Physical inventory has now dropped 7% in 3 days. SLV: May 3.2011: Ounces of Silver in Trust 354,100,312.500 Tonnes of Silver in Trust Tonnes of Silver in Trust 11,013.75 SLV: May 6.2011: Ounces of Silver in Trust 329,665,590.000 Tonnes of Silver in Trust Tonnes of Silver in Trust 10,253.75
When the price of silver is moving significantly SLV needs to track it. If it gets out of whack the Authorised Participants can add or remove silver, increasing or decrease the amount of shares as they do so. The arbitrage they get from this keeps SLV on track with the silver price. So some increase and decrease should be expected. How much that accounts for movements I have no idea! Some decreases may be due to big players remove some silver.
I don't know where I sit with SLV, I just reckon it all makes for great reading. Looks like it has recently been the most traded stock on the NYSE by a long way. ----- Nowadays everybody has to learn to do more with less. For reasons I'm not smart enough to understand, the SLV is becoming a shining example of that old adage. Since its inception in 2006, the SLV has traded more than 100 million shares exactly 10 times, 9 of which occurred consecutively (April 25, 2011 May 5, 2011 (today)). In fact today was all-time, #1 volume day for the SLV (295mm). So no doubt the SLV is doing more. What's utterly amazing is they are doing all this crazy volume 33 million shares less (and ounces of silver) than they had just 7 trading days ago. So in the last 9 trading days, trading has totaled more than 4 times the number of shares currently in existence. Even mighty Apple at its mo-mo-mo-iest never came close to this kind of volume relative to shares outstanding. In October 2008, AAPL traded 160% of its outstanding shares for the entire month. At the present pace, SLV will trade well over 1000% of its shares outstanding in May. ----- Full article with graphs: http://acrossthestreetnet.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/slv-trading-volume-soars-while-shares-vanish EDIT: And May 6, SLV traded 758 million shares .
I hadn't looked at this in a while. Back when I posted the above SLV inventory levels, spot was US$44/oz May 3 then fell to US$34/oz May 6. Now that spot is back up to US$39.85/oz, what's the inventory look like? SLV: July 15.2011 Ounces of Silver in Trust 309,738,781.100 Tonnes of Silver in Trust Tonnes of Silver in Trust 9,633.95
"And you honestly believe that they can move 20.14 million oz out of the SLV vaults in one day?" They don't move it out of the vaults, its ownership just changes. I can't believe he is that stupid that he thinks that every change in an ETF involves a physical shipment - that is why clearinghouses exist.
