Silver Breaks its Golden Shackles

https://marketforceanalysis.com/article/latest_article_02511.html

The stunning revelation from the data analysis was that if on any day I knew what the price of gold was I would be able to calculate the silver price from the equation of the relationship! How is that possible in a free market? It simply is not possible and so the conclusion is that silver is not in a free market but is manipulated to move algorithmically with the price of gold.

Since September 2010 silver has broken its golden shackles. The algorithmic trading that kept the price of silver subdued for seven years has been completely annihilated.

On Friday silver closed in complete backwardation on the Comex. Spot silver closed at $29.075/oz while FEB 2011 closed at $29.064/oz and DEC 2015 closed at $29.026/oz. I believe this is the first time in history that this has happened. Silver traded in backwardation between the spot price and futures contract up to one year out during the blatantly manipulative precious metals bashing of January, but now the entire futures structure is in backwardation. This is a sure sign there are shortages of silver because it means that buyers will pay a premium for silver delivered sooner rather than later.

Signs of shortages have also been apparent from a shrinking silver inventory on the Comex in the face of rising prices. The registered inventory stands at a paltry 43 Mozs. In addition there is lots of anecdotal evidence that there are tight supplies everywhere. There are reports of refineries refusing to take new orders due to insufficient silver feedstock.

News out of China recently showed that China's net imports of silver quadrupled in 2010 to 3,500 tonnes (112 Million ozs). China has traditionally been a silver exporter. For example, in 2005 China made net exports of 3,000 tonnes of silver.

The US mint reported last week a record month in silver eagle sales in January of 6.4 million ozs.

This update of my previous work adds more fuel to the fire that the dynamics of the silver market have dramatically changed. Because silver has been suppressed for so long we do not know what its free market price should be, but we are going to find out soon and I strongly suspect it will be many multiples of the current price.

Google Analytics

The internet and specifically--the blogosphere, may be the last free market frontier, an electronic ecosystem still largely unfettered by taxes, regulation, and government meddling (well, unless you're in China and a few other countries). Let's hope our government doesn't try to attack one of the few free market-driven industries left, where the little guy has as much chance to engage in content and commerce as the big corporate behemonths.

And Google Analytics can enhance the organizing, planning and marketing of that content. Based on their metrics, I can decipher the following information for this blog:

1) readers come from many countries: the US, Brazil, Canada, United Kingdom, South Korea, Australia, (not set)--could this be China?, Faroe Islands, Venezuela, Poland, Spain, India, Qatar, Bahrain, in order of frequency.
2) the pages per visit is 1.88
3) average time on site is 3:53 minutes
4) % of new visits is 37.30%

The data is carved up into geographic locations, referring site sources, bounce rate, search engines, direct traffic, visits, visitors, page views, etc.

Bottom line: you can never predict with accuracy who your audience is, and where they come from. But Google helps uncover some of the mysteries of the online world. If I was running a commerce website, I would definitely monitor these data sets more seriously, because it can reveal helpful data on content demand.

Must read for free market thinkers

It's long, but it explains how the financial crisis unfolded, and what the authorities should do next. Alas, our government will probably drop the ball again.

http://www.financialpost.com/story-printer.html?id=2069507