I haven’t looked at this in awhile: search term popularity according to Google.
Of course, a lot of the searches are for meDals, not meTals, especially during the Olympics. Still, gold is more popular lately, by about 20%:
Silver is the lagging black line with the price scale on the left.
I got 2 answers in the comments – thank you both for participating.
El Guapo said $425, and llman – $325. llman, you’re a pessimist!
I probably look naive or something, ’cause after seriously intense calculations, my “handler” looked me straight in the eye and said:
$400 even.
Having done my own math, I questioned that number. Also got a little mad, but spoke very calmly.
They have screens with live spot quotes all around, and use Buying and Selling prices, like with the currencies. At the time Buying price in CAD$ was $34.52.*
I showed her my logic on the calculator. Including their commission, my net came to $436, but she couldn’t let me have it and rounded down to $430. If it was a bigger amount, I would’ve questioned it, but ok… whatever.
The answer: $430.
5-12% of silver is lost during smelting so I figure they made about $70-120 on this transaction.
* Selling price was around $38.40.
I had some silver laying around and thought I’d do something with it. So I split everything into piles and took it to the refinery this morning.
Total weight – approximately 517g
I really didn’t have to break it up like this. You might have to do it if you take your metal to one of the trading/middleman places.
But I went directly to a refinery. They melt everything together, to avoid checking each piece individually and then they measure the purity of this combined bar.
My stuff being weighed
Without plastic bags and a couple of magnetic pieces, total weight came to 511g. After melting, I got a 501g bar with 93.52% purity (higher than sterling because I had some 99% wire in there).
Pouring my bar. The whole melting process took 3-5 minutes at most.
How much $$$ do you think I should’ve gotten? Answer tomorrow! 🙂
If Wikipedia is to be believed, then “The average gold/silver ratio during the 20th century was 1:47″.
As of today
Gold spot $1,432Â :Â Silver spot $34 = 42:1.
Not too out of whack.
But what’s really interesting, until mid 19th century (confirmed with sources other than Wiki) the average ratio was 16, which translates into $87.50 silver price today.
Historical gold/silver ratio
Silver spot price is down about $2 overnight (about 15%), while gold is down about $16 or 2%. The rumor has it that some hedge fund in Hong Kong is forced to liquidate its holdings, particularly silver.
Tomorrow silver stocks must sell off, by at least 15-20%. I will be catching that knife.
I’m even happier about selling SLW early on Thursday. In part, it was pure luck, in part it’s all the lessons I learned – don’t get too greedy. Too many times I got stuck with a stock for a nickel. A profit is a profit.
I will be buying SLW again. Not SLV. I don’t like that ETF, seems to me it’s more like paper than a mining stock. Well, I know SLW is not truly a mining stock, but what I mean is SLW is much more real to me than a certificate, which is what ETFs are. You can, of course, use ETF for day trades, but sometimes when I get stuck with SLW, my mind is at peace because I know it’s okay. They make money and they’re real.
Other than this, I don’t have any strong candidates for tomorrow, just a watchlist of about 15 stocks. Will have to see what they do in the morning.
