best silver exposures, page-26

This is an interesting thread. It got me poking around looking at the silver mining industry.

Now the obvious:

The price of silver over the recent years has seen the increase of pure silver exploration globally and now mining has commenced with literally hundreds of planned mines in the pipeline.

Those existing mines generally sit on massive reserves as the ore extraction was never an attractive economic venture until recently.

As the price moves up and explorers become producers marginal mines will become economic.

The obvious side to this is a massive increase in silver production year over year. One question that must be asked is "can the market handle (say) a quadrupling of silver coming onto the market?"

In fact a swamping of the silver market. Will investors take up the spill over as a hedge?

My crystal ball says short term solid price increases then an over supply with some mining projects put on hold.

There just seems too much silver mining in the pipeline which I feel may flatten the price. The market could then treat silver as a standard commodity.

However I can't see why it can't be a proxy for gold holdings as gold increases.

Silver mining companies....well the writing's on the wall mid term.

Gold just seems to have no down side.