Tag Archive: Basic Reports

Warren Buffett Shorts The Economy, 18 August

2020-08-20

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2020-08-20

Silver basis price
It must be Monday, because the price of silver skyrocketed. From $26.10, it shot up to $27.50, or +5.4%. The last time we wrote about silver was after its crash to $25. Silver is now priced 10% above that low point.

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Silver Supply & Demand Still Strong at $29, 11 Aug

2020-08-12

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2020-08-12

Silver Basis, Silver Price, 10 August
And, *bam!* Just like that, silver sells for $29. It seems so simple, so obvious, so black-and-white. Seeing the price chart in recent weeks, you wouldn’t know that silver speculators have been waiting for this moment since March, 2013 (when silver crossed the $29 line to the downside, and has not looked back until now).

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One of These Silver Days is Not Like the Other, 23 July

2020-07-24

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2020-07-24

Silver price vs Silver basis
Yesterday, the price of silver spiked about 10%. We wrote that it was driven by: “…buying of physical metal.” And we added: “This is a pretty good signal that a bull market may be returning to silver. Let’s watch the basis and price action closely and see how it develops, before we join the pack…”

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About that Spike in the Silver Price… 22 July

2020-07-23

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2020-07-23

Silver price vs Silver Basis
The price of silver has just spiked up about $2.00—that’s about 10%. All the usual suspects have been calling for silver to skyrocket. With some amusement, we have been watching ads from a guy known for savvy junior mining stock investments, who has been calling for gold to go up for a while.

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Dear Bullion Banks, Please Come Back! Market Report

2020-07-15

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2020-07-15

Gold Basis and Co-basis and the Dollar Price
One of our colleagues recently wrote an open letter to Ted Butler. The point was that Monetary Metals gold leasing is a different kind of activity than what is called “gold leasing” in the institutional bullion market. We make it possible for gold owners to lease their metal to gold-using businesses, and thereby earn interest in gold.

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Defaults Are Coming, Market Report, 22 June

2020-06-23

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2020-06-23

Silver Basis and Co-basis and the Dollar Price
We are reading now about possible regulations for air travel. In brief: passengers might be forced to spend hours at the airport. Authorities will perform medical checks, including possibly needles to draw blood, no lounges, no food or drink on board the plane, masks required at all times, and even denied the use of a bathroom except by special permission.

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Growing Dollar Demand, Silver Weirdness, Market Report, 15 June

2020-06-17

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2020-06-17

Silver Basis and Co-basis and the Dollar Price, November 2019-February 2020
The Federal Reserve has become more aggressive again, after several years of acting docile. As you can see on this chart of the Fed’s balance sheet, it has very rapidly expanded from a baseline from (prior to) 2015 through 2018, of about $4.4 trillion. After which, it had attempted to taper, getting down to $3.8 trillion last summer. Then it was obliged to reverse itself well before responding to the COVID lockdown. Since then, its balance sheet...

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When Is a Capital Gain Capital Consumption? Market Report, 25 May

2020-05-26

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2020-05-26

Silver Basis and Co-basis and the Dollar Price
The price of gold dropped a few bucks this week, but the price of silver jumped about half a buck. The drumbeat for the gold bull market is well underway, and it is beginning now for silver. So let’s do a quick update on the supply and demand fundamentals.

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Gold and Silver Markets Start to Normalize, Report 4 May

2020-05-05

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2020-05-05

Gold Basis and Co-basis and the Dollar Price
The price of gold dropped $29 and the price of silver dropped $0.27. We’ll get back to where we think the prices are likely to go in a bit. In recent Reports, we’ve looked at the elevated bid-ask spread in gold (though not nearly as elevated as some goldbugs would have you believe) and the elevated gold basis.

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It’s Only Paper, Market Report 27 Apr

2020-04-28

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2020-04-28

The response to the virus has added a new mechanism of capital consumption to the many we have documented over the years. Businesses are shut down, yet they continue to incur expenses. There is a popular misconception out there that this is merely a paper loss. One can almost picture a neutron bomb that somehow wipes out only paper, leaving all the physical assets and plant unscathed.

