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Demand for silver hit a record-high last year with the jewellery, coin and bar, and photovoltaic sectors, helping to boost the precious metal’s sales to 1.17 billion ounces.
Overall, however, the market registered its third consecutive annual deficit, which was 60% larger than 2014, shows the latest World Silver Survey published Thursday by GFMS in collaboration with the Silver Institute.
According to the report, the shortage was led by the continued weakness in scrap sales and a sharp increase in physical demand.
Source: 22nd World Silver Survey.
Globally, jewellery making increased for the third consecutive year to a fresh high at 226.5 Moz.
The increase was largely achieved on the back of a 16% rise from both India and Thailand, while North America posted a 5% annual increase.
The gains were partially offset by a sizable contraction in Chinese jewellery offtake. Total silverware fabrication enjoyed its third successive annual rise to an estimated 62.9 Moz, a ten-year high.
Source: 22nd World Silver Survey.
The largest component of physical silver demand, industrial applications, which accounted for 50% of total physical silver demand last year, fell 4% to almost 589 Moz.
On a regional basis, modest increases in industrial demand were posted in the US and Japan, the second and third largest sources of industrial demand, respectively.
Silver prices closed April with a gain of 15.2%. That was the metal's largest monthly increase since August 2013.
Electrical and electronics use declined by 10% last year to 246.7 Moz, due to slower economic growth in developing countries and the continued weakness in computer sales.
There were several highlights within the industrial segment. Silver demand for photovoltaic applications climbed 23% in 2015 to 77.6 Moz, marking the second consecutive year of growth in this sector on the back of strong growth in Chinese solar panel installations.
Supply and prices
On the supply side, the research found that silver mine production growth slowed to 2% last year, reaching a record 886.7 million ounces. "The overall slowdown in mine production last year is expected to continue," the report said.
An extremely challenging year for nearly all commodities, along with a continued slowdown in Chinese economic growth and a stronger U.S. dollar, led to a lower average annual silver price of US$15.68/oz in 2015.
Source: 22nd World Silver Survey.
The analysts, however, said the lower price environment helped boosting physical demand, particularly as long-term investors viewed lower prices as key entry points in expectation of future price appreciation.
GFMS experts are not alone in predicting a rosy outlook for the silver price. Last week, analysts with Bank of America Merrill Lynch said silver's fundamentals look the strongest in years thanks to declining mine output and rising industrial demand.
Silver prices climbed 5.4% last week, closing April with a gain of 15.2%. That was silver's largest monthly gain since August 2013.
Only around 30% of global output is from primary silver mines, less than the contribution of by-product production at zinc and lead mines where a number of mine closures are in the offing. The bulk of silver usage is also in industrial applications including alloys, electronics, photovoltaic and for the production of ethylene oxide.
As fear around the globe increases and more investors begin to worry about the insane policies of central banks, two billionaires just issued dire warnings.
Two billionaires, Stanley Druckenmiller (above) and Carl Icahn, just issued dire warnings.
Gerald Celente: “Stanley Druckenmiller was speaking this week at a major investment conference in New York. They wanted him to be specific about recommendations and he said, ‘The conference wants a specific recommendation from me? Get out of the stock market isn’t clear enough?…
Gerald Celente continues: “It’s also important to note that Druckenmiller said that ‘Gold remains our largest currency allocation.’ Druckenmiller then went on to warn that the corporations have relied on cheap money from the Federal Reserve by engineering over $2 trillion in acquisitions and stock buybacks in the last year. He said this is finally showing up on the books of companies, ‘as operating growth in U.S. companies has gone negative year-over-year, while net debt has gone up.’
Reminiscent Of The 2008 Global Collapse Druckenmiller also warned that this moment reminds him of the 2008 financial crisis. He then added that ‘The bull market is exhausting itself and the Federal Reserve is to blame by keeping interest rates so low. And it’s raising the odds of an economic tail risk that they are trying to avoid. It’s a sugar high.’
Carl Icahn Warns A Day Or Reckoning Is Coming Druckenmiller’s comments followed on the heels of last week when we heard from another billionaire investor, Carl Icahn, who said, ‘I do believe in general that there will be a day of reckoning.’ But he’s calling for more fiscal stimulus. So monetary stimulus didn’t work, and now that’s the word on the street — more stimulus to save the sinking ship, whether it’s quantitative or fiscal.
