Will silver ever be cheap again?

I know I am not in the same class as you guys with your predictions and vast knowledge of the silver market........ but the last few months or year silver to me hasn't done anything.........APPROX. 21.00 to 18.50 or there abouts isn't enough rise or fall for me to excited. unless I own a few thousand pounds.... then I would say the rise and fall would be interesting.......... but I like the coins and love to read these posts or threads to try and catch up with you guys.......

 

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Only fools try to trade silver. You buy it and HOLD it for the long, long term. The price continues to be unpredictable, and these 10c and 25c ups and downs are just random noise, as the statisticians would say.

Go back to basics. The only reason to buy silver in the first place is to exchange some of your paper money for bullion, in the hopes of preserving the buying power of your liquid assets. I still like the silver dime analogy; today a silver dime buys a loaf of bread -- inflation creeps up and up until bread's up 50%. A silver dime still buys a loaf of bread.

That's not a sure thing, but it strikes me as a better bet than holding "paper" money being printed and/or created in massive quantities every day.

The Rhodesians didn't see $100,000,000,000,000 bills coming (is that too many zeroes, LOL?)

 

Better than holding paper money? Absolutely. Better than holding other assets? Maybe/maybe not. Even though I bought most of my silver at $4, I have done better on almost all of my other investments. PM's main problem is lack of return. Most other things I hold pay me money every year, AND appreciate. PM can only appreciate, and in fact has to appreciate at the level of inflation just for me to stay even. That is why I say PM should long term go up, just to match inflation. But, just going up with inflation still means it was a loser investment.

No one has EVER said holding USD is a smart move. All currencies are designed to depreciate in modern societies, so you only ever keep enough liquid cash that you might need for emergencies. The rest should always be invested. What to invest it in will always be a debate.

While I appreciate Mr. Bellman saying I sounded like a prophet, that is not true. I was just stating my opinion and views based upong being around PM for 35 years or so. There is always a euphoria around them when they go up. Just look at so many of the huge pm bulls who posted on this thread back then. Where are they today? If they are still around, they are not posting much. I simply recognized the arguments being thrown around in support of PM since I had seen the same arguments in the 70's. Going over old threads like this are very valuable to people new to pm. Not to judge winners and losers, but to recognize the arguments that will always be trotted out to support "pm going to go to the moon". I do not want one single person to agree with me just because I say so, or anyone else. I want them to make up their own minds and listen to everyone's opinion, pro and con. I have been wrong on many things, and people on CT have helped me learn. However, one will never learn unless they actually open up their mind to it.

 

There IS still one reason to hold US dollars, no, actually two. The first is obvious - if your game is foreign exchange, either as a trader or as one who needs to manage risk because you need to handle international transactions as your gig. And that implicates the second one - if you are in need of purchasing things whose prices are denominated in US dollars, you're going to need some. And THAT is the primary factor that drives ALL exchange rates, and NOT monetary policy. That's a newer game, invented by speculators.

It's just like in the late 70's and early 80's, when my dad was distributing Swiss machinery in North America. Part of my daily life was following the exchange rates between the US dollar, Canadian dollar, and Swiss Franc and managing how much of each to hold. At the time, a single sale here was MINIMUM $160,000 US. So yah, whether a dollar looks good to you depends on what your main alternative is, and your time horizon. If your PM purchases are just extra funds you can afford to park long term, yah, do it, particularly at these levels. (But ANYONE who was still buying ANY silver in 2011 at $45+, I'm sorry but THAT was a moron.) But if you're using funds you'll need sooner or intermediate term, then WOW, you are REALLY biting off a whole lot of risk to chew on.

 

This thread is swinging towards political aspects and personal beliefs/conspiracies. I will not allow that. Stay on the subject of silver pricing, or don't post at all. Remember there are other sites ( including one of Peter's ), that you can rant away with others of like or opposite opinions.

 

The basic problem, to the frustration of the CT rules' admirable intent, and even stated therein, is that coins lead inevitably to economics, which leads in turn inevitably to politics. That fundamental truth will always have that rule being rubbed against. The line of demarcation being drawn is artificial and therefore doomed to failure, because it denies fundamental truths.

One can no more separate coins from politics than one can successfully separate wildlife from guns and hunting policy.

Coins ARE politics.

Maybe what Peter needs to do is stop enticing new people onto threads via Twitter, and keep his incestuous little community as it was. I had never even HEARD of CoinTalk until Peter's oversized noggin appeared unsolicited one day in my Twitter feed.

I do politics as my full time day job. I could no more shut it off than you could stop breathing.

 

Incestuous? You tryin' to start a war Kurt?

 

Nope, just pointing out that new voices that don't parrot the status quo "party line" around here get real unwelcome real fast. Thassall.

"No new fresh voices need apply."

