Why are silver prices so low? Every morning I hear this guy on the TV saying there is the

[doc03]

greatest silver shortage of all time. He says the US Mint can't get the silver to make silver
coins. The local coin shop owner thinks the government may confiscate silver like it did back in
the 1930s. If that is the case silver prices would be way up.

[ret5hd]

1. I think someone is trying to sell you silver.

[doc03]

2. I know, I have been hearing that for years that silver and gold are going to pop any day

now. It is like the preachers telling us to repent and send them money the lord is coming soon. There was a time back in the late
seventies when the Hunt brothers tried to corner the silver market and it went way up then crashed, people lost a lot of money.
I think silver and gold should be up now since the Wall Street gurus say there is a recession coming. But that is another thing that
doesn't compute.

[ret5hd]

3. I think people misunderstand the "purpose"...

of gold, silver, etc.

I have some amounts of both…for a very particular reason…and it is not to make money.

Metals are a utilitarian way to transfer some amount of wealth from one side of a political/economic catastrophe to the other side. To give you some amount of cushion/starting point after a collapse.

That is really their only value. Hopefully, mine will never be used for that. Hopefully, I will pass it on to someone that understands the purpose…and hopefully that person will pass it on also.

[A HERETIC I AM]

6. I heard an excellent analogy for gold...

Last edited Sun Nov 27, 2022, 01:29 PM - Edit history (1)

That applies to other precious metals in some way, I suppose.

It goes like this;

150 years ago a $20 gold coin would buy you a finely tailored suit.

Today that very same coin will buy you a finely tailored suit.

Gold and silver are a way to store wealth, not necessarily a way to grow it. Silver and gold pay no dividends or interest, but have a place in any broadly diversified portfolio

[progree]

7. Just don't buy tech stocks. That's like buying tulips (I had fun with that yesterday)

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142999878

... In total, investors have lost roughly $7.4 trillion, based on the 12-month drop in the Nasdaq.

... May I interest you in some tulips

A small sample of my reply --

Very scary. Over past 10 years Vanguard's Info Technology Index grew just barely 5.570-fold

For a 18.7% average annualized total return (includes distributions through Friday's 11/25/22 close).

Over past 18 years: it grew 8.682 fold (12.8% annualized total return)

. . . I am a little bit sick and I am a little bit tired of investing in equities being equated to tulips or "the Wall Street Casino". Historically, innumerable studies and simulations have shown that one's chances of running out of money in retirement is much less for people with equities than those in pure "safe" fixed income investments. I choose not to gamble on a "safe" fixed-income only portfolio, no matter what the perma-bears say.

I was able to contribute far more to Democratic candidates because of investing in equities than I would have been in just "safe" investments. Had I done the latter, I would have been struggling to get by.

(the fund started 18 1/2 years ago and I wanted to pick whole years)

(I could have added that I was able to retire quite early and pursue my own research interests, but I didn't want to rub it in).

Actually, replying to "tulips" and "Wall Street Casino" posts isn't fun at all. It bothers me a lot that blathering about tulips and "the Wall Street Casino, where the house has the edge" is a bug that has infected so many progressives. And thus end up with little more than Social Security to live on in their old age. And contributing $25 to Democratic campaigns when they could be donating $2,500. I consider shit posts like that as seriously harming my fellow progressives and I respond accordingly.

The thread was in LBN, which got locked (ahem, cough cough)

I went through the same thing back in September in the Economy Group, and yes, with that person.

[A HERETIC I AM]

9. You're braver than I am....

Or at least much more patient.

I’ve pretty much given up on arguing or even commenting on threads where people use terms that, just by the way they are typed indicate the poster has no idea what they are talking about.

I asked a long time ago for someone on that daily thread to explain if they knew the difference between coupon and yield on a bond and what it actually means. No one, and I mean NO ONE ever did, nor have I ever seen any indication that any of the old regulars could answer it. As a poster a long time ago pointed out, most of them don’t know the difference between common stock and livestock.

You are absolutely spot on correct in pushing back against that insidious and stupid “Casino” line of thinking. “Don’t put money there because I think it’s rigged” is and has been a regular sentiment on DU for literally decades now.

Cheers, old friend. You’re a better man than I am!



Happy Holidays.

[progree]

10. A coupon, typically $10 off, is what they use to entice you to buy a lousy bond

You clip coupons out of your copy of the Wall Street Journal or Barron's and send them into the bond-issuer for a refund (one per customer of course).

Yield - that's what you damn well better do when the banksters knock on your door and want their bond back. That's known as "yield to call".

Actually, yield has a double meaning. It is also what you damn well better do when the IRS revenuers come around and demand the interest you thought you had earned.

Thanks and Happy Holidays!

I asked a long time ago for someone on that daily thread to explain if they knew the difference between coupon and yield on a bond and what it actually means. No one, and I mean NO ONE ever did, nor have I ever seen any indication that any of the old regulars could answer it

[A HERETIC I AM]

11. LOL....Nailed it!

[Clash City Rocker]

4. There's a reason so many RW radio shows push silver and/or gold

Because dumb people listen to those shows.

If it was actually a good time to buy gold or silver, those people would be buying it as quietly as possible. They wouldn’t be trying to sell it to us.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. Exactly. Simplistic ads for manipulable suckers. . . nt

[keithbvadu2]

8. but then they bait and switch to overpriced collectible coins

They advertise gold and silver but then they bait and switch to overpriced collectible coins where the
real push is and the real money/profit.