True to form precious metals is still going nowhere as predicted in my previous " IS STACKING STARTING TO SUCK" posts . I'm still holding cash. But we are getting closer to another bottom in my opinion. If your currently without a plan to combat the premium overpay then silver will for the time being be the suckiest of all investment classes at the moment. Cash is STILL KING ! I'm holding out till Christmas / New Year and see what happens as I think there is still some bloodletting to go. The biggest winners in last 6 months are the dealers and biggest losers are the stackers. But that game changer will turn the corner in the future for the stacker, but it's just not now. Of course like a resounding gong someone will chime in and say for the millionth time - "IT'S A GREAT TIME TO BUY", I say "IT'S BEEN A GREATER TIME TO HOLD CASH" and continue to wait it out a tad longer.
Cash - wait for evidence of a turn imo Must admit the retreat of silver in aud has disappointed my expectations so far. Did leave myself a redoubt of $20 aud, but if that falls I throw up my hands in defeat again as a silver bull. Thought $22 aud would hold. Hope silversale doesnt read this and come out in his 'scary clown' costume
I bought the majority of my silver under AU$20. Haven't been buying much above that. I'm now holding out completely until it hits that level again. If it doesn't, oh well, doesn't matter much to me. Gold is very temping with this recent drop today (third weekly smackdown in a row), it's erased the last 9 months of gains. But I agree, it's nice to be sitting on cash right now.
Back to 22 again. But money is made on the buy. Buy when it's on the way down sell when it goes up. I'm looking at the dropping price and saying BUY.
I started buying and selling silver about a year or so ago. I've made over 10% return. I'm pretty sure that your cash hasn't grown that much. So, no, over the past 12 months, Cash wouldn't have been king for me (though fondling stacks of $100 notes is fun!!!)
Not for the last 5 months or so. With hindsight I should have sold into the strength, but hindsight is always easy.
Waiting for the US interest rate to come in effect, then the last smackdown and I will complete my gold accumulation in one final swoop.
Read wide and varied data and analysis and guess. That's what I'm doing and so far I've get a lot of PMs worth less than what I paid. I got the wrong type and that doesn't help. In short be prepared to make mistakes, learn from them and end up like the rest of us guessing what's up next.
Good luck to you if you're stacking speculatively. I started that way when I first joined SS years back. Got in when silver was at $16 an ounce waiting for the 'to the moon' moment and missed it! Who knew that at the time $40-odd bucks an oz was a winning price!? I even got sucked in to the hype then and bought at around the top. Looking back, and looking to the future, silver and gold aren't for speculating unless you're prepared to lose your savings or get yourself into some very hot water with creditors. I have adopted an approach where we're saving about 10% of our income and spending it on PMs. Silver is volatile, sure. What we're hoping is that the volatility over the short term will be wiped from our (worried) minds over the long term - even if we're only keeping above inflation and making modest returns. If silver does anything stupid (really--if the market does anything stupid--causing silver to show true value) and things look much better than anticipated, then so be it. Lucky you. Lucky me. Enjoy it. Don't get too caught up. Do it for reasons and consequences you can live with and can explain to your loved ones
I'm looking at it as another buying opportunity. End of the year is always tough for me but at least this year I'm not selling. It sucks if you have to sell. A good cash position in Dollars looks the way to go and buy physical as premiums collapse or paper at the right entry point. Unfortunately, I bought some at the highs but overall done well and will cost average down. I think it is good to have some in PM's with everything going on around the world. Though I bought high, my money in the stock market has been doing well so PM's as insurance!
Just out of interest when you say " I think it is good to have some in PM's with everything going on around the world" what is the difference in the world between now and 30 40 or 50 years ago? It would appear to me that other than MORE NEWS that allows us more views the world is a lot more stable than it has been in history and if we go back to the 50 year mark we had the cold war and the Cuban missile crisis and yet we are all still here today. "Stacking" for the sake of it to just buy and hold will NEVER see a return for the MAJORITY of stackers and perhaps even see them loose a lot of $$$$$, the only way to "stack" is to be constantly buying and selling making $$$$ and metals on (hopefully) each deal.
