Tag Archive: Basic Reports

Defaults Are Coming, Market Report, 22 June

2020-06-23

by

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.

Read More »

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

2020-06-17

by

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...

Read More »

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

2020-05-26

by

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.

Read More »

Gold and Silver Markets Start to Normalize, Report 4 May

2020-05-05

by

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.

Read More »

It’s Only Paper, Market Report 27 Apr

2020-04-28

by

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.

Read More »

Crouching Silver, Hidden Oil Market Report 20 Apr

2020-04-21

by

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.

Read More »

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

2020-04-02

by

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).

Read More »

Alchemy Rediscovered by Research Scientist, Report 1 April

2020-04-01

by

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.”

Read More »

Cash is Toilet Paper, Market Report 23 March

2020-03-24

by

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.

Read More »

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

2020-03-16

by

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.

Read More »

Socialism and Gold

2020-03-04

by

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...

Read More »

Silver Backwardation Returns, Gold and Silver Market Report 2 March

2020-03-02

by

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.

Read More »

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

2020-02-17

by

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.

Read More »

Monetary Metals Gold Brief 2020

2020-02-03

by

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.

Read More »

Open Letter to John Taft, Report 17 Dec

2019-12-18

by

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.”

Read More »

The End of an Epoch, Report 8 Dec

2019-12-10

by

2019-12-10

“There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”

Read More »

Money and Prices Are a Dynamic System, Report 1 Dec

2019-12-03

by

2019-12-03

Gold and Silver Prices
The basic idea behind the Quantity Theory of Money could be stated as: too much money supply is chasing too little goods supply, so prices rise. We have debunked this from several angles. For example, we can use a technique that every first year student in physics is expected to know. Dimensional analysis looks at the units on both sides of an equation.

Read More »

Raising Rates to Fight Inflation, Report 24 Nov

2019-11-26

by

2019-11-26

Physics students study mechanical systems in which pulleys are massless and frictionless. Economics students study monetary systems in which rising prices are everywhere and always caused by rising quantity of currency. There is a similarity between this pair of assumptions. Both are facile. They oversimplify reality, and if one is not careful they can lead to spectacularly wrong conclusions.

Read More »

The Perversity of Negative Interest, Report 17 Nov

2019-11-18

by

2019-11-18

Gold and Silver Prices
Today, we want to say two things about negative interest rates. The first is really simple. Anyone who believes in a theory of interest that says “the savers demand interest to compensate for inflation” needs to ask if this explains negative interest in Switzerland, Europe, and other countries. If not, then we need a new theory (Keith just presented his theory at the Austrian Economics conference at King Juan Carlos University in Madrid—it is...

Read More »

What’s the Price of Gold in the Gold Standard, Report 10 Nov

2019-11-12

by

2019-11-12

Gold Price
Let’s revisit a point that came up in passing, in the Silver Doctors’ interview of Keith. At around 35:45, he begins a question about weights and measures, and references the Coinage Act of 1792. This raises an interesting set of issues, and we have encountered much confusion (including from one PhD economist whose dissertation committee was headed by Milton Friedman himself).

Read More »