Gold & Silver Market Info
Links to gold and silver market information & resources
Gold - Commodities Futures Prices (see the most active contract months)
Silver - Commodities Futures Prices (see the most active contract months)
Most charts and graphs use the most active futures contract trading price. An example is this link to a silver chart of the silver price. This is important to understand because there are a variety of different gold and silver prices quoted on different web sites and on financial media on TV. In addition to that, retail sellers of gold and silver products often have other prices they quote that include some premium which allows them to make money buying and selling the products. I linked to the commodity futures prices here because most technical analysis is done based on those prices. If you are reading a technical analysis and it says "a silver close over $29 this week is bullish", it is important to know which silver price is being used in the analysis. Usually the "spot price" of gold and silver is a bit lower than the futures contract prices. (see an explanation of this here). Kitco is a web site often used to view precious metals prices which you can find here.
Precious Metals Price Charts on Money Metals
Example Listing of Various Precious Metals Product Prices
Dealers who sell various gold and silver products to retail buyers need to sell at a higher price than they buy to stay in business. This creates what is known as a Bid and Ask price for these products. The spread between the Bid price and the Ask price is the dealer profit and this spread will vary some from dealer to dealer. When supply of products dries up (as happened recently with silver products), the spread between the Bid and Ask price tends to widen as dealers want a higher premium to sell their inventory -- which may be hard for them to replace and likely will have to be replaced at a higher wholesale price cost. Dealers often raise their buy back price as well in this situation.
World Gold Council Supply & Demand Stats
Silver Institute Supply & Demand Stats (see updated 2021 Silver Survey here on page 7)
US Geological Survey (USGS) 2021 World Silver Reserves Estimate
How Much Silver Does the World Have?
Generally speaking, the annual supply of gold and silver seems to be peaking recently and in 2020 this situation was compounded by mine closures due to the COVID pandemic. At the same time demand for gold and silver has been holding steady to trending higher. The latest USGS world silver reserves estimate is saying there is only enough silver in the ground to supply annual consumption for 17 years. That assumes all those reserves can be produced at a profit. If these trends continue, obviously that bodes well for gold and silver prices in the years ahead. Rising industrial demand for silver is especially worth keeping an eye on. This new silver supply forecast released 2-26-21 is predicting an increase in silver supply contradicting other studies suggesting that mining supply may have peaked. 2021 should provide a good test to see which forecast is panning out the best. There are a lot of factors that impact silver production including declining ore grades, rising production costs, and the fact that silver is often mined as a by product of other metals like copper and gold. Some factors favor less production going forward while others may favor increased production. So any future silver production forecast is a complex calculation. 2021 should provide some insight on whether global supply has peaked.
Sprott Report on Silver's Green Energy Future
The links just above are what makes silver different from gold. Silver is much more widely used for industrial purposes even though at times it also attracts demand from investors seeking to insure against currency devaluation similarly to gold. If the global supply of silver falls below the industrial demand for silver at some point in the future, the price of silver could rise more sharply than it has been because silver users must have it to produce the products they sell. For the most part, each product they sell that uses silver contains a small amount of silver. So in many cases silver could go much higher without greatly impacting the final sales price of the product being sold. But they cannot make the product at all without the silver. This is why it will be good idea to keep an eye on industrial demand for silver in the years to come along with the demand for silver by investors.
Silver Mining Production by Country (Top 20)
Silver production appears to have possibly peaked recently (2019?). Annual Silver production fell 6% in 2020. New mines are not coming into operation as quickly to offset the natural production decline from existing mines. In the future, it is likely the cost of mining of reserves will increase as easier to find lower cost reserves are mined out. The silver price would need to rise to create incentive to look for new reserves to add to the global supply of silver production.
Gold Mining Production by Country (Top 10)
Gold production seems to be peaking out in 2019 as well. Of course in 2020 some mine production fell due to the impact of the COVID pandemic, but it still appears normal production may have peaked recently. Production in South Africa (formerly the global leader) has dropped sharply after peaking in 2008. In the US, almost 80% of gold production comes from just one state (Nevada) and US production fell 11% in 2019. That ended five years of growth in the US.
World Gold Reserves by Country
Central banks own huge amounts of gold reserves and in recent years central bank buying has outpaced selling. There is no reason to think gold will not continue to be a key reserve asset for central banks in the future. Russia announced its central bank gold reserves now exceed it holdings in US dollars.
The last video link listed above provides an excellent example of why investing in a gold or silver mining company stock is more complex than simply making an investment in gold or silver itself. It goes through the many variables that can impact the price of a mining company stock beyond just the eventual sales price for the gold or silver being mined. How much it costs to find the gold and silver reserves can vary greatly. The richness of the gold or silver reserves impacts how much it will cost to mine them per ton of soil mined. The kind of rock or soil attached to the gold or silver can impact how much it costs to separate out the gold and silver. How deep underground the reserves are is another variable that impacts the cost to produce the end products. All these and more variables should be known so that an investor can assess how likely the mining company is to make a profit over the life of its mines. Because many costs are fixed regardless of the selling price for gold and silver, mining company stocks tend to be more leveraged and sensitive to price moves than the metals themselves. When the selling price is rising above the break even price for a mining company, all the further increases in price go to the bottom line as increasing profit margins. This can cause a mining stock price to rise more sharply than the price of the gold or silver being mined. However, the reverse is true in a falling price environment. This means that stock prices for mining companies tend to be more volatile than gold and silver prices, which can be volatile themselves at times. This article takes a deeper dive into valuing mining companies.
Understanding Gold & Silver ETF's
How Do We Define Silver Demand?
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