Many people around the world want to know the answer to the question, “Where is silver going?”

I invested several hours browsing the Internet searching for answers to save you time and money (because time is money, after all). Have another financial question? Drop me a line. Please don’t ask me where your lost kitten is or why she left you. Ask me about topics that can make you money, like silver!

Here are my findings on the latest silver price predictions for 2013, 2014 and beyond. The prices are sorted from low to high:

1) $26 Barclays according to CommodityOnline

Barclays believes strong production growth in mining will knock silver prices down and keep them low in 2013. “We expect it to grow to 25.2kt in 2013, with the slowdown in output from Australia and Europe being offset by strong growth across South America and Asia. We expect modest growth from the major producers, with Mexico retaining its pole position.”

2) $30-$32 Neil Meader (Head of Precious Metals Research and Forecast) according to Forbes

“For the moment, we would expect to see a continuation of the price volatility that we’ve seen of late.

“The unknown for the longer term is inflation.”

“It would be wrong to assume that a year-on-year price fall automatically presages an end to the multi-year rally; that occurred in 2009 and yet prices (based on the annual average) then more than doubled in just two years.”

3) $31 Deutsche Bank

The bank lowered its forecast last month 16.5% to $31 according to Fox because the demand for stocks over commodities is rising and the growth in the United States of America is improving. The 2014 forecast was also significantly reduced.

Excluding major banks currently in the red. Deutsche Bank is the fifth least profitable major bank in the world with barely $400 million in profits. It appears they are no longer qualified to give financial advice to anybody. Perhaps they should hire me. I can easily turn a profit of $40 million. I am just a regular guy. They have 100,000 employees.

4) $33 HSBC

The bank increased its target for silver from $32 based on four factors driving prices higher: industrial demand, investor appetite, strong coin and bar purchases and a bottoming out of jewelry demand according to the Wall Street Journal.

“Greater industrial silver consumption is one of the most compelling arguments in favor of higher prices.”

5) $34.10 BNP Paribas

The bank reduced its silver 2013 forecast a few months ago to $34.10 from $39.05 according to Reuters.

6) $35 Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley is very bullish on silver and selected the precious metal as one of the Top Picks for 2013 according to BusinessWeek.

“Gold, silver and corn will outperform other raw materials next year as a weaker dollar and rising investor demand bolster precious metals while supply curbs aid grains.”

7) $38 Commerzbank according to the Wall Street Journal

Silver is “establishing itself as a precious metal with an industrial character, setting itself significantly apart from gold.”

8) $40.25 Michel O’Brien

Silver To Gain 29% in 2013 – Analysts, Traders and Investors.

“The silver market remains a very small market and this continuing global investment and store of value demand should lead to silver reaching a real record high, inflation adjusted, of over $140/oz in the coming years.”

9) $50-$60 Ge Christenson according to SilverSeek

“This is not a prediction based on wishful thinking and hope, but a best estimate based on rational analysis of data stretching back to 1975.”

“Silver (and gold) will continue to rise, doubling every 3 – 4 years, until our government manages to tame the deficits, the borrowing, and the inevitable inflation.”

10) $91 Equity Management Academy

Silver Doctors started recently in 2011 and they are visited by over 750,000 each month. The video analysis by Steve Roy is only 9 minutes long.

This was the highest forecast I could find at the time of this writing – a time when, admittedly, silver prices are extremely low. It’ll be interesting to see which of the predictions above come the closest to the truth by the end of the year.

Because the silver investment market is so small, it’s particularly vulnerable to hype. That’s exactly what the commodities research firm CPM Group thinks is happening now as investors trumpet the “incredible” demand for silver coins in January. While the U.S. Mint did announce all-time sales records for 2013 silver eagles in January (with 7,498,000 coins sold), CPM Group argues that’s just a hold-over of pent-up demand from earlier in the winter.

“All of this talk about a shortage of silver is irrational and not supported by readily available market data,” CPM Group says in its latest report.

Specifically, the company cites worries over the Fiscal Cliff in November and December as driving up demand for American Eagles. Since the Mint sold-out of coins in both November and December, that demand rolled forward into January driving sales up to record levels.

CPM Group’s been painting a pretty bleak picture of silver prices going forward. The commodities research firm believes prices will head lower over the next decade (through 2022) rather than higher as most silver price prognosticators would have you believe.

I’m not ready to make that assumption, but there are lessons to be learned from CPM Group. Mainly that the U.S. Mint isn’t the best gauge of market demand for silver. It’s too easily overwhelmed by demand, and that pushes sales forward into months when demand could have otherwise been low.