More Billionaires Converting Their Fiat Money Into Gold But what’s most important as I see it is the fact that more and more high-profile and high-powered investors are converting their fiat money into gold. And gold prices are proving them right, with gold prices up more than 20 percent since the start of the year. There is major concern worldwide that the central bank policies have run out of gas, they have created a larger bubble than ever before, and now we are hearing it from the billionaire investor class saying what myself and others have been warning about for years on King World News.”
Well that escalated quickly.. After 3 VIX-smash saves this week, the selling pressure won (for now) as a dead-cat-bounce after the dismal jobs data has sent S&P 500 back into the red for 2016 (joining Nasdaq and Small Caps) with Dow and Trannies getting close...
The bounce is dead...
After 3 VIX-smashing saves...
But Bonds & Bullion lead the way since The Fed's rate hike...
The current economic system is designed to fail, but so was socialism. That’s according to former GOP Congressman Ron Paul, who told RT’s Boom Bust show that we need to go toward a system of property ownership, voluntary contracts and individual liberty, while getting rid of central banks.
A new Harvard University poll shows that 51 per cent of young adults aged 18-29 oppose capitalism in its current form.
RT: Do you think this poll is just politics, or do you agree that there is something wrong with the US economic system as it operates today?
Ron Paul: I think the problem is all in semantics. When they say they oppose today’s capitalism, I oppose today’s so-called capitalism. I don’t even like the world “capitalism,” I like “free markets.” But if you say “free markets” and “capitalism”together, we don’t have that. We have interventionism. We have a planned economy, we have a welfare state, we have inflationism, we have central economic planning by a central bank, we have a belief in deficit financing. It is so far removed from free-market capitalism that it’s foolish for people to label it free market and capitalize on this and say: “We know it’s so bad. What we need is socialism.” That is a problem.
That is a problem in definitions and understanding of what kind of policies we have. I am a champion of free markets, but not of the current system that we have today. I am highly critical of it, because it is designed to fail. It is designed to reward the rich; it is designed inevitably to destroy the middle class, and also to finance some of the worst things in government: all the deficits with the welfare state and for the warfare state. So yes, it’s failing. People should reject what we have, but they shouldn’t reject liberty and freedom and sound economic policies, because that is not the problem. The problem is we don’t have enough free markets.
RT:In the same poll it is said that Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, has been the most popular candidate for America’s 18-29 year olds. Despite the fact that he is now losing steam, as we’ve seen on the campaign trail, what does it really say to you about what’s driving this voting pattern?
RP: He’s tapped into something, something that I’ve talked about for years and tapped into when I was a candidate. And that is to describe the frustrations, the evil, and the nonsense of what we have. The problem with Bernie and myself is that he sees it quite differently. He thinks that it’s too much freedom and too much capitalism. And I see it as too much government; it’s too much of interventionist planned economy, which leans itself to fascism. But the young people might not understand the economics and what free markets are really all about, and they don’t understand central banking. And Bernie doesn’t understand that we have to get rid of central planning – from the Central Bank – if we want to help these people.
The current economic system is designed to fail, but so was socialism. What we need to go toward is property ownership, voluntary contracts and individual liberty in getting rid of the central bank.
But yes, I am not a bit surprised – it is a good sign that they are upset and they ought to be. What I have in mind is to show them the difference between what we have and what we should have. And believe me, it is not going toward this ancient tradition of government and socialism. We’ve tested socialism. Socialism has been a complete failure. That is what the 20th century was all about, whether it was a fascist system in Germany, or the Soviet system of communism – this all has been a failure. So you don’t want to go toward socialism, you have to go toward property ownership, volunteer contracts and individual liberty in getting rid of the central bank. Then you might talk about a real alternative. But the young people have a justification; they are justified in detesting what we have, because it has served the rich and has really hurt the poor and the middle class.
RT:Some would argue that the data does signal a generational shift is under way here, in which more young people are receptive to bigger government, rather than smaller government right now. And the issues that young people care at this moment are low wages, jobs, student debt, income inequality, etc. You would probably argue that libertarianism can still best tackle those problems. How so?
