) prevailed with perhaps no liquidation of above ground stocks.
Why has this occurred? Above all because the trend in global fabrication demand for silver has been extremely weak. This includes demands from the rapidly growing Indian sub-continent.
At the same time, the supply trend has been typical of industrial metals, averaging perhaps 3% per annum.
The corollary of the above is that silver’s commodity price equilibrium has fallen significantly in nominal terms over the last decade and has fallen even more in real terms.
The contrast between gold and silver is striking. If anything, gold’s real commodity equilibrium price has risen. Stagnant mine supply has helped. Silver’s has fallen dramatically. Gold is cheap at $600 and will work higher as the liquidation of the above ground official hoard ebbs.  Silver is now expensive. If one assumes no liquidation of above ground stocks, its commodity equilibrium price is probably close to $6.00 and may be falling.

Gold Versus Silver: A Historical Perspective
From the long perspective of history, this divergence in the “equilibrium” prices of gold and silver is nothing new.
When Isaac Newton was the Master of the Mint in England, the ratio of the price of gold to the price of silver was five or six to one, if my memory is correct. By the 19th century the ratio of the price of gold to the price of silver in monetary coinage was 16 to one. In the late 1960s in the US, the price of gold was fixed at $35 an ounce and the price of silver at $1.29 an ounce, for a ratio of 27 to one. Three decades later in the 1990s, the price ratio between these two metals was closer to 70 to one.
If the above conclusion is correct, gold’s commodity equilibrium price is probably now $700 or $800 an ounce. Silver’s commodity equilibrium price is perhaps $6.00 an ounce. This would imply a widening in this ratio to well over 100 to one.
Why is this the case? In my 1998 Gold Book I showed that, based on the best historical data available, the real price of gold has remained roughly unchanged over the last two centuries.  This is in sharp contrast to the real prices of other commodities, which have declined in real terms by about 2% or 3% per annum.
Gold appears unique in that, for a constant real gold price, its non-monetary demands have grown as rapidly or slightly more rapidly than global income. In the jargon of the economist, we say that gold has an income elasticity greater than unity or, in other terms, a rising intensity of use. At the same time, for a constant real price, primary gold mine supply grew less rapidly than global income. Given these two ex ante trends, one would have expected a rising real gold price over those two centuries. But two centuries ago half of all gold demand was for monetary uses.  By the 1990s the monetary stock was being dis-hoarded — in other words, monetary demands
were now negative. It was the swing in gold’s role as money that kept the real gold price from rising.
By contrast, there has been an exact propensity for primary supplies of other commodities to grow more rapidly than global income. Technological change and the discovery of new lands have resulted in a rapid outward shift of commodity supply schedules. Consequently, it has taken a declining real price to curb supplies and encourage demands and bring these markets into balance.
These latter commodity dynamics have applied in spades to the base metals. Most silver production occurs as a byproduct from the production of base metals and gold. In effect, its output as a result of base metals production has made it more readily available. Its supply side has been less stingy than that of gold. This has contributed in part to its declining real price and the decline in its price relative to a stable real gold price  I am less familiar with the historical dynamics of silver demand. But the stagnation in silver fabrication demand over the last decade suggests that something quite adverse to silver’s demand dynamics now prevails.
Of course, the most striking thing about the above supply/demand balances is the swing in the market from a large GFMS deficit in the mid-1990s to a surplus by 2004. Implied net disinvestment refers to private stock liquidation, which is GFMS’s measure of the deficit. Implied net investment is their term for the market’s surplus. GFMS includes official sales as part of supply, putting it “above” the balance of deficit or surplus.
To my mind, official sector sales are a stock liquidation comparable to private dis-hoarding. So I would prefer to add the net government transaction to implied net disinvestment or investment to get the true market balance. In doing so, the market’s deficit peaked at close to 170 million ounces in the mid 1990s. By 2004, treating net government sales as part of the market balance, the silver market remained in a small deficit. The swing in the balance was on the order of 150 million ounces. Such a swing was adverse and huge. What contributed to this adverse swing? Above all, it was the stagnation in fabrication demand. Fabrication demand in 2004 was actually below the level of 1997. It was up only slightly from the average level of the mid-1990s. This is truly remarkable. It is hard to find a metal in which fabrication demand has shown only negligible growth in a period of almost a decade — at least when the real price is stable and therefore is not rationing demand. Most metals exhibit demand growth under stable price conditions of about 3% per annum. Even lead — the commodity with the slowest trend growth in demand — did better than silver over this period. Why the weak demand trend? People point to the eclipse of the use of silver in photography.
