SILVER SUPERLATIVES
My company made a lot of money in the 1980 price blow-off in silver and gold. Consequently, I thought I knew a lot about silver. It turned out that I had only a superficial knowledge, and that fact was driven home when I met Ted Butler. He knew everything there was to know about silver including the inner workings of the futures market. He talked, I listened (for 20 years). Today, I believe his predictions will be right on the money. I see great irony in his recent passing and the fulfillment of his promise that silver will soon explode. Ted claimed it would quickly rise to $200 an ounce once it broke out above $30-$35. He thought it would then rise to as much as $1,000 an ounce before falling back to the $200-$300 level. He insisted that silver was the greatest profit opportunity in the world. He claimed that owning a modest amount of silver would change your life. It would make you prosperous.
Ted saw that a few big banks and brokerage firms were manipulating the silver price to their advantage in the futures market. This price suppression kept the mining supply of silver artificially low while amping up demand. This distortion led to deficits and a shortage that would ultimately drive up the price. When the industrial users of silver could no longer get the silver they needed, they would stockpile silver at any price. The longer the price was held down in the paper futures market, the greater would be the price explosion in the physical market.
We may now be rushing toward silver’s date with destiny as more and more industrial applications for silver are introduced. Today, we have Asian buying and the worldwide inflation that threatens the dollar and incites investment buying of silver. Ted saw all this and doubled down on the bullishness of his silver forecast. If he was still with us, he would forcefully tell you to buy silver. He would tell us we will never see this price again.
Ted would get upset and angry when the silver price dropped. He would point to the culprit and explain what happened. He always saw these downturns as bullish. The longer the gains are withheld, the better for the ultimate price spike. He would then articulate further on how ripe silver was for a price explosion.