Ok. I’ll admit I’m not entirely sure who Ian Williams is. This UK article describes him simply as “a City-based asset fund manager.” Still, he’s rather brazen in his predictions for the white metal.

Silver is destined to enter a “sustained bull market” in the coming weeks. Mr Williams believes the price of silver will increase fivefold between now and 2016, with a peak expected in the third quarter of 2015.

Good news for silver bulls if Mr. Williams can be trusted. More at livecharts.co.uk.

Global Resource Specialist Peter Krauth of Money Morning believes silver prices could hit $54 an ounce in 2013. Here are four reasons why he’s so bullish on the metal:

1. An expected normalization in the gold-silver ratio
2. President Obama’s prediliction for money-printing
3. Hard asset investor demand as paper currencies continue to slide
4. Growing industrial demand

More at ETFDailyNews.

And the newspaper gives five reasons why:

1. Platinum has outperformed gold and silver in the short-term and over the past year.
2. Strong car sales mean higher platinum prices, particularly since 40 percent of mined platinum goes into catalytic converters.
3. Mine strikes in South Africa have seriously dampened platinum supplies.
4. Mining costs have out-stripped platinum prices for a lot of companies – a fact that will likely lead even more producers to cut their platinum output.
5. Growth in China means more platinum jewelry sales.

Source: Investors.com.

This is the stuff of investing legend. For the first time in history, not one but two jurisdictions have legalized possession of marijuana (Colorado and Washington). Overnight, companies that may have been laughable are suddenly the talk of Wall Street. The most stunning example, of course, is Medbox Inc. (PINK:MDBX). Shares in the Hollywood-based maker of a standalone medicine dispenser (think the Redbox of pot), shot up nearly 7000 percent in two weeks from $3 a share to north of $200 a share (they’ve since sold off to still hove around $70 a share).

Other pot stocks have also enjoyed spectacular gains. But the big question is which of these companies will thrive long-term if pot manages to stay on the right side of the law? Here’s our table of the Top 14 best marijuana stocks based on market cap. Beneath that, check out the top 3 marijuana stocks we currently view as the best of the best.

1) Medical Marijuana Inc. (PINK:MJNA) Medical Marijuana Inc. operates five pot-related businesses: Photosphere (a medical-grade cannabis producer), Red Dice Holdings (produces hemp-oil based products, namely Dixie Elixirs drops, which present an alternative delivery method for pot), Hemp Med Rx (a marijuana-related medical technology company), Wellness Managed Services (a marijuana dispensary operator), and CanChew Biotechnologies (a chewing gum-based marijuana product). As of Sept. 30, 2012, the company claimed total assets of $8.1 million and net income during the quarter of $1.19 million.

2) GW Pharmaceuticals (PINK:GWPRF) Founded in 1998, GW markets Sativex, “an oromucosal spray for the treatment of MS symptoms, cancer pain and neuropathic pain.” The UK-based company is continuing research into new applications for medical marijuana. The company sold £5.4M worth of Sativex through the six months ended March 31, 2012.

3) SearchCore Inc. (PINK:SRER). SearchCore’s already making some decent cash. The Newport Beach-based technology company grew profits by 38 percent to $1.2 million during Q3 (per OCBJ). Their MO? Making weed-related websites. Among them are WeedMaps.com, which provides information on medicinal marijuana dispensaries; MMJMenu.com, a site for medicinal marijuana dispensaries, and SafeAccessMD, which offers software for doctors who prescribe medicinal marijuana.

Runner Up: Cannabis Science Inc. (PINK:CBIS). CBIS focuses on “phytocannabinoid” science – that’s the pursuit of marijuana blends that target specific illnesses including HIV/AIDS and cancer. Through Sept. 30, 2012, the company claimed total assets of $1,778,489, but lost more than $2 million in the quarter. Research into medical marijuana doesn’t come cheap.

Side notes: Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) developed a synthetic version of marijuana that could start gaining stream. And watch out if a major tobacco producer (say Marlboro-maker Altria) decides to move into the marijuana space. Their deep pockets could crush competition and they just might have a new product to hang their hats on. Don’t expect any announcements until we get more direction from the Federal government, though.

