I think anyone can speculate on silver, definitely a couple boring kilobars bought at spot or near spot in Oct-Dec 2018 is a good and affordable long term investment. But at today's price, not so much - I personally may not begin to buy silver now if I had not started last year. So it's a timing issue. But the same can be said of gold. Prices have gone up significantly (gold is at all time high in most currencies) and the risk has increased. The chance may present itself again should we have a deflationary bust event in which silver collapses like in 2008.
I would not distress if gold dropped, I would buy more. But I would be worried if my silver stack became worthless. It's weird how I feel so different about the two. I have been buying an ounce or two a week of silver but I don't consider that much more than collecting pieces I fancy.
Still far better than holding currency in the banks and enabling them via their fractional reserve banking scheme. I wouldn't be surprised to see silver test the $13-$15 USD handle over the next few months and never return to these prices again. If that happens, I'll be buying 100oz bars at every opportunity to keep my savings out of the banks. Raise a glass to negative rates and undervalued assets!
I guess this applies to most of us because the sentiment on gold is much better than silver as it is being pumped and endorsed by likes of Putin, but no trend is guaranteed to last forever. What happens if governments start to launch government backed cryptos that can be traded on private exchanges and bypass SWIFT? Crypto yuan is now being launched. Government buying of gold to bypass the dollar will slowdown when this happens, and with gold mine production still rising, investment and jewellery demand cannot fully absorb the supply coming forth. The sentiment on gold in the early 2000s is not the same as today. At that time gold is not seen as an asset. It is only used as jewellery and gifts which isn’t surprising since gold peaked at $800 20 years before and it is a depreciating asset, not to mention you need to pay GST on bullion.
GST is exempt on bullion: https://www.abcbullion.com.au/investor-centre/blog/do-you-pay-gst-on-precious-metals
