There will come a time to sell and if silver behaves as it did in the 70's, then it would be prudent to sell in batches on a rising price keeping in mind the inevitable parabolic blow off. You have to be careful to not end up like some people I know....a financial advisor...( there is a clue here also as to indicate the time to sell when financial advisors are on board).....told them to buy silver. They paid $1500 per kilo..........that would be close to $6000-$7000 per kilo in todays money. Twenty years later they were still sitting on 2 very expensive paper weights..........add another 10 years for a another blow off and you will have a total holding time of nearly 40 years to get your money back...
This is the funnest thread yet on SS...thanks all for the fun comments! In all seriousness, the key to cashing out I believe is to try to cash out not when you need to, but when the time is right. Generally, if you cash out because you need to that means you are probably going to be desperate to sell at almost any level even if that means taking serious hits. I hope this doesn't happen too often to too many of us. I do know at least one SS member who has not cashed out but sold a bunch of his coins in the past several months and took a hit. So, that's the key...try to sell only when it's most beneficial to you and try to avoid getting into a position where you need to sell when the market is in consolidation mode.
Not sure I agree with you on the desperation point MM, I think it depends on why you stack (I prefer "collect" ) and what your goals are. I collect as part of a balanced portfolio which should insure against the need to dine on kitekat in my latter years and avoid financial dependance on anyone, particularly the govt (unless there is a financial armageddon then I suspect we are all screwed unless you have a nice plot of land which you manage sustainably and can grow your own food). However, unlike my super which is locked up for now and real estate which is not so easy to liquidate, I can access portions of the collection (or shares) and move them relatively quickly if I decide I want a treat (holiday, new dive gear, car etc). Just like share prices, I don't get too hung up on the fluctuations in the prices in the short term as I am in for the long haul and just keep adding (and dipping in from time to time for a treat if my other reserves are low). My exit strategy is to be carted out in a lovely white box with silver handles to the haunting tunes of Amazing Grace on bagpipes. The kids can have the left overs (anything not spent on dive trips!)
Lessons learnt by investors in 2011 means we're very unlikely to get another parabolic rise, and therefore, overpriced silver any time soon. If you wait for crazy prices then you're going to have to hold for a very long time, and that's time you could have had your money working better elsewhere. My personal belief however is that at current levels both metals are undervalued, and that they need to get to ($30 - $35) ($1700 - $1900) to be in the fair value price range in todays world. Haven't really seen a reason to buy metal yet, hoping for a dip this year to buy in and then a 1 year holding period to flip at the above prices. I am however still collecting numis, exit strategy for them has always been a 100% return. Next time metals have a decent run up my lunar series 1, reminted kooks and pandas will be finding new homes.
I literally write my PM investments off the moment I hand the $$ over, the same as I would a beer, a mars bar, or a steak dinner.To me the dolars invested was fiat that was excess to requirements, and now it's gone and i don't give it another thought. I don't track fiat spent, asset appreciation, prediction charts or the GSR in any way. I know what the price is day to day, so I know a bargain when i see one, but I don't keep score on dollars spent vs asset apprecaition. I also don't count on seeing my super policy, it is (resonably) safe for now, but 'they' keep changing the rules and pushing back the date i'll get access to my own money, so, apart from making sure my empolyer pays it, that it is safe, i don't put it down anywhere as an asset either. it'll be nice if i see it worth big bucks one day, same as PM's, but i'm not relying on it. My PM collection similar to any other collection I have, I collect because I enjoy it, and if when I no longer enjoy collecting and sell & make a profit...... great. It is simply an added bonus of a PM collection that there is the potential to make money, it is also another form of liquid 'insurance' to hand in case of emergency. I have collected on and off over the years, at one point I cashed out compeltely as discussed above, the need for $$ at the time far outweighed any thoughts of profit or loss on purchase prices. My PM collection allows me to sleep well at night and not worry about losing my job , i can't put a value on that!
