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Weekly People's Gold and Silver Prices
Single Ounce Silver Market Price Benchmark
Money Daily has been providing business and financial market news, views, and coverage on a nearly continuous basis since 2006. Complete archives are available at moneydaily.blogspot.com.
PRIOR COVERAGE:
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Friday, February 11, 2022, 9:15 am ET If the globalist elites don't get what they want, they will punish everybody else. That is a statement you can bet with your last dollar to be true. Thursday's trading in markets was a microcosm of what lay ahead should a stock market crash occur, a condition that seems more and more likely to present itself every day. When the BLS released its most recent reading of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the immediate reaction was to sell any and all assets. When the announcement hit the wires, stock futures fell, bond prices fell, gold, silver, and cryptocurrencies fell. Even the price of oil suffered a bit. When the equity markets opened for the cash session at 9:30 am ET, investors and speculators were still sorting things out. Gold, silver, bitcoin all recovered and the opening on the major indices wasn't a cascading waterfall of share prices. That would come later, and with it, decimation across most other asset classes. With stocks ending with rather scarring losses, after the close, bitcoin fell to a low of $42,617, after trading as high as $45,855 earlier in the day. Gold had reached as high as $1,842, but tumbled to $1,826 by the time the NY Globex closed. Silver had risen as high as $23.69 before collapsing back to $23.17. The point is that the money assets - gold, silver, bitcoin - in competition with the fiat dollar, should be going up when the dollar is losing purchasing power. In other words, if the dollar is losing 7.5% of its purchasing power over the course of a year (it's actually more like 10-15%), then the prices you pay for other assets should be higher. That simple calculation works with a bag of grapes, a whole chicken, a box of cereal, a sheet of plywood, a used car, or any of the thousands of other consumer items available. Apparently, concrete math does not apply to other forms of money, though it most certainly should, and, in the long run, must, unless the laws of physics and mathematics are discarded. If $100 buys Bitcoin at $44,000 today, one would need $107.50 to buy it at the same price in a year given the inflation rate (loss of purchasing power). It actually gets worse, as human nature determines which currency is best. When people become fully aware that the US$ just isn't cutting it any more, they will flee to other currencies, other money, other assets. Argentina and Venezuela are good cases in point. When the currencies - the Peso and Bolivar - collapsed, people fled to the US dollar, which was obviously more stable. As the crises continued, even into the present, more people were buying hard assets, like cars, washing machines, anything that was going up in price, along with gold, silver, bitcoin, and even euros. Gresham's Law allows that "bad money chases out good" which is the current condition. The US dollar is the bad money, and it is chasing away gold, silver, bitcoin and other cash equivalents, like bonds, which are a unique case worthy of deeper insight. Thursday's rout in the treasury market - a secondary market for treasury bills, notes, and bonds in circulation - was nothing short of catastrophic. Investors seek a return OF capital in bonds. When they sense an imminent rise in interest rates, the sell, at a lower price to receive a higher rate. The eruption in the treasury complex Thursday looked like a nine-car pileup on a busy expressway. Let's take a look. Starting with 2-month bills, which were severely damaged, the rate on Wednesday was 0.15%. By 3:30 on Thursday, it stood at 0.31%, a rise of 16 basis points, not exactly a sign of stability. Going further out, the real damage was done between 2-year and 10-year notes. The 2-year advanced a shocking quarter point (0.25%) in one day, rising from 1.36% on Wednesday, to 1.61% on Thursday. The 5-year note finished with a yield of 1.96% on Thursday, not far behind the 7-year and 10-year notes which both ended the day at 2.03%, on the cusp of inversion. Short of an emergency rate hike of 0.50% by the Fed on the federal funds rate, here's nothing holding bond prices from tumbling lower and rates rising, eventually sending rates on 2s, 3s, 5s, and 7s higher than 10s. By the time the FOMC meets to make a 25 or 50 basis point hike official, the treasury curve will likely have already inverted, signaling a recession dead ahead and, ironically, fixing the Fed's inflation problem. Money will get so tight that prices will be forced lower, in a basic demand collapse. Supply shortages will fade into memory holes. Consumer prices will come down, and with them, so too stocks, bonds, and other assets. In the meantime, the market riggers have already pumped stock futures from deep declines overnight, into positive territory with a half hour to the opening bell.
If recent stock market activity is any guide, the main indices will open higher and end lower. Here's where they stand on the week, through Thursday: Welcome to Planet Dystopia, where elite losses are magnified onto the general public. Happy Hunting. Be sure to tag your kill.
