por admin » Jue Sep 16, 2010 9:46 pm
Silver Hits '80 Level; Gold Sets Fresh High
By LIAM PLEVEN And CAROLYN CUI
There's a silver lining to the gold rally.
Silver futures on Thursday hit their highest level since 1980, the year the Hunt brothers allegedly attempted to corner the market. Individual investors are snapping up new Silver Eagle and antique coins, and hedge funds have been plowing money into the metal since midyear.
The fervor has pushed prices up 4.8% this week alone, and 23% this year, outstripping even gold's 16% gain.
A clerk weighs gold and silver in Seoul in August. Both are rallying.
.Silver settled Thursday at $20.7450 a troy ounce, topping its 2008 high of $20.685 and hitting the highest level since Oct. 15, 1980. Prices hit their all-time high of $48.70 in January 1980, fueled by the Hunt brothers' buying.
Gold, meanwhile, set a record high Thursday for the second time this week, rising 0.4% to $1,271.90.
Like gold, silver is benefiting from investor concerns that paper currencies could lose value as governments try to stave off the threat of another recession.
"I have zero faith in the U.S. dollar going forward," said Chad T. McNair, a silver investor in San Antonio. "As we continue to print money to bail out banks and companies, we will continue to destroy the dollar. Then, hard assets are going to be the last standing."
Mr. McNair buys both silver bullion and junk silver coins, which are coins minted by the U.S. government before 1965 and containing 90% silver. He likes silver because it can benefit from both industrial and investment demand, since silver is widely used in electronics, photography and jewelry.
Lately, investor interest has been helping compensate for industrial demand, still in recovery mode after the financial crisis. Barclays Capital estimates the amount of silver used for fabrication will rise 5.4% from a year ago, not enough to soak up silver supplies on its own.
By year's end, there will be a surplus of 4,480 metric tons of silver, as production from mining and recycling outstrips demand, says Barclays.
"We're still in a surplus situation," said Brad Kopp, head of investor relations for Silver Wheaton Corp., a Canadian silver company. But should industrial demand return, that could be alleviated.
Meanwhile, hedge funds have been adding silver into their portfolios since mid-2010, said Charles Gradante, co-founder of Hennessee Group, an adviser to hedge-fund investors.
Some institutional investors are also interested. Foxhall Capital Management Inc., which oversees about $900 million in investments for insurers, pension funds and others, has raised its holdings of iShares Silver Trust, a silver fund. The firm is betting both on demand for commodities and on the risk of inflation, both of which could boost silver prices. "It's a combination play," said Paul Dietrich, CEO of the Orange, Conn.-based firm.
.Sales of American Eagle silver coins at the U.S. Mint have risen an estimated 17% in the first three quarters of this year, which is down from last year, when sales soared 47%.
As prices rise, some buyers are shifting toward junk silver coins, which are cheaper than other coins, according to Ross Hansen, founder of Northwest Territorial Mint, a Federal Way, Wash.-based precious-metal dealer.
Junk silver sales have climbed to 35% of total silver sales, up from 22% last year, Mr. Hansen said.
Record silver prices have lured banks and coin collectors who have held on to these coins back into the market.
That points to a risk to the silver price—that high prices could bring new supplies onto the market, which could in turn send prices down.
The recent strong silver rally has driven the traditional relationship between gold and silver prices back down toward the typical ratio of 62 to 1. That ratio was in the upper 60s for much of the summer, but fell to 61 to 1 on Thursday.
Silver prices tend to swing more widely than gold, throwing the ratio out of whack at times. In 2008, for instance, the ratio swung as low as 48 to 1 and as high as 84 to 1.
That can also heighten the risk for investors. "If gold has a correction, then silver will tend to correct more," said Anne-Laure Tremblay, an analyst with BNP Paribas.
And there are some nascent signs investor demand could be nearing a limit for now. The silver holdings of exchange-traded funds are up 6% this year, after racking up a 50% gain in 2009, according to Barclays.
Silver is still well below the record high hit in January 1980, the year the big silver bet by William Herbert Hunt and Nelson Bunker Hunt began going sour. Prices dropped sharply early that year, slamming the value of the Hunts' holdings.
On an inflation-adjusted basis, silver prices are even further from their 1980 high. The last time silver was higher than Thursday was on Oct. 15, 1980, when it settled at $20.98—$55.94 in 2010 dollars.