Commodities | Oil, gold, and silver . . .

[Nonc Hilaire]

Arbitrage between London and Shanghai silver is consistently running +$2.00.

At over 10% premium for physical it's time to start watching the market again.

[Juno]

Ratio is almost 100 right now. that's rare. If I had gold I'd be very tempted to swap it for silver at this point, and wait for the ratio to drop back to around 40 before swapping back.

[Miss_Faucie_Fishtits]

Ratio is almost 100 right now. that's rare. If I had gold I'd be very tempted to swap it for silver at this point, and wait for the ratio to drop back to around 40 before swapping back.

Not knowing how much elemental silver is in the earth's crust and how much of it can be extracted, I may not be so sure.........

[Typhoon]

Arbitrage between London and Shanghai silver is consistently running +$2.00.

At over 10% premium for physical it's time to start watching the market again.

Gold appears to be taking off like a scalded dog.

Now near its last, inflation adjusted, peak in 2011.

Good call.

[Nonc Hilaire]

Arbitrage between London and Shanghai silver is consistently running +$2.00.

At over 10% premium for physical it's time to start watching the market again.

Gold appears to be taking off like a scalded dog.

Now near its last, inflation adjusted, peak in 2011.

Good call.

And up in all currencies, not just USD.

[noddy]

England, Europe, America and China all having currency risks, nearly every other country exposed heavily on trade to them.

[Nonc Hilaire]

I bought an ounce of palladium (US Mercury) ≃ $1,500 and it is such a dull gray coin it does not look valuable. Might be a good choice for those who cross borders and need insurance. The other metals look valuable but I bet palladium would get by as pocket change.

[Doc]

England, Europe, America and China all having currency risks, nearly every other country exposed heavily on trade to them.

https://youtu.be/qH5QzuzD01A?t=551

[Nonc Hilaire]

Got gold yet?

https://www.dnb.nl/betalingsverkeer/goud/index.jsp#

[Nonc Hilaire]

Getting my toes wet in junior miners. All are penny stocks. The logic is as gold rises or resources are proven the majors will buy them up.

Not much watching required with that strategy. A trading strategy would be a full time job.

Also, First Majestic Mining is retailing Ag @ $20/oz. if you are still looking for metal. A reasonable premium these days.

[Typhoon]

Visual Capital | Table of 10 year commodity returns

[Nonc Hilaire]

Visual Capital | Table of 10 year commodity returns

US 1 oz palladium bullion coin is about the same size as and a bit more valuable than gold. A beautiful enlargement of the old Mercury dime, it has a dull and unremarkable luster.

A good choice if you travel and want the security of carrying close to US $2,500 good at any coin shop worldwide. Other bullion coins are shiny and attract attention. Palladium is often overlooked in customs laws and blends in well with pocket change.

[Nonc Hilaire]

It seems there is almost no gold or silver bullion for sale anywhere in the world. 2/13/21.

[Nonc Hilaire]

[Miss_Faucie_Fishtits]

Wait a minnit...... aren't mints just producers of those annoying collector tokens that somehow pose as legitimate currency? It's not a commodity issue, it's a commemorative issue because of a dearth of things and events worthy of being impressed on the obverse of the coinage of the realm and pushed out the door as a 'collectors set'.....'>......

[Zack Morris]

Physical commodities are a waste of effort and money. The bid/ask spread is ridiculous and that's the nature of the scam: dealers are selling but won't buy it back from you at anywhere near the same price. What a racket!

A friend of mine is convinced we are on the cusp of a commodity super-cycle as the world emerges from COVID and as a result bought XLE, BAR, and some others (funds tracking materials like copper, etc.). So far, his thesis has not played out. It isn't the first time someone has hyped energy ETFs in the last decade only to see them falter.

As an extreme crypto-skeptic, I actually think a wiser "investment" (read: speculative bet with a high probability of payoff on a 2-3 year timescale) would be to purchase a mix of BTC and ETH rather than bother with useless garbage like commodities. The rest of your portfolio should be invested in successful US technology firms. Most people have no idea just how much innovation is coming down the pipe and how disruptive it will be. Arguably, tech companies shouldn't even be viewed as "tech" companies anymore. Tech is essential to all business and has enabled former technology pure-plays to usurp legacy businesses.

[Nonc Hilaire]

The Reddit ‘Silver Raid’ is about the elimination of unallocated storage and phony funds like SLV, which will in turn eliminate the naked shorting and rehypothecation of metals used to illegally cap metal prices.

Zack is right about the Wallstreetsilver crowd being illogical about buying too many coins and bars, but they are attracting attention and funds have started acquiring serious positions in allocated PMs and closed end physical funds like Sprott’s.

Think of subreddit/wallstreetsilver as a PR vehicle for producers, fabricators and allocated storage firms to force the legitimization the PM markets.

[noddy]

the perth mint claims the only problem is production of fancy little silver tokens - they cant keep up, so they cancel orders rather than get caught with a backlog against a volatile purchase price.

as always, I dont think precious metals are a way of making money, they are just a hedge against losing too much of it in an unstable market.

im not convinced doomsday is around the corner, but for those about to retire, it is a good idea to have some failsafes against your nest egg being destroyed by a global woopsie that takes 10 years to recover.

[Nonc Hilaire]

the perth mint claims the only problem is production of fancy little silver tokens - they cant keep up, so they cancel orders rather than get caught with a backlog against a volatile purchase price.

as always, I dont think precious metals are a way of making money, they are just a hedge against losing too much of it in an unstable market.

im not convinced doomsday is around the corner, but for those about to retire, it is a good idea to have some failsafes against your nest egg being destroyed by a global woopsie that takes 10 years to recover.