Related

I’ve been glued to my computer looking at the photos from Hurricane Sandy rolling in on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Here are the Top 10 pics of the hurricane I’ve seen so far:

1) New York’s Skyline blackout (credit Hsyee):

2) Flooding on Avenue C and 14 Street in New York City (credit Megetz):

3) Flooding on the piers in Long Island City (credit JimmyVanBramer):

4) Flooding in Hoboken hours before the storm (credit Tarafied87):

5) Flood waters start rolling into the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel (formerly the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel) in New York (credit MTAPhotos):

6) Water pouring into Ground Zero in New York City (credit Passantino):

7) Water pouring into the Subway in Hoboken (credit Mr_Alens):

8) Water slams the Statue of Liberty (credit h0es-and-v0dka). FAKE: Per a reader, we’ve learned the image below was yanked from ‘The Day After Tomorrow’.

9) A wind-blown trampoline; not sure where (credit ibejeanette):

10) Flooding at Avenue C and 14th Street in New York (credit ZeroHedge):

Bonus Pics of Hurricane Sandy

11) Water pouring into the a Times Square subway station (credit alelulule). Per a reader, we’ve learned this image is also a fake that cropped up during Hurricane Irene.

12) Girls on the verge of floating away in Brooklyn (credit Ma_Rockaine):

13) Water pours into an underground parking garage in the Financial District (credit KGW.com):

14) Firemen respond to a call in this @Time photo (credit AmericaBlog):

15) NYPD vans underwater (credit ABC User Photo):

16) A wind-damaged building in New York (credit InFlexWeTrust):

17) Water sweeps over roads in Manhattan in this AP shot (credit TheAtlantic):

18) Flooding in the East Village (credit BuzzFeed):

19) Flooding in the Dumbo area in Brooklyn (credit ABC):

The price of gold, oil, energy and other hard commodities has risen steadily for more than a decade, and that can only mean one thing: global currencies are weakening and inflation has settled in. The real question, though, is when we’re going to see the serious inflation that economists have been predicting?

To answer that, we’ve got to do some data mining. First: what’s the current inflation rate? According to the U.S. government, it’s a paltry 1.7 percent. Ask anyone who goes grocery shopping or pays household energy bills and they’ll probably shake their heads at that number.

In fact, if we calculate inflation the way the government did in 1989, we’d see inflation’s actually hovering at an annualized rate of 5 percent (per ShadowStats). If we calculated inflation the way our own government did in 1980, we’d see it’s even worse at somewhere north of 8 percent (again per ShadowStats).

Those are scary numbers. And they’re indicative of just how fragile our so-called recovery has been. And yet, most investors – and particularly the media – are happy to get spoon-fed the more palatable modified inflation numbers that get announced every month. It’s just a matter of time before that changes.

When will inflation get worse?

Inflation’s already bad, but it’s probably just a glimmer of how bad it will ultimately get in the U.S. Unfortunately, we don’t have a roadmap that spells out exactly when the bottom will drop out, but we can take educated guesses.

Right now, the U.S. dollar is artificially propped up thanks to the fact that it’s in better shape than some of its neighbors. The EU is worse off than the US, China’s yuan is pegged to the dollar, India’s got official inflation numbers north of 7 percent and inflation’s ravaging South America. Since the U.S. is printing money at will, that gives central banks around the world little incentive not to do the same. In fact, other economies get penalized if their currency stays strong relative to the dollar and Euro because their exports effectively cost more.

That’s created a race among central banks, with each of them trying to devalue their currencies faster than their neighbors.

The U.S. is doing particularly well at devaluing the dollar. Yes, the government can say that unemployment is under 8 percent, and that our budget will be balanced in a decade, but the facts just don’t support those claims. We think we’re insulated from riots, draconian budget cuts and hyperinflation, but I would argue we’re just a black swan away from a bout of hyperinflation in the U.S.

And that black swan would be a sudden rise in interest rates that the government is forced to pay on bonds. At the moment, interest rates on bonds are unnaturally low. That’s thanks to investor uncertainty and the Federal Reserve’s bond buying spree (known as quantitative easing). Yields on bonds are so low they’ve crumpled 50 percent over the past decade and more than 70 percent over the past 20 years.

We truly are at a pivot point. The U.S. debt load threatens to collapse the economy, and if investors lose faith in the U.S. government’s ability to pay back it’s bonds, the U.S. national debt could transform itself from a heavy burden into a crippling death blow. That’s no exaggeration, either. The same thing, in fact, happened in Ireland, Greece and Spain. How? Investors stopped buying bonds and the rates those governments had to pay to borrow cash skyrocketed.

It can’t happen here

Surely Greece is in worse shape than the U.S., right? In fact, the U.S. has surpassed Greece’s debt-to-GDP ratio (per GlobalFinance), and Italy’s debt-to-GDP is only about 16 percent higher than the U.S. government’s. Should investors stop buying bonds, the U.S. would have to sell them at ever higher interest rates with each tick up in rates further burdening the ability for our economy to “grow it’s way out” of debt.

