Silver market capitalization

[Michal]

Hi, anybody has reliable data about Silver global market capitalization?

I found only unconfirmed data from 2014 stating 5 trillion. But was looking for real hard data, newest preferably. 

[sixgun]

What do you mean by global market capitalisation?

Do you have a link to your source of 2014?

In early 2014 silver was at $20 - a $5 trillion - $5,000,000,000,000

$5,000,000,000,000/20 = 250 billion ounces -

On a good day it is suggested there is a world above ground inventory of a billion ounces - the silver market is tiny - it could be bought up for loose change, so whatever this $5 trillion is talking about it isn't physical.

 

[HawkHybrid]

1 hour ago, sixgun said:

On a good day it is suggested there is a world above ground inventory of a billion ounces

https://www.silverinstitute.org/silver-supply-demand/

suggests that minimum available silver is more than a

billion toz. (jewellery + silverware + coins and bars make

up about 0.4 billion toz per year. I'm guessing everyone

still have their coins from last year, and the year before...

etc and few have made it to the melt pot at this early

stage)

 

HH

[sixgun]

24 minutes ago, HawkHybrid said:

https://www.silverinstitute.org/silver-supply-demand/

suggests that minimum available silver is more than a billion toz. (jewellery + silverware + coins and bars make up about 0.4 billion toz per year. I'm guessing everyone still have their coins for last year, and the year before...etc and few have made it to the melt pot at this early stage)

HH

The numbers from the Silver Institute show the balance of flows of silver. There is pretty much always a deficit of silver. i recall David Morgan in a Kitco interview last year say the total silver inventory is about 1 billion ounces. i reject the notion there is 1 billion ounces of silver available - available means immediately available at today's price. ETF silver is not available unless the fund gets liquidated - silver bugs stacks are not available at today's price - well mine isn't.

We essentially have mined supply and recycled silver - then we can silver for industry, investment and jewellery. The demand exceeds the mined and recycled supply - there is silver coming in from a 'dark' pool of silver. i call it a dark pool b/c i have asked quite a few times and i have never got an answer to my question which is where is this silver coming from. The deficit adds up to 1097.8 million ounces since 2008. Over a billion ounces have come from somewhere the Silver Institute does not list - the dark pool. If it were old silver jewellery and coins coming into the supply chain it should be counted as scrap. Are we deliberately left in the dark about this pool of silver which has offered up over a billion ounces since 2008?

Whatever the numbers the silver market capitalisation is not $5 trillion (250 billion ounces) - the turnover of physical silver and (paper - fictional silver) derivatives could be $5 trillion - i might turn a penny coin over a 100 times but i still don't have a pound

[HawkHybrid]

for market cap purposes my use of available meaning

exists in physical form that can be traded just like

any other physical form. (I wasn't suggesting that

prized jewellery or premium historic coins are being

traded at spot)

(maybe I should have used exists instead of available)

people are holding onto 0.4 billion toz of physical

silver in 2017. it's easy enough to track coins by

year minted. I'm assuming very few(%) of the coins

minted in recent years have been melted and counted

as scrap for subsequent years. it's easy to see that

total physical silver above ground can easily exceed

the 1 billion toz figure.

 

I think the figures not adding up due to insufficient

data makes sense. there are many possible

legitimate reasons for this. why would anyone

choose to openly declare their pm holdings for

all to see?

 

HH

[sixgun]

Yes - 'exists' is the term that should be used but we see 'available' - i will say a deliberately misleading term. The amount of silver that exists is the same as it ever was. Most of it is still in the ground. Some is commercially recoverable but most of it isn't - well certainly not at today's prices. Some is in stacks which are for sale. Some is in stacks that aren't for sale at today's prices. Some is in goods - like your TV which is not available and then may or may not be recovered. Then a good deal has gone into land file and is certainly unavailable at today's prices.

What matters today is not how much exists but how much is immediately available (deliverable) at today's price. If no silver is available (deliverable) at today's price then the price has to go up irrespective of the antics in the paper markets.

We hear silver will go extinct - this is a nonsense as there will be as much silver as there ever was, it will just be spread out very thinly. If this happened, manufacturers would use something else and where they couldn't they would have to pay what it costs - which would be a lot more than today.

The story of silver extinction is to hype up the investment market - what will drive the price is the investment market and what will drive that is gold. What will drive gold is when the supply to China dries up. China will then reset the price of gold - this will drag up the price of silver - this will cause a clammer for silver by investors and manufacturers will have to stockpile - this will cause the silver price to rocket - it go to the Moon (at last). Until this happens silver will bobble around in the range we have seen since 2014.

Silver has been a poor investment for most of us on the forum - it has not even kept up with inflation - i have my stack for the reset - it sits there - i don't sell any of it - it just sits there and i add bits to it when i see something i can't resist.

[HawkHybrid]

I not sure how much clearer I can be with this.