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Crouching Silver, Hidden Oil Market Report 20 Apr

2020-04-21

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2020-04-21

Gold Basis and Co-basis and the Dollar Price
The price of gold has been up steadily for the last 30 days (with a few zigs and zags), now re-attaining the high it achieved prior to the big drop in March. Gold ended the week at $1,662. Alas, it’s not quite the same story in silver, whose price drop was bigger. Now its price blip is smaller. Silver ended the week at $15.19.

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The Out Has Not Yet Begun to Fall, Market Report 31 March

2020-04-02

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2020-04-02

Gold Spot Spread
So, the stock market has dropped. Every government in the world has responded to the coronavirus with drastic, if not unprecedented, violations of the rights of the people. Not to mention, extremely aggressive monetary policy. And, they are about to unleash massive fiscal stimulus as well (for example, the United States government is about to dole out over $2 trillion worth of loot).

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Alchemy Rediscovered by Research Scientist, Report 1 April

2020-04-01

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2020-04-01

“The Medievals were smarter than most people think,” says Dr. Michael Mus. “I mean, sure, they tortured people for believing that the sun was the center of our solar system, and they burned witches at the stake. But they knew a thing or two about gold.”

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Cash is Toilet Paper, Market Report 23 March

2020-03-24

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2020-03-24

Gold Spot vs Near Contract, 2019-2020
The price of gold dropped $31, and that of silver fell even more by proportion, $2.14. The gold-silver ratio hit a hit of over 126 before closing the week around 119. This exceeds the high in the ratio last hit in the George H.W. Bush recession. Last week, we were warming up to silver, if not recommending it.

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Is Now a Good Time to Buy Gold? Market Report 16 March

2020-03-16

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2020-03-16

We got hate mail after publishing Silver Backwardation Returns. It seems that someone thought backwardation means silver is a backward idea, or a bad bet. “You are a *&%#! idiot,” cursed he. “Silver is the most underpriced asset on the planet,” he offered as his sole supporting evidence. He doesn’t know that backwardation means scarcity, not that a commodity’s price is too high.

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Socialism and Gold

2020-03-04

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2020-03-04

Most people assume that the central bank prints money when it buys bonds. They further assume that this increase in the quantity of money causes an increase in the general price level. And, this leads them to assume that the value of the money is 1 / P (P is the general price level). Therefore, when the central bank prints money to buy bonds, it is diluting the value of the money held by everyone—in proportion to the amount printed divided by the...

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Silver Backwardation Returns, Gold and Silver Market Report 2 March

2020-03-02

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2020-03-02

Silver Spot Price Bid-Offer Spread
The big news this week was the drop in the prices of the metals (though we believe that it is the dollar which is going up), $57 and $1.81 respectively. Of course, when the price drops the injured goldbugs come out. We have written the authoritative debunking of the gold and silver price suppression conspiracy here. We provide both the scientific theory and the data.

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Widening Bid-Ask Spreads, Gold and Silver Market Report 17 February

2020-02-17

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2020-02-17

Gold Term Structure
The price of gold rose $14 and the price of silver fell $0.07. The gold-silver ratio rose further with this price action. Welcome to our new Gold and Silver Market Report, or “Market Report” for short. We are separating this from the economics essay, which was attached for many years. As they used to say in many toy commercials of yore, “batteries sold separately”—or in this case essays.

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Monetary Metals Gold Brief 2020

2020-02-03

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2020-02-03

Gold Fundamental Price
We apologize for not posting articles during January. We have been busy, and going forward will publish a separate Market Report every Monday morning plus macroeconomics essays later in the week, as time permits.

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Open Letter to John Taft, Report 17 Dec

2019-12-18

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2019-12-18

Silver Basis and Co-basis and the Dollar Price
Dear Mr. Taft: I eagerly read your piece Warriors for Opportunity on Wednesday, as I often do about pieces that argue that capitalism is not working today. You begin by saying: “Financial capitalism – free markets powered by a robust financial system – is the dominant economic model in the world today. Yet many who have benefited from the system agree it’s not working the way it ought to.”

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