The fundamentals for PMs are there. Experienced stackers here are aware of them and the information is easily accessible. I don't think the majority of stackers (those that have iron will and can hold on through the shitstorm of silver's inherent price turbulence) will lose money. If you buy on a whim or expect 'to the moon' prices in 6 months, I wouldn't call you a stacker, I'd call you an idiot. In the long term, I don't think stackers will only be able to make money buying and selling over and over. I like the idea of using the GSR as a vehicle to increase one's holdings, which is a way of buying and selling, but to make reasonable gains with only a modest amount of metal, you'd need large GSR shifts which don't occur too frequently. If you began buying silver regularly for the last three years or go, you've probably have a cost average of about $AUD20-25 an ounce. Silver's hit $USD50 that was entirely unrelated to fundamentals. I think we should expect the price of silver to reach this price again (at least). You've doubled your money. The issue is when stackers believe their own hype and start buying more metal at these inflated prices when they should be ditching all their metal instead of buying. My 2 cents.
Trust me when I say I completely understand where you are coming from with this and in a lot of ways I feel the same. If you noticed, i said 'SOME' PM's, not all. In our lifetimes there will be spurts of instability and these PM's are good to counter the effects of a downward market. When you ask how is it different that 30-50 years? It's not sort of. Turbulent times come and go and the severity has gone down but that doesn't mean it will continue to be smooth sailing. Gold and instruments like Bitcoin add a bit of an alternative to currency. The price of gold 50 years ago was $35/oz or $275/oz adjusted for inflation. If you think it will continue to fall, don't buy. I tend to think things go in cycles and we're finishing one up. Before I started stacking a little over a year ago, I was 100% in stocks from 2009. I lost a bit in the crash, but made a lot more in the recovery. Seeing how I got wiped out the first time and if you look at how PM's handle during those types of times. Gold in particular is fairly stable or inches up. I don't expect for my bullion gold to earn a return, that's what my money in the market is for and/or collectible coins. The bullion gold and silver is mainly to soften any damage in a market drop and to use as reinvestable currency for market dips/pm spikes. I think this is the difference. I'm not looking to stack for the sake of it or never convert it, quite the opposite. I did a lot of buying and selling to get a better understanding of the market. The buying and selling gets difficult because there are two distinct markets. High premium and low premium. As people age, i'm not sure there will be enough buyers of the high premium stuff, but at a fundamental level everyone understands low premium and what metals are typically used for. I like the wider market of the lower premium space since buyers are less fussy. I still do some buying and selling with some value adds to reduce my cost to lower the avg. cost and reduce market risk. Now that i see how much effort it actually takes to sell stuff, i'm moving a bit to straight stacking now. Even if it were to continue dropping. I'm in the mindset now to continue building because metals can be used anywhere around the world. What worries me is the devaluation of fiat around the world. There are very few things that are constant and I look at gold as one of the constants and silver as more volatile little bro. Either way, if in 30 years from now I've accumulated several tens or hundred+ of ounces of gold and/or thousand+ of oz silver, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, think if you had that many oz from 30-50 years ago. This in addition to property and money in the stock market. Something physical to hand down and virtual. I should add the majority of my stack was purchased around the current level or a little lower.
If your willing to see out the highs and lows then stack whatever you see to be a great buy irrespective of the price I still have atleast 25yrs of stacking... Cheers, HAPPY STACKING
Twenty five years! You get less punishment than that for murder these days. Personally, I think I have suffered enough and will hopefully be fully out of this caper within the next two or three years with perhaps a small gain, if I am very lucky. I will be keeping my gold but the silver is steadily being sold off as stacking silver, IMHO, definitely sucks.
As long as there is corruption and manipulation by banks and traders interfering in the spot price we may as well be stacking rocks ...