At the Close, Thursday, February 10, 2022: Bitcoin (9:10 am ET): $43,819.12
Thursday, February 10, 2022, 9:41 am ET There it stood, naked in all it's glory, January CPI: 7.5% The reading, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the same agency that fudged January's non-farm payrolls this past Friday, was the highest annual rate since March, 1982. The month-over-month increase was +0.6%, the 24th consecutive increase. Reaction from all markets was swift and noticeable. Stock futures fell, with the NASDAQ screeching lower, down 1.5%. The dollar index (DXY) leapt higher, rising to 95.93 just 20 minutes following the data release. Bitcoin, and the rest of the altcoins and tokens in the crypto-space, were dashed, with bitcoin quickly quickly down nearly $2,000. Ten minutes prior to the BLS release, bitcoin had topped $45,000, but fell to $43,201 in short order. As usual, gold and silver were punished, though the beatdown lasted mere minutes. Silver actually showed a gain of one cent at $23.29 per ounce. Gold was down around five dollars, holding its ground at $1,827. It's a remarkable sight to see huge, dynamic markets moved so much by one number, but it was the one markets had been keyed to for the better part of the week. What remains to be seen is whether investors will lose their never as regards stocks, which had advanced sharply Monday through Wednesday and appeared to be streaking back toward all-time highs. Interest rates in the US spiked, with the 10-year note hitting 1.99%. For crypto, the number could be disastrous, as more dollars are apparently needed to purchase the same amount of coin. The same logic applies for gold and silver, though it's upside down thinking that a further decline in the purchasing power of the US$ somehow makes it a stronger currency. In that regard, Zimbabwe and Venezuela would have by far the strongest currencies on the planet, due to their hyper-inflations. Alas, the opposite is true, and, should price inflation persist - though 20 months gives it a good head start - the US dollar will eventually lose the final 2% of value that it still holds since its inception in 1913 under the Federal Reserve. Make no mistake, the dollar is weaker. The kneejerk reaction to the high CPI is mostly tracking interest rates. Money is being squeezed out of the economy at an alarming rate. Bitcoin should reverse course in due time and head much higher. It is the anti-dollar, and thus, will eventually bethe most desired money.
At the Close, Wednesday, February 9, 2022:
Wednesday, February 9, 2022, 9:20 am ET Well, everything is back to normal. Stocks ramped higher on Tuesday, for no particular reason other than maybe World War III may be averted, for now, or the old guard which enslaved most of the planet for two years is still standing, still in control, plotting even more evil things. What does it matter? Those numbers on your screen, representing your stock prices and how much money you have, or, are they bitcoins, or other cryptos? The choice is clear now. Choose your weapon of measurement. Dollar or Bitcoin, or Euros, or gold. It's probably not a bad idea to have some of each, but, in the end, the fiats will die ugly deaths. The dollar is dying, the euro along with it. Japan and their yen may survive in a manner, though many in the Land of the Midnight Sun are opting for cryptos. It's just what's out there. El Salvador, the lone nation on the planet that calls Bitcoin legal tender, has the youngest legislature in the world. The place is booming. They also accept US dollars, so, what could be better? Bitcoin, overnight, was measured as high as $45,519.24, which sounds like a number that hasn't been heard from in a while, but, the truth is that level was the standard a month ago. Bitcoin is still down ($46,211, 12/31/21) about five percent on the year so far, roughly the same as the S&P 500. The Dow is donw just three percent; the NASDAQ is lower by 10. So, the race resumes. All the major indices are pointing toward a higher open. Bitcoin trades continuously. Here's a notion. Do you want your money in companies run by people you don't know, in a currency that requires guns and military force, 12 regional central banks, a huge printing press, all kinds of arcane transactional commitments ‹ stocks, bonds, treasuries, futures, options, swaps, etc. ‹ by which to derive its dubious value, or one which has an fixed supply, requires nothing other than people using it and cannot be confiscated, stolen or otherwise censored? Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert explain, from San Salvador:
At the Close, Tuesday, February 8, 2022: Tuesday, February 8, 2022, 9:40 am ET Bitcoin has been on a tear, dragging the rest of the crypto space higher with it. Overnight, Bitcoin rose to a four-month high of $45,519.24, its highest level since September 30, 2021. Price has pulled back to the mid-$43,000 level, though a drawdown of a couple thousand fiat dollars was highly probable after the world's #1 cryptocurrency rose more than $12,000 since bottoming out around $33,000 on January 24. The past two weeks - and especially the past five days - have given adherents of Bitcoin some degree of hope that the sharp decline since November 9 has reversed and that the coin has separated itself from trading in correlation with the NASDAQ index, an unusual development that lasted a few months but now appears to be ending. Other than a possible inverse relationship to the US dollar, there is no good reason Bitcoin should trade in sympathy to any index or commodity. It is a unit of measure to itself. Fluctuations and trends in other asset measures may be caused by attempts at manipulating the price via derivatives, such as the Bitcoin futures ETFs that have become popular over the past six months. One question that the ETF promoters fail to answer is why products such as BITO (ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF) exist at all, other than to influence the price of Bitcoin. After all, investors can just as easily buy Bitcoin directly. In the US, at least, it is subject to the same capital gains taxes as stocks, ETFs and other investments. It's a question that won't be answered, because th truth is likely that BITO and other vehicles like it only exist to keep people out of Bitcoin, instead funneling their money into the investment house product. These innovations do little to raise awareness or answer legitimate concerns about Bitcoin, nor do they offer much in the way of value. They exist only to benefit their creators, largely big investment houses from Wall Street, the City of London, or elsewhere. If money invested in these derivative products were properly invested directly into Bitcoin, the benefit would be obvious. They are, in the main, products which serve the interests of the central bank fiat currency promoters and, at the same time, damage the price discovery process for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Bottom line: Buy Bitcoin. Shun these derivatives. Your portfolio balance will thank you.
