HERE'S WHAT ONE OF THE HUNT BROTHERS TOLD ME ABOUT SILVER IN THE 1980's
In 1979-80, the Hunt brothers of Dallas, Texas tried to corner the silver market. They succeeded in driving the price of silver from $6 to $50 an ounce. This episode put silver on the map in a big way. At the time, I was able to secure an interview with Herbert Hunt, which I ran in my newsletter. He was exceedingly bullish on silver. He told me he was sure it would go up a long way. Herbert Hunt saw the importance of silver as the world’s best conductor of electricity and forecast huge industrial demand in the future. He told me this demand would cause silver to take on great value. The Hunts went on to instigate a great wave of investment demand that was responsible for silver’s explosive rise.
The Hunt brothers were influenced by a silver analyst named Jerome Smith, who wrote a book entitled Silver Profits in the Seventies. Smith wrote the most bullish paragraphs ever penned about silver. He claimed that “silver would someday be more valuable than gold, as it once was in ancient Egypt.” I talked frequently with Jerome Smith, and he came to Minneapolis to see me. Jerome had an uncanny record of accurate predictions. He wrote that silver would jump and it soon did. He predicted a big rise in gold, and it took off just as he promised. Then he wrote in his newsletter about a coming rise in platinum, which immediately soared in price. He wrote one bullish newsletter after another that advocated owning silver and gold. He was a fixture at the New Orleans Monetary Conference where I’d meet with him every year. I was happy when he endorsed my company.