I will sell the day court jester admits he has been wrong all along if that day doesnt come, I will take it to the grave with me
I hope you got time ahead of you! I remember reading one of your post stating you didn't see how they would ever be able to hold it till the end of 2013....
That's true but not always, not as a general rule. Price fluctuations aside of beyondhumanpower, are due to people making errors and other people taking advantage of this. But, people learn, and the degree of error thus shrinks, resulting in a more stable price trend. I think, at least until next big macro economical hay events, we have passed the bigger error degrees. Second, it wasn't about 'cashing out' upon needs, it was about selling SOME upon needs. Yes it's possible that the price is lower than you bought. But same or higher (important - in terms of purchasing power of what you gonna buy later ofcourse) is also possible. This isn't measuring over a short time period, this is over the entire horizon, and fractioning instead of 'cashing in/out' can end up as good and bad as the latter. I have read older people saying afterwards that they would have had more success if they had done nothing, because the 'extra trades' of the cashing in/out game, made it worser. Third, and maybe most important of all, it's exactly this 'cashing out' that makes price fluctuations worser. So actually, the logic of it runs in a circle. If alot people don't (and I won't), then your 'who has not cashed out but...' lost its very reason. A market consists of people, and if you try to screw people they'll screw you back, and, marketwide seen, instead of a win-win you get a lose-lose, since it's rendered to a zero sum game of which consequences scare off new market visitors. Much like the wolves and the sheeps story, with no sheeps left. You are right on the short term and for another reason: silver is just like any money an inbetween step to what we really wanted. Trading is much handier with remote payable money (electronic) - these days are buying online, and it would be silly (at least outside serious inflation) to convert this 'easy' money for just a few months. That's not stacking anymore too, that's just playing the game that yoyo's the price up and down.
Economical collapses tend to take much longer than most expect. And when they then do take place, they happen much faster than most expect. In my case, I didn't buy silver only to evade collapses. I bought it to take control over my savings, and to prevent further decades of disguised theft (purchasing power loss due to fiatproduction and intrest rates differences manipulation). A 50% loss over X years is the same as a 50% loss over X months, the former isn't called collapse, the latter is, while actually, they're both the very same.
"I remember reading one of your post stating you didn't see how they would ever be able to hold it till the end of 2013...." Probably, and I feel the same way about 2014. Nobody REALLY knows but the 'experts' all seem to be expecting it soon. Time will tell, OC
Do you feel comfortable with the idea that the ones of whose theft you wanna hedge against, buy, and sell, huge amounts gold, at the same time? After decades selling, they bought 1600 tonnes since 2011, upwards price pressure, inflicting those that wanna buy gold less gold. They are one of the biggest, if not THE biggest, gold price driver. You would rely on the actions of the very same you wanna hedge against. They 'stabilize' the gold price, with the catch that the stabilisation 'sinusoidal' is 180 phaseshifted with speculators actions haha. Take for ex the IMF, bought 191 tonnes from the market in 2008, driving price up when alot speculators wanted to buy due to the crisis / QE, then sold during 2010, every month a bunch, as to not 'distort' the gold market (haha), driving price down (again, directional pressure, not necessarely actually moved there) I leaped around gold. It's only good for the short term and marketwide cyclic players, that try the same as the central banking thieves, in a more poormans fashion then heh. At least if you ment that swap here as a long term / permanent / final storage of value.
My exit plan has never been about profit, but has a two pronged approach. The plan is to have a source of income when I retire which big brother does not know about. I plan to travel in my motor home when I retire and I will sell odd bars of gold when I need to supplement my pension. What did I pay for it or am I making a loss will not come into it. Currently I am stacking small bars of gold and the nice thing is I don't get tempted to sell when my cash flow is tight or a bill comes in. If that was savings in a bank it would be long gone on the latest toy. I like buying as cheap as I can and that is the fun of researching, but I won't be worrying about spot when I come to sell the odd bar.