 

 eg. almost all of the physical silver bullion 2016

kangaroo coins are with us today. the same is true

for much of the millions of ase minted in recent

years. I'm not deliberately misleading anyone.

there is no shortage of these coins or any other

recent year silver coins that have been minted in

the millions. it's all in physical silver form of a

defined purity.

 

the reason why I don't use exist is then you have

to define exist above ground and then exists in

physical form at the required purity. the use of

available is actually closer to the truth than

exists. all these physical silver are actually

available to be traded using the current market

making mechanism. the fact that some choose

to withhold physical silver at the current market

prices is not an anomaly, it happens all the time.

this doesn't change the availability of the silver

in a recognised market form. as in an emergency

unwilling sellers can still sell silver at current

prices. fact is people are buying physical silver

at the current prices, (melt plus adjustment for

physical delivery). therefore there are also sellers

fulfilling the other side of each trade.

 

it may or may not be as high as 250 billion toz but

there is a lot of physical silver out there that is

already in a tradable form. easily more than 1 billion

toz judging from the silver institutes data. if there

has been 1 billion toz covering the deficit since 2008,

what does that say about the amount out there in a

tradable form from unlogged sources?

just because we can't see it, doesn't mean it's not

true?

(the paper silver market is an extension of the

physical silver market)

 

HH

[Michal]

https://sdbullion.com/blog/how-much-silver-gold-is-there/

they say it is 4 billion oz silver

https://articles.royalmintbullion.com/how-rare-are-precious-metals/

they say 777 million kg ~ 27,4 b oz

 

But that still doesn't answer what is silver global market capitalization

that is bloomberg article :

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-06-18/new-silver-benchmark-seen-heralding-gold-fix-revamp-commodities

 

 

Added:

They claim 1b oz of silver

http://money.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-money-markets-one-visualization-2017/

[Michal]

silver Cyclotrons from manhattan project, that is answer why you didn't have shortage of silver till recent years i seen great video about that but can't find it now. And it fits to data. It sounds like conspiracy theory but i wouldn't be surprise if it is not.  😉

[Martlet]

The Silver Institute reports between 684m toz and 895m toz mined a year past 10 years.  This cross checks (with some margin of difference) to numbers from USGS.  Thats about 8bn toz out of the ground in 10 years and not counting rest of history.  Reporting beyond this is unreliable with lots of estimates, with how consumption in industry, in bullion, jewellery or silverware affecting how much is "available" in the market.  I see one estimate (JM Bullion site) reckon there's 5bn toz available, seems on low side given this is about what we have from just the past 10 years in bullion, jewellery and silverware, but in the ball park. 

So that gives a range of 75-120bn market cap, if the market is the amount that is available. High $trillion estimates are counting the turnover of ETFs, options etc, and we wouldnt normally count that as market capitalisation. 

[Michal]

True but people buying ETF and all other paper silver think they are actually buying/investing in silver so not taking that under consideration is like measuring iceberg from sea level to the top.

[Martlet]

4 hours ago, Michal said:

True but people buying ETF and all other paper silver think they are actually buying/investing in silver so not taking that under consideration is like measuring iceberg from sea level to the top.

That may be the case with retail investors, i would expect the vast majority of trade in ETF and similar are by banks and institutions well aware of the nature of the instruments.  Either way, such instruments arent counted in market cap, futures in Apple or Vodafone dont count in the market cap for Apple or Vodafone.  It isn't ignored, it shows up in measures of that derivative market and other market data. 

[HawkHybrid]

56 minutes ago, Martlet said:

That may be the case with retail investors, i would expect the vast majority of trade in ETF and similar are by banks and institutions well aware of the nature of the instruments.  Either way, such instruments arent counted in market cap, futures in Apple or Vodafone dont count in the market cap for Apple or Vodafone.  It isn't ignored, it shows up in measures of that derivative market and other market data. 

 

whilst I agree that anyone with more than pocket

change in an etf is likely to know what they are

doing, etf's are still part of the silver speculation

trade. etf's are an alternative to speculating by

holding physical or stored silver.

people have this 'I must hold physical in my

possession mentality' and discard all other

forms of speculating on the silver price.

remember this, the pumpers that insist that you

must hold physical silver despite all it's

drawbacks are doing so in order to mislead

people to try and increase sales of physical

silver.

etf's that hold physical silver should definitely

be counted towards market cap.

 

HH

[Michal]

https://polandin.com/38084188/explainer-amber-gold-affair

Something to think about "pompers that insist you to hold physical" 😉

[HawkHybrid]

38 minutes ago, Michal said:

https://polandin.com/38084188/explainer-amber-gold-affair

Something to think about "pompers that insist you to hold physical" 😉

 

we've all heard the fear mongering stories.

 

what can we realistically expect?

where are the stories of physical pm's saving someone in

britain as opposed to the use of etf's?

 

HH