To be sure, in the last several years, photographic demands have fallen. But this decline alone doesn’t tell the whole story.
The Indian Weather Vane
Perhaps more striking is the virtual stagnation in demand for silver in jewelry and silverware. We must remember that part of this demand is attributable to India, whose economic boom has been widely viewed as especially positive for precious metals. Why, then, did it not lift global demand for silver jewelry and silverware? Some of the stagnation in global jewelry and silverware demands has reflected changing tastes in the West. For example, in many developed countries there is less giving of silverware as wedding gifts. But apparently there has also been surprisingly little growth in Indian demand for silverware and silver jewelry. Here we may be seeing the signs of a dramatic change in tastes, as the Indian economy and society modernize. There is a striking and possibly relevant precedent in the case of gold. If one goes back to the GFMS data on gold demand in the emerging Far Eastern economies in the 1980s, one sees that bar hoarding was a very large portion of total aggregate gold demand in countries like Thailand or Hong Kong. As their societies grew wealthier, more sophisticated, and more modern, gold bar hoarding fell off sharply and is now often negligible. At the same time, rising incomes stoked demand for gold and adornment jewelry and, on balance, overall demand for gold remained stable or rising. But it lagged the growth in incomes owing to the disappearing role of gold bars as a savings medium. Apparently something like this is happening in India with respect to silver. The accumulation of silverware and silver jewelry has been most associated with India’s rural sector. But it is not the rural sector that has powered the dramatic growth of the Indian economy over the last decade. Rather, it has been the modern sector encompassing computer software, electronics, IT services, etc. Apparently, people in this sector have less of the traditional proclivity to accumulate silver objects than people in the rural sector. As a consequence, Indian demands for silver have seriously lagged aggregate Indian incomes. What is the outlook for silver fabrication demand? No doubt some of the newer industrial applications of silver will grow as fast or faster than the world industrial economy. Silver used in photography has already been hurt by the inroads of digital photography. Much of the damage from this technological change has already been done. But there probably remains somewhat more ahead. Key will be Indian demand for silver in jewelry, silverware, foils for foods, threads for traditional textiles, etc. I cannot forecast this. [See comment below about lead/silver in soldering.] But if the evolution of gold demand in Far East Asia is a precedent, ongoing modernization of Indian society and the Indian economy should cause Indian demands for silver to continue to lag the likely rapid future growth in Indian incomes. The above is all relative to a more or less constant real price for silver. This is what prevailed on average over the last decade and a half. But the price of silver has now doubled. The question arises, what will the rise in the real price of silver do to the trend in fabrication demand?
In the 1980s and 1990s, emerging Asian demand for gold in ounces were quite “price sensitive”.
When the price of gold rose sharply, demands fell off sharply. There was what I call both a short-term price elasticity and a long-term price elasticity, which I discussed at length in the Gold Book of 1998. In the very short run, Asian households’ demand for gold in the form of jewelry and bar fell sharply when the gold price rose. If the gold price then held its gain over time, some, but not all, of these demand came back. The short-term price elasticity is similar to the sticker shock that retailers in a modern economy often experience when they raise their prices. But, after a matter of months, consumers become adjusted to higher prices. They resume their past pattern of expenditures on such items as a percent of their household budget. If the relative price of the good rises significantly, they will spend perhaps the same amount of their budget. But that will of course purchase fewer units of the good. What makes gold jewelry different from other consumer items is that the gold contained comprises a very large percentage of the cost of production. If the gold price rises, so does the cost of the final product. Households don’t target expenditures on gold jewelry in terms of ounces of gold contained; they target expenditures as a share of their incomes. If the gold price rises sharply, so do jewelry prices. Households spend the same amount on gold jewelry but they spend it on items with a lower coinage. Or, a hollow core. Or they spend on a smaller item. Less gold in ounces is consumed. We should expect perhaps the same pattern