RP: I don’t think the young people would. They might be sucked into believing that the government can give them a temporary benefit by raising a wage, but they just need a better understanding. But they are not for the big government when it comes to their personal liberties, their sexual habits, the civil liberties that they like. They like their privacy. So I don’t think they are looking for bigger government. The young people that I talked to – they are not looking for a bigger government and more militarism; they are not championing the person that wants to spend a lot more money on military and rebuild the military – that’s all big government.
But yes, they are tempted because of this lack of understanding to go along with bigger government, when it comes to trying to have a better economic system. This is a result of a hundred years of teaching our young people that government is necessary to redistribute wealth. And they do – they redistribute wealth – the more they try, the more the wealthy get wealthier. It redistributes it upward, and it ruins the middle class. That is what they have to understand. But they’re onto something and they should be justified in looking at this. But, as a group of people, the millennials are not looking for more government. Only in that economic sphere are they tempted to look at this. There are many others who declare themselves libertarians. They want less government in their lives and they want more privacy and they want [fewer] wars.
RT:When you ran for president four years ago, you had a message that resonated with young people. Your comments that fixing the economy should start with fixing foreign policy were very popular. Do those voters still exist and where did they go?
RP: I think a lot of them are sitting on their hands and rightfully so. How could they pick somebody that would champion those same views? But some who are just loosely connected, not well-informed and get led into believing that we have to have a super military force to rule the world, and police the world, and be occupying these countries - yes, they get tempted to go along with this. But the true believer in a free society – they are not champing at the bit to champion the cause of any of these candidates right now…
RT:Some of those voters might have gone over to Donald Trump. He is the frontrunner on the GOP side. The economy is still the most important issue for voters, and he has been most vocal about amending NAFTA, reducing taxes, building a wall between the US and Mexico, and so on. What is it really do you think at the end of the day? What is so appealing here to his voters?
RP: He has a personality, he has a megaphone, and he is getting the attention, and you don’t have anybody in particular out there talking about the real economic issues. But he is regressive… he is falling backward. He is going to the dark ages of thinking that he can go into mercantilism, protect natural resources, put on tariffs, and just bash and blame everybody else: The Mexicans, the Chinese. That is going to be devastating to the economy – it has nothing to do with freedom. It has to do with the opposite – it is an exaggeration of economic planning that we already have. So he is going in the wrong direction, just as Bernie is, even if they are both tapping into the disenchantment that… a lot of people have with what is happening.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
(Kitco News) - Emerging market economies need to shy away from the U.S. dollar and U.S. treasuries, and instead invest more in gold, this according to one Harvard professor.
Tuesday, in a commentary for Project Syndicate, Kenneth Rogoff, professor of Economics at the Ivy League university and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, recommended that emerging economies boost their gold reserves to about 10%, which would still keep them below some developed country’s gold reserves.
“Emerging markets have remained buyers of gold, but at a snail’s pace compared to their voracious appetite for U.S. Treasury bonds and other rich-country debt. As of March 2016, China held just over 2% of its reserves in gold, and the share for India was 5%. Russia is really the only major emerging market to increase its gold purchases significantly, in no small part due to Western sanctions, with holdings now amounting to almost 15% of reserves,” he said in the article.
Rogoff argued that emerging markets would get more from their gold investments than they would from government bonds from developed nations like the U.S., Germany or Japan. He explained that competition for developed country government debt is helping to keep bond yields low.
Many analysts have noted that strong demand for government bonds have pushed yields into negative territory. In March, the World Gold Council estimated that $8 trillion of high-quality sovereign debt have negative yields.
Rogoff said that gold is a better investment for emerging markets because there is no limit on its price.
“Moreover, there is a case to be made that gold is an extremely low-risk asset with average real returns comparable to very short-term debt. And, because gold is a highly liquid asset – a key criterion for a reserve asset – central banks can afford to look past its short-term volatility to longer-run average returns,” he explained.
Rogoff's commentary comes as gold prices are flirting around $1,300 an ounce, its highest level since January, 2015. Since the start of the year gold has gained more than 21% as one of the best peforming assets for the year.