At the Close, Monday, February 7, 2022: BITCOIN (2/8/22, 9:39 am ET): $43,892.69
Sunday, February 6, 2022, 10:05 am ET Wasn't this a fun week? The last days of January and the first few of February produced a pretty wild ride for everyone. While the US and Britain continue to goad Russia into a war over Ukraine, stock traders, bond market plungers, and crypto cultists certainly had their ups and downs. Lovers of precious metals were likely bored to tears as silver and gold gyrated around the same depressed levels they've traded in range for months. All of the main averages produced a second straight weekly gain. The pivot was Wednesday, when everything peaked. Thursday was the lone decliner for the NASDAQ, but it was a doozy, a loss of 538.73 points, the fifth-largest one-day point loss which could prove consequential, coming a month after the seventh-largest decline (?522.54) on January 5th. Powered by the sudden demise of Facebook (now known as Meta Platforms), tech's bloodbath spilled over into the Dow, sending that index down more than 500 points. The S&P shed 112 points on the day, the NYSE Composite lost 227. While the week as a whole was positive - the second straight gainer - Thursday's drawdown left a nasty mark and the indices remain well below their respective 50-day moving averages, the NASDAQ still below its 200-day moving average and staring blankly at an emergent death cross, where the 50-day crosses below the 200-day. Despite the positive returns for the week, there isn't much joy in Mudville (Wall Street), as mighty Casey (the Fed) is about to swing and miss when it raises the federal funds rate at its March meeting, just six weeks out (March 15-16). The baseball analogy may be appropriate due to Major League Baseball's current locked-out condition. The owners started it on December 1. Negotiations and talks have been unproductive, to say the least. Owners called for federal arbitration, which is not binding, this week. At this point, nobody believes Spring Training will begin on time. Pitchers and catchers are supposed to begin arriving late next week, but there's no movement in talks. March is setting up to be a real bummer. Higher interest rates, raging inflation, and no baseball. As for stocks, the median stock in the S&P 500 Index is still roughly 20% more expensive than it was pre-pandemic and 70% more expensive than at the peak of the DotCom Mania in 2000. That should sufficiently dispel any rumors of rallies. The Treasury complex loped along for much of the week, until Friday's firestorm, which pumped rates to higher ground. Yield on the 10-year note reached a level not seen since the December 31, 2019. The chart below shows yields rising over time over the past 13 months. Note the dates on the left, from the start of 2021, to the end, then the first posting of 2022, last Friday, and this past Friday. Besides the rapid ramp over the past week, which happened almost entirely on Friday, what's notable is the change from 12/31/2021 to 1/3/2022. While the 1, 2, and 3-year yields rose only slightly, the 5s through 30s all jumped by the exact same 11 basis points, mostly affecting loans for long term capital goods, business machinery, cars, and all forms of real estate. It is almost as if the bond market was saying, "Welcome to 2022. It's going to suck to be a borrower."
