The shake out of ETFs and futures has left the Australian mint short of deliverables and Japanese and Chinese gold retailers seeing a “frenzied” surge in demand.
The customers are not just the ‘rich’ or ‘elderly’; in China “they tend to wear water shoes and come directly from the market…;”
in Australia, “the volume of business… is way in excess of double what we did last week,… there’s been people running through the gate,” and Japanese individual investors doubled gold purchases yesterday at Tokuriki Honten, the country’s second-largest retailer of the precious metal.For bullion-buyers, this also introduces an additional variable to consider in looking for a source for your bullion: availability.
I certainly see the current situation as a "buying opportunity" for investors. Indeed, had I not used-up the remainder of my bullion-buying dollars (for the time being) at the beginning of September I would definitely be a buyer myself at the present time.
Higher premiums appear to be the "necessary evil" which those of us who want REAL bullion have to live with - unless you happen to live in a "bullion supermarket" like India. As people grudgingly pay these higher premiums, I remind people to consider how those "high premiums" will look a couple of years from now, when silver is likely MULTIPLES of the current price.
Given the choice between paying silver's (real) "fair market price" today (and getting low premiums on those purchases), or buying silver at a fraction of its real value, but getting "squeezed" for an extra dollar or two an ounce, it is obvious what is better for investors.
MAKE SURE YOU GET PHYSICAL SILVER IN YOUR OWN POSSESSION. Don't Buy SLV, or Futures or Pooled Accounts or any other BS paper silver product .Remember anything on paper is worth the paper it is written on. Go Long Stay long the bull market have even started yet