of price elasticity with respect to silver jewelry and silverware. Silver is a far less expensive material than gold. Therefore, its value comprises less of the total value of a consumer item than in the case of gold. Therefore, its longer run price elasticity should be less. Even though silver comprises less of the value of the final consumer item containing it, it still comprises a significant portion. I have read one estimate by GFMS that silver comprises 30% of the value of an item of silver jewelry (as opposed to 60% in the case of gold). This should make silver jewelry and sterling silverware far more price elastic than other consumer items. Running the parallel with gold further, we might expect that, on a doubling in the silver price, Indian households should experience sticker shock. There should be a very sharp initial fall off in demand. Over time, those demands will come back if the silver price stabilizes at its new higher level, but they will not come all the way back. There has been another feature associated with consumer behavior regarding precious metals in the emerging Far East. When the gold price spiked in the past, there was a certain amount of selling of gold jewelry — creating a form of scrap supply. As these societies modernized and tastes changed, this dis-hoarding might have become more pronounced and more permanent. We might expect similar behavior as a response by households in India to the recent sharp rise in the price of silver. Some of this behavior appears evident in recent monthly data on Indian silver imports. In the first months of 2004, the silver price ran up quickly to $8.00 from its prior $5 average level. Even though this spike was brief and transitory, Indian imports, owing to curbed demand and higher scrap supply, fell extremely sharply. Later in the year, the silver price recovered. Indian demands recovered on average, though perhaps not to the levels that prevailed when the silver price was lower. That was the response of Indian silver imports to an extremely brief spike in the silver price to $8.50. What about the recent spike which has been sustained for months over $8 and has gone so much further? According to John Brimelow, who has monitored the data for a decade and a half on a daily basis, the price of silver in India is always at a premium to the world price. When silver spiked to $8.50 two years ago the Indian silver price fell relative to the world price, but a premium still persisted. Yet Indian imports collapsed. Now John tells me the Indian silver price has gone to a noticeable discount to the international price. That suggests a possible net export of silver from the Indian subcontinent. The above described short-term and tong-term elasticities must be at work in spades.
A Looming Glut
Silver is largely a by-product of base metal and gold production. Gold mine supply has stagnated for almost a decade. Base metal production expanded rapidly in the late 1990s but ground to a standstill in the early years of this decade. Overall, silver mine supply, largely through by-product production, has risen about 3% a year, a little more rapidly than trend base metal supply growth and much more rapidly than gold mine supply growth. What is the outlook? As a by-product of gold production, one would think the outlook would be for slow growth. However, the decline in the output of global gold supply stems in large part from a severe decline in South Africa. The South African mines produce little silver. By contrast, there is a rapid build up of gold production going on in Mexico. Those mines are very silver rich, with silver often accounting for half of output by value. This mix shift will result in more rapid silver production from gold mines than most people think.
More striking is the growth of silver output from base metal mines. Lead/zinc mines contain a large amount of silver. Lead, normally a “slow grower”, may experience a 15% increase to mine output over 2005 and 2006 combined. The same might be said of refined copper output. And again, silver, through lagging, is not far behind. Taking all of the above together, silver mine output is likely to be on a rapidly rising trend, with well above trend gains in the 4% - 6% annual range possible. Once again, silver mine output growth should easily outpace growth in fabrication demand. This would have turned the small silver deficit (before official sales, as I define it) into a significant surplus, even if the silver price had not risen. This implies a faster fall in the “commodity price equilibrium” of silver in both real and nominal terms.
Potentially Dangerous Holes In The Official Data