Extrapolating into the future from the chart's numbers, it's clear that shorter-term maturities (1s through 7s) are galloping ahead of the longer-dated ones (10s, 20s, 30s). The 20s-30s are already inverted, but from the start of this year the 2s have gained 53 basis points; 5s, 41; 7s, 35; while the 10-year advanced 30, and the 30-year 22. Should yields continue to rise in this manner, the suggestion is that the curve will invert right around the March FOMC meeting, with the 7s vaulting over the 10s, and then, possibly as early as May or June, the whole curve flopping over as the 1s and 2s rip higher, overtaking the 3s, 5s, 7s, and 10s. What this means is that the Treasury curve is soon to invert (already has on the 20s-30s), as the 7-year note is just three basis points below the 10-year. If inversion commences, a recession will follow as it has every time since the 1960s. Thus, hyperinflation tendencies will be killed off suddenly and harshly by a huge economic crash. Expect that to happen before the end of the year and last well into 2023 and possibly much longer. A major crash has been in the cards for the global economy for years. The cyclical downturn in 2020 was just a test run for the real deal, which appears to be dead ahead, coinciding with the threat of global war, which is likely to begin within months. It's a way out and a distraction for the elites, the globalists, the controllers. The biggest bang for the buck was in oil, which rose in tandem with the dollar's fall. The DXY fell from 97.19 on January 31 to a low of 95.14 on 2/3, recovering somewhat into Friday's close at 95.48. WTI crude oil ramped from $86.82 on 1/28 to Friday's close of $91.93, the highest price in nearly eight years. Expert opinion has oil pricing well beynd the $100 dollar mark despite recent production hikes promised by OPEC nations. Naturally, the tensions between Russia, the US and Europe aren't helping matters at all. Europeans are paying through the nose for heating fuel and petrol, while North America is beginning to feel relentless pressure from higher prices for heating fuel, natural gas and gas at the pump, which rose about 10 cents over the course of the week, to $3.44 per gallon on unleaded regular, according to Gasbuddy.com. Gas prices are lowest in the Southeast (Mississippi, $3.06) and highest in the West (California, $4.67; Oregon, 3.92; Washington, $3.96). Higher gas prices will almost certainly slow down the economy, at the same time fanning the flames of inflation. At some point in the not-too-distant future, discretionary spending is going to be hit hard, with consumers paying more for food, energy, and household maintenance (mortgages, repairs, regular expenses) while shunning smaller luxuries like dining out, travel, and all manner of consumer goods. It's almost as if the Biden administration, which fails at everything, is waging war on the American family (they are). Cryptos spent the majority of the week just marking time, settling in near the lows of the recent declines since last November. Outlooks began to change in a hurry on Friday, when the entire crypto market began to bounce higher, led by Ethereum (+15% w-w) and Bitcoin (+10% w-w). Impressive gains were also made by Solana, with a rise of 20% on the week. As Friday turned into the weekend, higher prices were maintained across the space, with Bitcoin leveling off above $41,000, currently pricing at $41,857.22. Should these levels hold, it could mark a bottom in crypto, especially for the two biggest, Bitcoin and Ether, with next moves to $43-44,000 and $3,150-3,200, respectively. That the gains in cryptos coincided with a declining dollar and the spike in interest rates should not be lost on investors in alternative currencies and cryptos' developing technology with advancing adoption. As expressed earlier, the week was a dour one for precious metals, with gold hovering just above $1800 and silver ending the week right at $22.50. The suppressed wholesale prices on the COMEX brought down the retail prices as well, evidenced by the lowered prices on eBay and at online dealers. Retail gold managed to maintain most of its value, down slightly over the prices of two weeks ago, while silver slumped back into the recent range after two weeks above trend.
Gold price 01/23: $1,835.60
Silver price 01/23: $24.27 Here are the latest prices for common one ounce gold and silver items sold on eBay (numismatics excluded, shipping - often free - included):
Main takeaways from the week were the fallout of big tech, notably Facebook, the advance of oil to nosebleed levels, higher prices for cryptos, the constant thumping of war drums by the illegitimate DC rogue government, and a declining dollar. They all mesh together to form a cornucopia of ponderable complexity for investors, consumers, and even world leaders. Not to be discounted is the ongoing rebellion in Ottawa, Canada, where the trucker Freedom Convoy has extended to 14 days of occupation of the nation's capitol. The mainstream media refuses to report on the event, confirming that it threatens to be world-changing. Loathe to leave, the truckers have extreme resolve and the government, as of yet, has not made any headway in resolving the crisis nor have they entertained any measures toward conciliation or debate. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, selected in much the same manner as Biden was, not by popular vote but by a corrupted election, remains in hiding. Essentially, by going into hiding, Trudeau has abdicated his position, but remains steadfast in his refusal to bargain with the protesters. Facing a popular uprising which has support of a majority of Canadians, Trudeau is in deep trouble and may soon be the first of a handful of national leaders to be ousted from office. Boris Johnson in England and Joe Biden of the US may be soon on the chopping block, along with Macron in France and Mattarella in Italy. Citizens are angry at their governments, to the point of popular uprisings that have explosive potential. Geo-politics may begin to emerge as main drivers of markets, outside of fundamentals and momentum. Societal conditions are unstable, and if the US gets the war in Ukraine it's so enthusiastically seeking, Biden and his gang could be facing an insurmountable obstacle in the American citizenry, which is far and away opposed to any conflict beyond its borders. Political, societal, and economic pressures are mounting. The world is very close to an epochal explosion that will change everything. For today, that's a wrap. Stay focused, informed, and unafraid.
At the Close, Friday, February 4, 2022:
For the Week: Bitcoin (Sunday, 2/6/22, 9:34 am ET): $41,857.22
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