*ECB ENDS PRODUCTION AND ISSUANCE OF €500 BANKNOTE
*ECB SAYS ISSUANCE OF EU500 NOTE TO STOP AROUND THE END OF 2018
*ECB SAYS OTHER EURO BANKNOTES WILL STAY IN PLACE
*ECB: EU500 CAN BE EXCHANGED AT CEN BANKS FOR UNLIMITED TIME
And just like that the second highest denominated European bank note in circulation (after the CHF1000 Bill) is dead...
And so now, everyone rushes into the CHF 1000 note.
So what, big deal, eliminate it. The people will still have 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 and 200 euro bills right.
As we wrote previously, the answer is not that simple at all. Recall that the €500 note is the second highest currency denomination in G10, after the CHF1,000 note. More importantly, the total value of €500 notes in circulation amounts to €306.8bn and has been rising as shown in this BofA chart:
Furthermore, as a share of the value of total euros in circulation, the €500 note is the second-highest, after the €50 note.
In other words, if overnight the €307 billion worth of €500 bills were eliminated, the notional value of the entire amount of European physical currency in circulation would decline by 30% to €700 billion!
And there you have it: while it may not be banning all European cash outright, we are confident the ECB would be delighted if one third of it was to start, while pretending to be fighting financial crime, terrorism, corruption and drug dealers.
Of course, what Europe would be truly doing is setting the scene for ever more aggressive NIRP, and by removing the highest denomination bank notes, it would make evading negative that much more difficult and costly (albeit would certainly favor gold).
That's not all: as Bank of America pointed out, abolishing the €500 note may even end up even weakening the European currency:
... we would expect that abolishing a note that represents almost 30% of the total Euros in circulation would be negative for the currency, keeping everything else constant. The share of the €500 note in the total value of Euros in circulation has been falling since 2009 and this has coincided with a weakening Euro in real effective terms. This is not evidence of causality, but we should not ignore it.
If we are right, the Euro will weaken, primarily against the USD and the CHF. The USD is the most liquid currency and we would expect it to capture a large share of the drop in the demand for the Euro as a store of value. However, the CHF could also benefit, having the largest note denomination in G10 economies. Indeed, the CHF1000 note is already very popular, representing more than 60% of the CHF notes in circulation, unless the SNB follows the example of the ECB and also abolishes the CHF1000 note.
BofA is right, unless of course, in this global race to the bottom where every central bank tit has other central bank tats as a direct response, first the SNB "scraps" the CHF1000 bill, and then the Federal Reserve follows suit and listens to Harvard "scholar" and former Standard Chartered CEO Peter Sands who just last week said the US should ban the $100 note as it would "deter tax evasion, financial crime, terrorism and corruption."
Go ahead and cut, then: after all who really needs the Benjamins, right? Well, here's the thing:
As the Treasury chart above shows, $100 bills account for for $1.08 trillion of the $1.38 trillion total in circulation. So should the Fed react to the ECB's "scrapping" of the €500 bill, which accounts for 30% of the value of currency in circulation, then the Fed would respond in kind, by eliminating 78% of all paper currency in circulation by value.
Not a bad way to launch a global ban on paper currency ahead of a global NIRP regime, and all, of course, in the name of fighting "tax evasion, financial crime, terrorism and corruption."
“Money for free! Well not exactly. The Piper that has to be paid will likely be paid for in the form of higher inflation, but that of course is what the central banks claim they want. What they don’t want is to be messed with and to become a government agency by proxy, but that may just be the price they will pay for a civilized society that is quickly becoming less civilized due to robotization. There is a rude end to flying helicopters, but the alternative is an immediate visit to austerity rehab and an extended recession. I suspect politicians and central bankers will choose to fly, instead of die.”
Culture Clash
A respected reporter recently asked me what were a few important things I had learned from all this and all of that during the past decade and I surprised myself and perhaps him by answering that I now realized that younger generations – the Xers and Millenials – were far different generations from my own. “How so?” he asked. They are ephemerally connected as opposed to hardwired, I replied. They hold history less dear and appreciate freshly baked inclusiveness more; they are inclined to move on instead of settle and build, perhaps because employer loyalty has weakened as well; they are more temporary residents than architects. But they are the future.
