It looks like silver is going to break $35 sooner than I thought. It is currently down $1.51 to $37.88 as I type this but it was down further than that earlier. If silver does not break $35 on the downside ths Friday (May 6), then I think that it will break $35 on the downside early next week. Tuesday (May 10) at the latest. We will see what happens.
I have posted before my feelings on silver being generally over valued in relation to all the other traded commodities. In the recent commodities bull market there were others I felt the same - mainly cotton. Both of these commodities entered their bull markets well under valued. I never attempted and still will not try to determine a future price in terms of dollars for these commodities mainly because I just have no idea what the future value of the dollar will be. Price could go up or price could go down - I don't know but eventually they will settle somewhere close to their true general economic value in relation to all commodities as a whole. Looking at all current commodity prices I still feel silver and cotton are over valued. There are events happening right now up and down the Mississippi River basin that could change my outlook on cotton but at the moment I really don't think so.
My first stock market investment was in 1971, long before you even discovered silver, kid. I've invested in various markets continuously since that time. I also wouldn't go around bragging about buying silver in 1980. It won't help your credibility.
I notice that silver prices on ebay are still high LOL over here (UK) averaging about £25 p/oz thats just over $41
I am happier now with my decision to sell between $30 and $40 on the way up than I was a few days ago. I am pretty sure I got a higher % of spot than people are getting now. Is anyone that hung on for the top trying to sell now, or just waiting it out? Once prices settle I will start buying back in, but it has been too high for me lately. I guess it will be hard to find silver at spot for a while since people will be trying to get back what they paid.
I'm not selling or buying at the moment. I dumped a few hundred ounces at 48/oz but decided to hang on to the majority of my stash. I will definitely be buying more when the price finally settles and finds the new "bottom". Until then, I wait and watch all of the people panicking.
I think there are a lot, and I mean really a lot, of people who bought 25 to 50 oz of silver and think they are investors and risk takers. Actually they are just tagging along and experiencing the ride. A very inexpensive way to educate themselves to the market. And a good way I might add. I think 100+ oz buyers are more legitimate but also more knowledgeable. So I look at this whole scenario as simply paying for your schooling until and when your day comes. Nothing to panic about, nothing to feel bad about. Just make sure you are taking good notes and you learn for the next time. It's like buying your first fake coin if you are a collector, its very discouraging but shouldn't cause you to give up and stop collecting.
I'm doing the same thing only I thought about selling around 48 and second guessed myself Im just going to hold now. I enjoy watching people panic. RE READ michael maloneys book everyone
I'd been continuing to grab stuff on eBay as long as it was at least 20% below spot, but such opportunities are pretty scarce at the moment -- lots of people were lagging the rising prices, but nobody wants to lead the falling prices. And I'm not confident that we're within 20% of the bottom anyhow, so I'm not looking that aggressively. I've tried "buying the dip" in the past, but it's impossible in practice to distinguish a dip from a persistent drop (except in hindsight). I won't need to liquidate any time soon, so if prices continue to drop, I'll continue to hold. Once they flatten or start to rise again, I'll likely resume bargain-hunting.
They absolutely ARE investors. Everyone is in a different economic situation and has a different tolerance for risk. Perhaps some folks have money tied up in a business or in real estate or in the stock market, and this is just another portfolio component. Perhaps this is their only investment. It doesn't matter. The size of a person's investment has NOTHING to do with their competency as an investor. It would be incorrect to assume it is. Investing is one activity where size doesn't confer some special advantage or guarantee better results. If a person's analysis and attitude are correct, they will probably have good results. If they are incorrect, size or even experience won't bail them out.
To a degree yes. You have to admit Soros' investment cannot be analyzed excluding the size he is dealing with. As long as your purchases and sales cannot move a market then I agree Cloud. This is a very moving target, though. Coin hoards are a great example, finding sometimes as few as 20 or 30 examples of a coin can seriously depress a market for them, since coins are a very thinly traded market. A smart collector will see this and buy when they are common, just like a smart investor buys any asset if s/he feels its undervalued.
