El Bullion said:
Another thing worth considering...at least for silver...is how small the physical market is.
If above ground silver is really only worth US$30B at the moment, and a good number of those currently buying are looking to hold for at least 12 months...then we may never get to the point where the average mom and dad are out buying silver on the street. A few hedge funds, commercial buyers, and large individual investors could effect the mother of all squeezes in the silver market...and that'll be all she wrote.
This is a very good point.
These are the things we all know about a 3 phase bull market.
Phase 1) Quiet accumulation from smart investors, with a vision of whats happening and long term
Phase 2) Slight awareness by the savvy investors, price has already moved. However the price is still an excellent buy. Small media attention
Phase 3) Common awareness, people wanting to buy hand over fist (irrespective of price, because they feel it can only go up). A lot of media attention.
The above will stay true in a normal bull market, where everything is certain and there are no unknowns. IE, throughout the last 15 years everyone feels property can only go up in Australia. The financial market and currency system itself is sound (well appears to be). No one thinks outside the whole box and thus the 3 phase bull market plays out as per history. The main stream media consistently pushes this bull market. IMO, this is starting to end.
Can the same concepts be applied to a physical silver market, here are the unknowns that totally distort the whole market for physical silver.
- Price being dictated by paper spot. (Can this go on for ever, this is not reality). If I was a refiner, I would give the comex the finger and start selling to the public at a price they can command. Its starting to become a sellers market.
- The physical market being so small that the amount of money out there can buy it 100-1000 times over (worldwide GDP)
- The risk of fiat currency going to its intrinsic value of zero (more people are waking up to this fact)
- The timing cycles and information awareness is shortened (information found daily on the market)
- Ever increasing need for industrial use, oil being more expensive and the easy silver has already been mined
- The chance of Silver becoming a monetary metal again (as opposed to a commodity)
- The possibility of the chinese planning to back their currency in an hard asset or number of hard assets (I believe gold will underpin this). The chinese may want to become the worlds reserve currency because of its manufacturing and labour force.
These are only some of the points I have come up with that will move the silver price irrespective whether its in stage 2 or 3..
The other side of the equation is when a bubble market turns from boom to bust. There has to be an overwhelming reason for people to sell and flood the market to drive down prices. What is the catalyst for this, the only one I can think of is if it is overbought and overvalued (by those that have leveraged into it). Again you will need to shake out the strongest of hands to get silver off them. Strong hands are ones that own the metals outright and have no debt obligations. If silver maintains purchasing power over time, why would they need to sell?
Anyway, I just feel that the phase indicators only give a small picture of the whole market. The factors I have listed move physical silvers price to equilibrium. Maybe by then we will see the bubble forming. Or it may form during that price discovery phase.
Slam