Since topping out around $35.50 an ounce late in February, the price of silver has done little except fall. Sentiment in the precious metals market seems to be hovering at multi-year lows with investors shunning the metal for riskier assets. That is until late last week.
The pop in silver prices on Thursday felt different to me, and I went long silver for the first time in months (buying shares in ProShares Ultra Silver ETF – NYSE:AGQ). Why? Here are four reasons why I think silver prices could be due for a sharp upturn:
1) QE3. We thought Operation Twist buried our chance to see further monetary easing out of the Federal Reserve. Don’t give up hope just yet. The metals bounced hard on Thursday after meeting minutes from the latest Federal Open Market Committee gathering held hints that further quantitative easing is still a potential option if the U.S. economy remains sluggish. Another round of QE would likely ignite a surge in commodities across the board.
2) Too far, too fast. Silver prices have crumbled more than 11 percent in the past three weeks. The drop last Wednesday was extreme with the metal shedding $1 an ounce in a single day of trading. A plunge that large feels like concession selling. And we all know when we see concession selling: right before the start of a recovery.
3) The bull market in precious metals is still intact. While we don’t always like to admit it, silver prices generally follow gold’s lead. Sometimes, it can feel like it’s the other way around since the silver market is so much smaller than the gold market, but we’d be kidding ourselves to say that silver prices aren’t extremely dependent on what the price of gold is doing.
And gold’s been flirting with important psychological levels lately. For one thing: last week’s lows (hit on Wednesday) coincided with a 20 percent drop from last year’s highs (per Forbes). That key technical level seemed to awaken a lot of the sleeping bulls who promptly piled back into the metal. After all, a 20 percent drop is considered the cut-off for the transition from a bull market to a bear market. Had gold continued dropping (and particularly if it would have fallen below $1,500 an ounce), you could have taken it as a sign to sell your metals and head for the hills. Until we get that confirmation, though, I’m leaning to the bullish side for gold (and therefore silver, too).
4) The Grecian plot thickens. The primary reason I think last week’s low in silver prices was a turning point is this: fears that Greece would leave or get booted from the Eurozone were still at a fever pitch. For the past month or so, problems in Greece have been amplifying, and I think that’s a big reason the price of precious metals have fallen.
Investors didn’t want a “safe haven”, they wanted cold, hard, highly-liquid cash. Indeed, some €700 billion reportedly left Greek banks in a single day last week. Last Thursday and Friday marked the first two days gold and silver prices have climbed in the face of the fears of a default in Greece. That could be a sign investors are betting the EU will announce new stimulus or that they’ve accepted the fact that a collapse in Greece is unavoidable. Either way, the rise in precious metals – despite the bad news out of Greece – was enough to turn me bullish on precious metals (at least for now).
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The iShares Silver Trust ETF: The fund buys and sells silver in an attempt to have it’s share price match the value of its bullion holdings. If the value of the fund’s shares rise, iShares buys more silver. In theory, the fund’s market cap should equate to the fund’s silver holdings (less fees and liabilities).
In general, I break gold buyers into two camps: defensive buyers and offensive buyers. Defensive buyers are temporarily trying to protect their wealth from effects of inflation. Offensive buyers are the so-called “gold bugs” – the investors who believe that we’re in the midst of a financial crisis that can only be resolved in one way: a string of sovereign defaults. Those offensive buyers don’t plan on selling until we have some new, multi-national gold-backed monetary system.
1) The Gold/Silver Ratio. The gold:silver ratio has been trending up since early March, and that trend probably won’t stop until the ratio re-tests January’s highs around 57:1. Why? Because swing and momentum traders themselves help cause the fluctuations in the gold:silver ratio. So long as the ratio is showing a clearly defined trend, and it’s not nearing any key resistance levels (or psychological barriers), those swing traders are going to short silver. Check out the steady upward climb in the gold:silver ratio:



One of the leading voices in this debate is Dr. Paul Walker of precious metals consultancy GFMS Thomson Reuters. At a conference last week in Dubai, Dr. Walker pointed out that it takes some $120-$150 billion of investment demand every year just to keep gold prices flat – not to mention see prices climb higher (per 

Of course, silver is still in the green this year (up 7 percent around $30 an ounce), but it’s hard to argue the fact that investors are giving the metal the cold shoulder. The gold-silver ratio is in a strong uptrend (per
Now that the hoopla has died down, a lot of investors are acting like the silver story has run its course. Not so fast 



1) The gold standard helped create the Great Depression. Pegging the dollar to gold led to financial panics during the Great Depression Bernanke argued during a recent speech at George Washington University (per
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Both the Fresnillo and Cannington mines are “primary silver mines,” which means that silver is the predominant metal that’s being mined at the sites. For years, those two mines have helped BHP and Fresnillo take the title as the world’s largest silver producers.









