Is anybody else consumed with the silver spike? [View All]

[pipoman]

I have dabbled in silver for years, actually since the rise and fall of the Hunt brothers manipulation of the 1970's. I remember the record high silver prices in the 1970's. I remember my dad selling enough silver he had hoarded since the introduction of clad silver coins, to have a marked impact on his mortgage at the time. The market at the time was being manipulated by the Hunt's attempt to corner the silver market. IIRC, their belief was that the cost of mining and extraction of silver exceeded the spot pricing, therefore by buying already processed silver they could at some point drive the price up based on shortage of "junk" silver for re-purposing.

Fast forward 3 decades. Now the industrial demand for silver has created an actual shortfall in the availability of "junk" silver. The recent (this years) spike in silver prices are more market driven than the Hunt manipulation. The result has been a doubling of the spot price of silver over the last 12 months. Silver has far, far out performed any other commodity on the market and is showing no sign of receding beyond normal, minor fluctuation.

Will silver continue to rise in the months ahead? Where will it end? Is there a more sophisticated (than the Hunt's) price manipulation underway which will ultimately result in a similar crash? Or is the current price volatility a long overdue adjustment of value based on actual concrete supply and demand economics/production cost vs. re-purposing cost economics? Is there a not widely known gigantic cache of processed silver which will hit the market at some price point resulting in a long term and immediate decline? How much of the current spike is being driven by speculators and not actual demand?

All of these questions and more keep bouncing through my thoughts. What it your take?