The most salient aspect of the GFMS silver data in recent years has been the emergence of China as a major official sector seller. This appears only at the end of the 1990s. It continues Veneroso’s [i.e., this author's] View 7 April 19, 2006 into 2004, though in that year the pace of sales fell from a peak of close to 100 million ounces to only 40 million ounces. GFMS cannot identify the source of much of the metals liquidation in their balances throughout much of the 1990s. They admit that their grasp of East Asian official stocks and liquidation has not been that good. It is possible that there was more liquidation of Chinese (and other East Asian) official stocks in the early 1990s than GFMS has identified. That would perhaps explain why the silver price did not explode in the 1990s despite sustained recorded deficits and two extremely large one-off private purchases. What is the outlook for future official sales? Obviously, in the long run, they will cease. GFMS has apparently revised up their estimate of Chinese official holdings. They expect those sales to abate, but they should persist over the intermediate run, though at lower rates than prevailed at the turn of the decade. However, the prospect for such sales remains clouded because of the size of silver stocks outside the familiar depositories. GFMS notes that, over history 40 billion, ounces of silver have been mined. That is equal to 60 times annual mine supply. The ratio is a little less, but comparable to, that of gold. Of course, as silver is a less valuable metal, more of the above ground accumulation over history has been lost. But there is still a lot of silver out there. As GFMS notes, a mere 1% of that total of all silver ever mined is equal to 400 million ounces. What is unclear is what has happened to the silver coinage that was such a large part of monetary issue in countries like China. GFMS notes higher than expected European official sales from the melting of old coins. It is possible that the historical legacy of coinage and silverware held in emerging economies may work its way into official sales and other channels for longer than many expect. This was certainly the case with the surprise surge in Chinese official sales that occurred in silver at the turn of the decade.
Conclusion
By 2004 the large deficits in the silver market gave way to balance owing to an adverse trend in global fabrication demand against a decent trend in supply typical of base metals markets. These trends should persist. In particular, we should now be in a period of accelerated mine supply which should throw the silver market into a surplus (as I define before official sales) at $6.00 silver. On the recent run up in the silver price we should see the emergence of a large surplus. Some components of demand are surely quite price elastic. Scrap supply should exhibit some elasticity. The recent fall in the Indian silver price relative to the world price may reflect a combination of the two. In India alone the Indian balance could shift by more than 100 million ounces at an annual rate. At the same time, the same elasticities should be operative outside India. In addition, official sales should persist. They have had a tendency to rise into price spikes. The same may now be occurring. If one takes into account the accelerated trend in mine supply, the above-ground demand and scrap elasticities and some official sales, then the recent run up in the silver price could easily take the silver market from a balance to a surplus in the hundreds of millions of ounces on an annual basis. This exceeds even the more optimistic (and, in my opinion, totally unrealistic) estimates of flows into the silver ETFs. Silver has a long history of rallying into the $10 range, ending its rise with a parabolic ascent. These rallies have clearly been driven by trend following speculative behavior in U.S. futures markets. The same is happening again, though amplified greatly by the metals mania that has taken over the hedge fund world. Somehow, on past spikes, there were offsetting surpluses that “filled the boots” of trend-following speculators. As a consequence these spikes always ended in crashes. This time the speculative buying far exceeds that of past episodes. Therefore, we must ask, will the emergence of market surplus matter this time? At least over the short run? It is hard to say. We hear that one commodity hedge fund alone may currently be carrying a long position in copper physical, futures and OTC forwards of perhaps $10 billion. That is unprecedented. It is too large for such a market. It and similar positions have skied copper to unimaginable heights. What if such firepower is turned on the smaller silver market? A $10 billion position is 800 million ounces at today’s high price. That is equal to a year’s total supply/demand. It exceeds all known deliverable silver in identified depositories. It is seven times Buffet’s position. It is equal to the entire position of the Hunts’ at the peak $50 an ounce price they took it to. It would be a multiple of a very large annualized market surplus and would dwarf likely inflows into the ETF. And there are a group of other hedge funds that have been acting in concert with this one hedge fund with so large an alleged copper position. But in those past episodes of silver spikes and crashes the silver market was healthier. It was in sizeable deficit to begin with. It was not in balance or surplus. The trend in fabrication demand was stronger. So, in this cycle there is much potential for an offsetting swing in the short-term balance of a greater magnitude. Whatever the hedge funds do, if the silver market goes into appreciable surplus, the funds will have unprecedented difficulty in getting out. When the hedge fund mania for metals abates — which it will, for they are traders, in the end — silver is likely to crash, and it may visit once again the sub $5.00 zone for an extended period. Even if the gold price holds.