Since most of Europe shares a currency in the Euro, countries in the EU don’t have the luxury of cranking up the printing presses at will. The U.S. on the other hand, does, and when investors stop dumping money into U.S. treasuries (which they eventually will), the U.S. will be forced to print money even faster than they are right now.

When that comes, we’ll finally see the rampant inflation that everyone’s afraid.

Will it happen in 2013?

The short answer is, I’m not sure. The long answer is, it’ll probably happen when conditions start improving in Europe. The Euro is in bad shape right now, but the fact that it’s tied together a diverse group of countries means the EU can exert pressure on troubled countries, forcing them to cut their budgets and get on a more sustainable fiscal path.

We can’t say the same thing about the dollar, and that means our government’s going to be reluctant to make the hard cuts it has to make. Without those cuts, the only choice the Fed will have is to print even more than the $85 billion a month that it’s already printing. Once that happens, we’ll really understand what it’s like to live in an economy rampant with inflation – no matter what numbers the government throws at us.

Related

This post is part of series where we’re checking in on the Top 500 gold and silver mining stocks profiled in our book Top 500 Gold and Silver Mining Stocks: Metalproofing Your Portfolio from the Coming Inflation Shock.

Performance: First, let’s compare Agnico-Eagle’s performance against the AMEX Gold Bugs Index (HUI) – a basket of industry-leading gold stocks.

Agnico-Eagle Mines is one of the top-performing stocks in the HUI this year. The stock also happens to be the smallest component of the HUI with a 3.11 percent weighting. As the smallest component of the HUI, Agnico’s market cap still stands at a massive $8.28 billion. Since it’s smaller than some of its peers, though, share prices could be a bit more volatile.

Why we like Agnico: 1.66% dividend; More than 21 million ounces of gold reserves. By market cap, Agnico is Canada’s fifth-largest gold producer. In Q3 2011 alone, the company increased its production by 11 percent to 265,978 ounces of gold. According to their most recent numbers, they’ve got total proven and probable gold reserves nearing 21.3 million ounces. http://www.agnico-eagle.com/

Recent News: RBC Dominion Securities raised their price target on Agnico-Eagle to $53 a share last week. A year ago, shares were north of $70. Prices crumpled to as low as $33, though, on news that the company was forced to close its Goldex mine in Quebec due to safety concerns. On top of that, Agnico wrote off part of its investment in its Meadowbank mine in Nunavut.

RBC analyst Stephen Walker says things are finally looking up. “The company has shown its ability to ‘under-promise and over-deliver’ on its operating results and drive strong performance at its five operating mines,” he wrote in a note (per the Financial Post). “However, we believe investors expect to see the company deliver results that are sustainable and demonstrate future growth over the next 2-3 years.”

Agnico’s looking to the future with new exploration partnerships in Colombia and Alaska (with Miranda Gold) among other places.

Agnico paid out a dividend of $0.20 cents on Aug. 30. That’s up 25 percent over the company’s $0.16 dividend a year ago. Thanks to growing enthusiasm for gold and silver mining shares, I think RBC’s price target is low, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see shares north of $60 a year from now.

Check out our book Top 500 Gold and Silver Mining Stocks: Metalproofing Your Portfolio from the Coming Inflation Shock (pictured above) to uncover more undiscovered gold and silver mining stocks.

Related

One of my favorite quotes in recent news came from Bill Murphy founder and chairman of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA). In an interview (that I highly recommend) with Jim Puplava of the Financial Sense Newshour, Murphy argued that the price of gold and silver have been successfully manipulated for decades.

The debt crisis that’s plaguing the U.S., Europe, Japan and other countries will eventually lead to so much money-printing, though, that continuing to suppress the price of precious metals just won’t be possible. That’s when we’ll truly see a tremendous climb in prices.

“When the public comes in here in our tiny gold and silver markets, it will be a bubble, and it will dwarf what the Internet did except it will be real for a long period of time,” Murphy said. “And that’s coming.”

That’s good news for gold and silver stock holders, but it will likely be bad for everyone on the outside looking in. Since Murphy’s certain we’re nearing the tipping point for inflation (especially after the Fed signaled that QEIII is coming on Friday), he looks at buying mining shares as a no-brainer.

“It’s probably the best risk-reward situation right now as the gold and silver markets have ever seen in terms of the equities,” he says.

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