The challenge for me as a Boomer, I said, was to understand this, yet not sacrifice my generation’s heritage that had made these evolving differences possible. This generation gap, I continued, was just that – a far distance from one side of a chasm to the other. And yet, I thought, (having concluded the interview) culturally we were much the same: making positive, sometimes obsessive contributions at work; loving our families, our pets. No chasm there to bridge. A common culture. But common cultures themselves morph and sometimes quickly so, producing substantial gaps from one figurative day to the next. Most humans who walked this Earth were alive inside a culture that was constant for centuries, yet now it seemed that technology was mutating standards like a cytoplast or perhaps at worst – a cancer cell. Who could say whether this new life form was positive or negative? Who could say that an older generation was any less an ideal than the succeeding one?My experience of the divide between Boomers and Xers is like that; I recognize that youth will be served, but not always for the better.
Yet, if I (you) understood that to be somewhat true, what should I (you) do differently? How to live a life – this Shakespearian brief candle? Should I listen to the beat of a bass drum instead of an ancient tom-tom? Would I dare dance to strange new music with a different step? “Forward” is my futile response. Forward – with difficult questions. John Denver expressed it succinctly, “If there’s an answer, it’s just that it’s just that way”.
Change propels economies as well as cultures, and sometimes before we are even aware of it. We listen to Trump and Bernie, then Cruz and Hillary as if one of them might be the mythical Wizard of Oz, guiding us down that yellow brick road to reinvigorate growth. They all try to emulate the Wizard of course. “Change you can believe in” was Obama’s mantra and then there was Clinton’s “I come from a city called Hope” and so on. Eisenhower was probably the last honest politician. “I like Ike” was his promise for the future, and I think many voters actually did – like Ike. But back then and certainly now, it was the economy that was changing, not politicians’ promises for a better future, and government policies usually took years to respond. If Thatcher and Reagan sparked a “revolution” of tax policy, it was a long lagged response to decades of growth constricting government policies. If the Great Recession exposed holes in those free market ideologies, then to my way of thinking, seven years of Obama have not yet addressed the cracks in our global financial system. Our economy has changed, but voters and their elected representatives don’t seem to know what’s really wrong. They shout: (1) build a wall, (2) balance the budget, (3) foot the bill for college, or (4) make free trade less free. “That will fix it” they discordantly proclaim, and after November’s election some unlucky soul may do one or more of the above in an effort to make things better. Similar battles are being fought everywhere. Brazil and Venezuela approaching depression’s edge; leftist and right-wing government elections in Euroland; Spain without a government; Brexit; China’s ever-changing five year plan; Japan’s obsessional quest for 2% inflation. “Fix it, fix it, restore our hope for a better future”, beats the world’s tom-tom. Or is it a bass drum? It’s loud, whichever generational beat you dance to.
But here’s the thing. No one in 2016 is really addressing the future as we are likely to experience it, and while that future has significant structural headwinds influenced by too much debt and an aging demographic, another heavy gust merits little attention on the political stump. I speak in this Outlook to information technology and the robotization of our future global economy. Virtually every industry in existence is likely to become less labor-intensive in future years as new technology is assimilated into existing business models. Transportation is a visible example as computer driven vehicles soon will displace many truckers and bus/taxi drivers. Millions of jobs will be lost over the next 10-15 years. But medicine, manufacturing and even service intensive jobs are at risk. Investment managers too! Not only blue collar but now white collar professionals are being threatened by technological change.
Nobel Prize winning economist Michael Spence wrote in 2014 that “should the digital revolution continue…The structure of the modern economy and the role of work itself may need to be rethought.” The role of work? Sounds like code for fewer jobs to me. And if so, as author Andy Stern writes inRaising the Floor, a policymaker – a future President or Prime Minister – must recognize that existing government policies have “built a whole social infrastructure based on the concept of a job, and that concept does not work anymore.” In other words, if income goes to technological robots whatever the form, instead of human beings, our culture will change and if so policies must adapt to those changes. As visual proof of this structural change, look at Chart I showing U.S. employment/population ratios over the past several decades. See a trend there? 78% of the eligible workforce between 25 and 54 years old is now working as opposed to 82% at the peak in 2000. That seems small but it’s really huge. We’re talking 6 million fewer jobs. Do you think it’s because Millenials just like to live with their parents and play video games all day? I think not. Technology and robotization are changing the world for the better but those trends are not creating many quality jobs. Our new age economy – especially that of developed nations with aging demographics – is gradually putting more and more people out of work.