Veneroso’s View 9 April 19, 2006


Topic: Silver bubble? - Paper by Frank Veneroso (2 of 11), Read 189 times
Conf: Gold & Silver
From: Jason Michelsen nmrarecoins@yahoo.com
Date: Wednesday, April 26, 2006 10:22 AM

Well, at least he admits it in the first paragraph, he's been too wrong for too long. This is just like the paper he wrote about copper, warning of its imminent collapse from $1.50. So if we extrapolate from that formula, silver will be $25. - $30. next year.

What's the problem, Frank? Can't stand the prosperity?

-Jason

Topic: Silver bubble? - Paper by Frank Veneroso (3 of 11), Read 188 times
Conf: Gold & Silver
From: Jim Ross   [This guy doesn't even know "for sure if stop losses are a guaranteed sale at the set limit? Or can the share price actually drop below your sell stop limit before your order gets filled? For instance during a heavy volume sell off."]
Date: Wednesday, April 26, 2006 10:46 AM

thanks for that Jason-God i've never read anything so long winded and depressing-i think if all those things could go wrong you would have heard about at least a few from other analysts

Topic: Silver bubble? - Paper by Frank Veneroso (4 of 11), Read 175 times
Conf: Gold & Silver
From: Robert Mockan robert.mockan@att.net
Date: Wednesday, April 26, 2006 11:48 AM

He does sound like a broken record.
People buy when others buy and it is hyped.
Silver will rise.

Topic: Silver bubble? - Paper by Frank Veneroso (5 of 11), Read 165 times
Conf: Gold & Silver
From: Jason Michelsen nmrarecoins@yahoo.com
Date: Wednesday, April 26, 2006 12:43 PM

Copper is now 3.49.
When it was 1.50, frank called it a top.
I said, 'Why? Why not 5.00?'
Only another 1.50 to go!

Got Silver? If not, call up Frank, and ask if he has any for sale.

-Jason

Topic: Silver bubble? - Paper by Frank Veneroso (6 of 11), Read 166 times
Conf: Gold & Silver
From: Jason Michelsen nmrarecoins@yahoo.com
Date: Wednesday, April 26, 2006 12:53 PM

I don't mean to harp on Frank, he has been with GATA for many a year now, but here is another thought.
In 1980, there was an estimated 10 billion ounces of silver above ground. Much was old coinage from the previous silver standard era. Grandma's silverware contributed to that pile. Fast forward to today, and we have a couple hundred million left. Say, 1 - 3% of the old surplus.
How long will it take to rebuild a 10 billion ounce surplus again? Mines produce 600 - 650 M oz a year. 800 - 850 M oz are consumed by industry. Monetary (investment) demand is rising. Where will a future surplus come from? The blue sky? At what price will we see even our FIRST YEAR of a surplus? Because there is NONE is sight yet!

Rest assured, silver will reach 35 - 70/oz. before we see a surplus.