All I ever try to do here is nudge people who have become overly comfortable with their old misconceptions over a little to maybe try on a different idea or 3, but it seems that's asking too much.

EVEN the stodgy old ANA is more open minded and tolerant on their new site than this site is. And I never imagined that could ever be the case.

 

Gee Kurt, sorry to disappoint you, but this isn't your soapbox, it is Peter's. If we looked at all of your postings, do you mention a coin in the same % as politics in your posts? Nowhere does CT mention politics as a prime subject area, in fact just the opposite. Sometimes in the discussion of coins ( such as the Nazi era) politics come up, but we limit it carefully. Come on, the rules are Peter's , he pays for the site, all of us ( myself included) are guests. Guests either behave or they are gone. You are not the first who has wanted to reshape CT in their image, and won't be the last. PM Peter and discuss it with him if you wish.
Jim

 

And how exactly is such a thing done? I have tried to open a private conversation with a member who had already opened an unrelated one with me, and the software denied me the ability to do so. The combination of stratified capabilities based on whatever and a bizarre set of rules makes for a very unwelcoming place.

And at the same time Peter looks me up on linkedin.com and asks me to accept him as a contact? Something is very incongruous here, Jim, very incongruous indeed.

 

Private conversations can be filtered by all users on this forum. Perhaps he blocked you?

 

Could be, I suppose, but he continued the original private thread all the while. I was able to get my question to him by using the original PM thread, but it just felt like it belonged under a new title.

I don't even know what or where or how to even look up Peter's other sites. My only vector into here is Peter's stuff in my Twitter feed. I never even log in at the front page. Again, I'd never even heard of CoinTalk until the post-ANA stuff blew a hole in my Twitter stream.

 

Peter is not online at the moment. his pm is
https://www.cointalk.com/members/peter-t-davis.1/

I don't see the site as you do. I see it as a safe moderated site with some of the nicest and most experienced and knowledgeable collectors around. It is safe for the very young collectors and the beginner.We clamp down on extreme graphics, language, religious and political comments, as it was chosen that we would be as American TV in the 1950s. Not all like it, but the benefits are well worth the effort to conform to the rules. You seem to be a very worthwhile member, hopefully for other input than just politics, and I hope you do stay. When people do leave, they often find there is no substitute.

 

Yeah, I can see that. It IS after all a fairly hoppin' place. As I said, (3rd time) I have been a collector for 51 years and an internet freak for 22, and still I hadn't ever felt a need to seek CT out. I have heard some people in the field discuss CT in casual conversations, and not all of it in as glowing terms as you might think. Never bothered me one way or the other. Some of it was downright derogatory. Diff'rent strokes, right? The main knock is the plethora of misinformation.

But keep in mind that, quite honestly, just ONE of the goals of the ANA's new website is to make places like CT irrelevant digital ghost towns, populated only by those unaware of the ANA's supposedly irresistible virtues. (Is the sarcasm coming through?) But seriously, they ARE out there gunning for sites like this one, to take it on and make it irrelevant. Overly ambitious? Yeah, most likely. But they're coming.

 

B'sides, 1950's American TV? Seriously? Yuck! I was there, man. Yuck, indeed. Might explain Peter's hairstyle, but still...

 

I'm not sure I see where you're trying to go with this, Kurt. (I'm also not sure why you seem to be unusually cranky about CT this Monday; I imagine there are conversations I've missed.)

If you're suggesting that CT needs to change its policies in order to compete with other online forums, I'm pretty sure I disagree. I've visited some of the others, and haven't felt any urge to stick around them. This one suits me quite well. If it changes to be more "edgy", or more "stimulating" (political discussion, dancing-baloney graphics, Facebook/Twitter feeds), I'll probably bail.

Some new members join, like it, and stick around, becoming regular contributors. Some... don't work out. Some of those are probably our loss, but I'm not sure what I'd change here to entice them to stay.

It may well be that this forum eventually will get out-competed by others, maybe some that don't exist yet. If that happens, I'll be sad, but it won't be the first forum that's gone out of business on me.

 

I admit to you Jeff, that I am cranky as heck right now. I'm home from work after learning that my boy may be dying. I was so useless at work they sent me home. I type on forums to keep from going totally bonkers. He went from "just monitor him at home" to "we'll do all we can to save him" in a week. It stinks.

 

I'm sorry to hear about your son Kurt and my heart goes out to you and your family. You'll all be in my thoughts tonight. I hope he gets well soon.

 

Thanks Jwt, he's all I've been living for. Divorced 14 years, and I live alone, except for coins and cats. My own health is crummy, and now this. I highly do NOT RECOMMEND it. Since he's now a legal adult, I don't even qualify for augmented visiting hours.

So fear not, my most sharp-tongued political diatribes are being directed elsewhere. Anything here is mild.

 

Good God. I can't imagine what you're going through right now. You're in our thoughts; if venting helps, please feel free to hit me up in PM.