The days of JP Morgan controlling the silver market may be numbered as a new player in the silver market has arrived. For the past several years, JP Morgan held the most silver on a public exchange in the world. While the LBMA may hold (or did hold) more silver, their stockpiles are not made public.
Regardless, JP Morgan held the most silver at nearly 74 million oz (Moz) in its warehouse, up until recently. Over the past two months, JP Morgan’s silver inventories have fallen nearly 7 Moz to 67.1 Moz today:
As I mentioned in my previous article, Why Are The Chinese Stockpiling Silver? Big Move Coming?, JP Morgan increased their silver inventories from 4 Moz in April 2011 to 69.4 Moz April 19, 2016. However, the Shanghai Futures Exchange silver inventories surged from 7.5 Moz in August 2015 to 54.7 Moz on April 19, 2016:
Basically, JP Morgan added an average 16.3 Moz of silver each year for the past years, whereas the Shanghai Futures Exchange added nearly 7 Moz per month. Furthermore, the majority of gains came since the beginning of 2016. Again, here is my previous Shanghai Futures Exchange silver stock chart from the article linked above:
As we can see from this chart dated April 19th, the Shanghai Futures Exchange more than tripled their silver inventories since November 2015. What is even more interesting is the continued buildup over the past two weeks. Here is an updated chart based on data for May 3rd:
Over the past two weeks, the Shanghai Futures Exchange added another 179 metric tons (mt) or 5.8 Moz. Now, if we update the JP Morgan and Shanghai Futures Exchange silver stock chart (from above) we have the following:
Here we can see that JP Morgan’s total silver inventories have declined from 69.4 Moz to 67.2 Moz, while the Shanghai Futures Exchange silver stocks have increased from 54.7 Moz to 60.6 Moz. If the Shanghai Futures Exchange continues to add silver at this rate, it will surpass JP Morgan in a two to three weeks.
Comex Registered Silver Inventories Drop Nearly 4 Million Ounces Yesterday
When the CME Group published the recent silver inventory change on the Comex yesterday, nearly 4 Moz were transferred from the Registered to Eligible Category. The majority of the transfer came from the CNT Depository at nearly 3.5 Moz with 485,325 oz from HSBC:
Some analysts say these transfers really don’t mean much if the overall inventories stay the same. That may be true, but there was some reason the CNT Depository transferred 3.5 Moz of silver from their Registered Inventories to the Eligible.
That being said, the Chinese are adding a lot of silver to their Shanghai Futures Exchange warehouses. The build from 7.5 Moz in August 2015 to over 60 Moz of silver in the beginning of May puts JP Morgan’s four-year inventory growth to shame.
For whatever reason, silver inventories at the Shanghai Futures Exchange warehouses are increasing at a rapid pace while the Comex silver stocks continue to decline. Comex silver inventories were over 180 Moz in July 2015 and are now only 151 Moz. This is quite interesting as the Shanghai Futures Exchange inventories started to build from 7.5 Moz in August 2015 to the 60.6 Moz today.
It will be interesting to see how the exchange inventories and price action of silver play out over the next several months.
Two billionaires, Stanley Druckenmiller (above) and Carl Icahn, just issued dire warnings.
Reminiscent Of The 2008 Global Collapse
Carl Icahn Warns A Day Or Reckoning Is Coming
More Billionaires Converting Their Fiat Money Into Gold
“Emerging markets have remained buyers of gold, but at a snail’s pace compared to their voracious appetite for U.S. Treasury bonds and other rich-country debt. As of March 2016, China held just over 2% of its reserves in gold, and the share for India was 5%. Russia is really the only major emerging market to increase its gold purchases significantly, in no small part due to Western sanctions, with holdings now amounting to almost 15% of reserves,” he said in the article.
“Money for free! Well not exactly. The Piper that has to be paid will likely be paid for in the form of higher inflation, but that of course is what the central banks claim they want. What they don’t want is to be messed with and to become a government agency by proxy, but that may just be the price they will pay for a civilized society that is quickly becoming less civilized due to robotization. There is a rude end to flying helicopters, but the alternative is an immediate visit to austerity rehab and an extended recession. I suspect politicians and central bankers will choose to fly, instead of die.”