-Jason

Topic: Silver bubble? - Paper by Frank Veneroso (7 of 11), Read 165 times
Conf: Gold & Silver
From: Argantonius of Tartessos lemetrocafe@yahoo.it
Date: Wednesday, April 26, 2006 12:58 PM

Thank you, gentlemen. I feel much better. Quite refreshing.

Best,
Arg.

Topic: Silver bubble? - Paper by Frank Veneroso (8 of 11), Read 160 times
Conf: Gold & Silver
From: Jack Fortin jaxville@telusplanet.net
Date: Wednesday, April 26, 2006 01:47 PM

The issue warranting caution with silver has been ( in my mind ) that 90% of silver goes to industrial end users with the balance going to investors/speculators . I am certain that the percentage that investors hold is higher now than it was when I read the original statistic about two years ago .

People are now buying silver for monetary reasons . Industrial demand will soon be irrelevant as people buy silver to protect their wealth from inflation .

Silver can only be considered as a bubble in the context of a stable monetary system with little or no inflation . That is clearly not the case . The bottom line for tangibles is how their future supply will relate to the supply of Federal Reserve Notes .
The way things are going now makes Jason's predictions very conservative .Industrial use is very relevant when you look at silver as one of the key replacements for lead in soldering electronic parts. Europe does not allow lead to be used as soldering material anymore.



Topic: Silver bubble? - Paper by Frank Veneroso (9 of 11), Read 89 times
Conf: Gold & Silver
From: Anonymous
Date: Wednesday, April 26, 2006 10:24 PM




"Most assemblers are choosing tin-silver-copper alloys (SAC) for leaded solder replacement. On a global basis Sn96.5 Ag3.0 Cu0.5 has been the favored solder recipe."

(quoted from http://www.emsnow.com/npps/story.cfm?ID=10669)


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Topic:     Silver bubble? - Paper by Frank Veneroso (10 of 11), Read 68 times
Conf:     Gold & Silver
From:     George Carson safetynz@xtra.co.nz
Date:     Thursday, April 27, 2006 09:20 AM


Both silver and zinc are going to be in severe shortage situation before long.

I have studied the situation fairly closely and would not be buying so much silver stocks unless I really believed that we are going into a dire shortage situation.

The key drivers in my view are:

1. huge move to cell phones and mini computers and all of them have just a little bit of silver in their manufacture.

2. Move to colloidal silver and nano technology making it possible for silver to be used for medicinal purposes and no longer deposit in the cells of the body.

3. Chinese industrial boom. Hey! The Chinese have recently tried the oldest trick in the book. They come out and say that they cannot sustain such a cracking pace. They force down the price of silver from 14.50. Then the swoop in and buy up as much as they can.

4. The Arabs are buying up silver and gold for possible setting up dinar as the monetary base of the world.

5. For some reason, Russia is buying up huge stockpiles of gold and this flows across into silver.

6. Warren Buffet has taken a strong position even though he may have recently liquidated.

7. The silver ETF is going to remove much of the free radical flow in the world.

8. Scrap merchants are now prolific and active and gathering up any spare stuff that they can find.

9. Talk of remonetization using silver coins both in Mexico and USA.

10. Le Metropole Cafe and other chat shows.

HELLO HELLO
did I get 10 our of 10 or do you want some more doom and gloom from Frank?

The forecasts that I have seen all indicate that the world wide shortage of silver and zinc will continue until about 2020.

The only other possibility is that there might be a number of huge mines found. This is what happened when last time there was a major slump in the price of silver.

Having said that, we now have much more sophisticated means of detecting mines even using satellites in space to find the magnetism and then drilling follows.




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Topic:     Silver bubble? - Paper by Frank Veneroso (11 of 11), Read 71 times
Conf:     Gold & Silver
From:     Christopher Brown brown.2583@osu.edu
Date:     Thursday, April 27, 2006 09:44 AM
Frank Veneroso, meet Ted Butler...