Silver linings

There is 5 times more gold above ground than silver.

Does that fact surprise you? Silver has lagged behind gold and other metals in the recent commodity price increases. That is because of very large short positions held on the silver comex by 4 or fewer traders. The silver market is very small compared to the gold market. A useful measure when comparing the worth of investments is market capitilzation. The market capitalization of silver is the price of silver in ounces times the number of ounces available. The market capitalization of gold is 250 times that of silver. What that means is that the dollar value of the gold ounces above ground is 250 times the value of the silver ounces above ground.

Many people who own gold do so to hedge against inflation. Since the price of silver has been artifically depressed by a few large trading interests buying short contracts on silver, silver has even more potential to increase in price than gold. And the larget market capitalization of gold compared to silver means that if the people who own gold sold just 1% of their gold and bought silver, the price of silver would double.