Ted Butler Quote on Silver vs. Gold

If anybody(s) wanted to corner the physical silver market, it would only take a few billion dollars.

At current prices, there is $6.6 trillion worth of gold in the world and a little over $16 billion worth of silver. In other words, on a dollar (or any other currency) basis, there is more than 400 times more gold in the world than silver. Expressed differently, all the silver in the world is worth only one-quarter of one percent (0.25%) of what all the world's gold is worth. Even by doubling the amount of silver by including coins and small bars (most of which will never be converted into 1,000 oz bars), one would still end up with the gold being worth 200 times what the silver is worth or silver being worth 0.5% of what the gold is worth. These are the most extreme valuation differences ever.

Like investors in everything else, precious metals investors seek out the best relative value available. Investors everywhere want the best value, lowest risk and biggest bang for their buck. Due to an increasingly obvious price manipulation on the COMEX, silver has reached a degree of undervaluation relative to gold that is so extreme as to be almost unbelievable, even when expressed in simple arithmetic terms. And because gold is so cheap compared to other asset classes, that automatically means silver is even cheaper compared to every other asset.

- Silver analyst Ted Butler, Butler Research, November 22, 2014