So all the people that posted they'll be buying when it drops under 38, 37, 40 or any other random key price they wrote are actually buying right now. To be fair I bought a few oz's last night of some bigger kooks because I want to own them, and was thinking if it dropped too much they'd sell before I bought. Not really for investment, more for example collecting.
I'm holding for now. Been buying since it was $8-9, bought all the way through $40, stopped at $40. If it drops to below $35, I'll buy again, but I'm a buy and hold guy. I may cash out some day, but I don't need the $ right now. I think long term, and I believe the silver bull marktet will continue for the next couple of years. Even with the roller-coaster ride, this market has been a great education for me. Two big takeaways: 1. Precious metals are volatile as all get out. 2. I think my biggest takeaway is that physical holders of silver really have to take the buy/sell spread into account. It's much harder than I thought to swim upstream against this current. Of course I knew about it, but this works against you more than I ever thought it would. Even selling silver on eBay for at or above spot, (I sold a small percentage of my overall betw $30-40), the fees were 9-12%. For silver rounds on APMEX right now, you're lucky to get them for $2.50 over spot (if you buy in bulk). So you'e greasing somebody's palm on both ends of the bargain.
I just wanted to post something here. Many of you have read my postings about silver, and many have read my "disagreements" with passantgard and others. What is happening right now is the basis of my disagreement with his model, and many others. Any model, like his, that showed the lowest return possible of an asset as a positive return is to me a failed project. Is someone is so convinced that an asset cannot go down, then they are not truly taking into consideration all possibilities. I am not saying the silver decline will have to continue, or that silver cannot hit his $130 value long term. ANYTHING is possible in human economics, probable maybe not, but possible. Whenever you have someone who shows you a complicated financial calc showing how they "prove" something, just stop and look at their assumptions. If they assume the worst something can go is still better than holding cash, then you know their model is fundamentally flawed without going one step further. The value of anything ALWAYS has the possibility of going down, and the optimists almost always overlook that fact. Today you are seeing that it IS possible for silver to decline, something that his graph and many others never allow for. If decline is not allowed for, then any financial model is worthless, and if turned in to me or any financial professor would immediately get a failing grade. I am not saying silver will stay down, not claiming I was right, just pointing out right now that anything is possible, and everyone needs to always keep that in their mind when looking at "predictions". I felt bad for the conversations here with Passantgard, and it wasn't his graphs that made me so mad, since I have seen similar items before, (especially by overoptimistic grad students, and before that overoptimistic dotcom advocates). Just wanted to get that off my chest. Sorry for the rant. Chris Edit: Oh yeah, great big hug for all of the group here, even Passantgard if he is still around. We can all disagree, but hopefully we keep an open mind to allow for new opinions and new ideas to sink in. When I came here I thought $20 silver was overpriced, but now I think it is a fair historical price, so I changed my mind.
Great post Race. Yeah, its a very high cost market like many have said here. Its even worst if sentiment turns against silver, (market price has declined but still lots of people think long term it will go up). If public sentiment stops thinking silver is a great long term buy, then the discounts when you sell will get more severe. In other words, if all of the non traditional buyers stop coming into coin stores and shows looking to buy silver, then dealers will steepen their discount to buy yours because they are not turning them over as quickly. Long term buy and hold the only way to try to avoid this, just like you are doing.
You could say anyone who even puts down a penny is an investor if he is hoping to receive a penny+ back on his return. However, many who have bought small quantities of silver feel this is enough to graduate them into the expert level. I always weigh the affect of participation and experience into the value of the information received. No guarantee's in life, but if you feel more confident to invest, then hopefully you have given it more thought. The fact someone has been in the market awhile makes you listen to what they say and place more meaning on their opinions. So does the size of their investment. They usually grow hand in hand.
