yikes... another 3 million oz. hauled off today...they must be using it to fill pot holes on Wall Street
World Silver Survey 2006 was just published today by the Silver Institute, a non-profit industry group, and GFMS Ltd. It's priced at $195 (non-profit, huh...), but a decent if short abstract, showing supply and demand statistics / trends by application and by region, can be found here: http://www.silverinstitute.org/news/pr24may06.html
Silver's been able to withstand a greater decline by some of the other metals - like gold, for instance. I wonder how long that'll hold for. And thanks for that, Apex.
2g is here to keep the stats str8.... somebody needs physical delivery since 17 million oz. have been removed from the COMEX in the last 30 days give or take.. it may get redelivered, but why all the trouble? I haven't been following who the delivery stoppers were... but that's a load of silver to move just for the hell of it...
lol it means all of us who own silver are looking for any justification whatsoever to feel good about hanging on to it despite the recent excruciating volatility in hopes it goes to 2500 an ounce at which time we pick the exact top and sell it. at which time i will buy an island and 100 virgins and hire u2 to play for me beachside as i drink private reserve budweiser and smoke $700 cohibas.....gonna buy one of those little hugh hefner smoking jackets too i think. a red one and a black one and a blue one. surprised you had to ask lol
but its so shiny, happy, and pretty! Pleasant to hold, and it likes to be held... (eyes glaze over) All crapping aside, the way the miners were absolutely manipulted over the last few weeks was unreal... if I was these guys, I would have gone private looong ago.
Photography accounts for 1/3 of industrial silver usage but with the advent of digital cameras the whole field is about to die away. As it is the industrial use that supported silver on the $4-5 level for years this might mean bad news for long term silver unless it manages to do the value coup and move into imaginary pricing as a "value holder" like gold.