Perth Mint has bigger problems than a lack of fabricated retail product.

They have unallocated accounts where they sell non-specific metal bars and hold them for the customer. They have refused to transfer unallocated metal to allocated (where the customer owns specific serialized bars in a separate storage area).

It appears that Perth has sold more metal than they hold and/or they are trading segregated customer owned metal in their house accounts. Both are serious breaches of fiduciary responsibility.

Similar problems exist in US/Can. Kitco unallocated accounts and iShares SLV etf. There are serious concerns that unallocated metal accounts are Ponzi schemes used to back naked short sales.

[Miss_Faucie_Fishtits]

They went and paid the ransom. The thing that shouldn't be done was done. Be afraid, be very afraid........

Colonial Pipeline Paid Hackers Nearly $5 Million in Ransom

Colonial Pipeline Co. paid nearly $5 million to Eastern European hackers on Friday, contradicting reports earlier this week that the company had no intention of paying an extortion fee to help restore the country’s largest fuel pipeline, according to two people familiar with the transaction.

The company paid the hefty ransom in difficult-to-trace cryptocurrency within hours after the attack, underscoring the immense pressure faced by the Georgia-based operator to get gasoline and jet fuel flowing again to major cities along the Eastern Seaboard, those people said. A third person familiar with the situation said U.S. government officials are aware that Colonial made the payment

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -in-ransom

[Nonc Hilaire]

They went and paid the ransom. The thing that shouldn't be done was done. Be afraid, be very afraid........

Colonial Pipeline Paid Hackers Nearly $5 Million in Ransom

Colonial Pipeline Co. paid nearly $5 million to Eastern European hackers on Friday, contradicting reports earlier this week that the company had no intention of paying an extortion fee to help restore the country’s largest fuel pipeline, according to two people familiar with the transaction.

The company paid the hefty ransom in difficult-to-trace cryptocurrency within hours after the attack, underscoring the immense pressure faced by the Georgia-based operator to get gasoline and jet fuel flowing again to major cities along the Eastern Seaboard, those people said. A third person familiar with the situation said U.S. government officials are aware that Colonial made the payment

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -in-ransom

My understanding is the actual pipeline was not affected á la Stuxnet, but only the payments system in one office.

These ‘hacker blackmail’ things have a strong likelihood of being an inside job. If somebody robs a safe, you first suspect the people who knew the combination. We had a county tax assessor who tried to fake a 2 bil hacking fraud on the tax database he controlled.

[Nonc Hilaire]

Perth Mint is a Ponzi scheme. Silverbugs have been all over this for a month, but now there is a qualified auditor pointing it out in Perth’s own data.

6QfoWiC66v0

[Typhoon]

FT - Lex | Lego: old bricks are better than gold bricks [paywalled]

Lego proliferates in many family homes. It clogs vacuum cleaners. It accumulates in drifts in dusty corners. It causes excruciating pain to unwary adults who step on it barefoot.

Take heart, weary parent, as you shell out £130 for a Hogwarts Chamber of Secrets set for your kid. Those little plastic bricks could also be a valuable asset.

Lego toys are a better investment than gold, according to researchers from Moscow’s Higher School of Economics. The yellow metal and the stock market suffer from price volatility. “Retired” Lego sets may be more stable and can appreciate faster. Their value rose by an annual average of 11 per cent over 28 years, apparently.

https___d6c748xw2pzm8.cloudfront.net_prod_9221fe50-5f4b-11ec-a646-fd4b28022fb0-standard.png (50.93 KiB) Viewed 1702 times

There is a massive caveat. You cannot sell a bucket of loose bricks for a fat cheque. Equally, while that Temple of Doom set may be complete, those chew marks on Indiana Jones’s hat imply depreciation. The study analysed the prices of 2,322 unopened Lego sets.

The most expensive sets on the second-hand market are mint, boxed editions of the original Millennium Falcon from Star Wars for about $1,500, or a vintage Taj Mahal for up to $2,000. The latter, ounce-for-ounce, is indeed worth more than gold.

Adult collectors buy these sets. For a festive season purchase to have a chance of appreciating in value, you would have to persuade the recipient to “lay it down” unopened, rather like a bottle of fine wine.

The same frenzy that has pushed up real estate and stock prices has also spilled over to collectibles such as sneakers, trading cards, vintage video games and handbags. It is also driving demand for digital artwork in the form of non-fungible tokens.

But unlike NFTs, no one is paying millions for a Lego set. In contrast, a vintage Super Mario Bros video game sold for $2m and the Nyan Cat NFT fetched nearly $600,000.

Lego collectors are also exposed to price drops when the company reissues popular sets.

The real wonder of Lego is not that fancy playsets have resale values running into thousands of dollars. It is that parents happily shell out $100 for plastic construction toys available — albeit in basic forms — as cheap Chinese knock-offs.

The investment value of Lego reflects the greater triumph of a family-owned manufacturer from Denmark. Through shrewd licensing, smart marketing and strict quality control, Lego Group sets benchmark prices for small, foot-unfriendly bricks all over the world.

[Nonc Hilaire]

My daughter picked this up in a $3 yard sale lot yesterday. Worth $70 sealed in box.

BD4B15B6-F925-4797-915D-96394A5833EB.jpeg (2.31 MiB) Viewed 1695 times

[Nonc Hilaire]

https://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=DBC&p ... 3100941035

A73A8673-C438-41A6-9932-62DEDB744CAF.jpeg (202.35 KiB) Viewed 1602 times

Opportunity knocks. One heckuva good looking pennant here.