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Industrial and Health Care Demand of Silver at an All Time High

July 12, 2011 By 1 Comment

If you take a quick look at the history of silver, you can see that the importance of silver goes far beyond being just a precious metal that jewelers use to sell to customers who want to wear it. As a matter of fact, silver is not only beautiful, but it is also durable, convenient, has utility value, and is used within industries more than we realize.

Industrial demand for silver has grown consistently for the past three decades. This is due to the fact that because of silver’s many unique properties — which including its strength, malleability, and ductility, its also has unparalleled electrical and thermal conductivity, its sensitivity to and high reflectance of light, and its ability to endure extreme temperature ranges.

All of these factors are important aspects of many of today’s leading industries. Not only that, but silver is also used in numerous health care products because of the unique antibacterial characteristics that it possesses. The “Silver Bullet” is used by hospitals to prevent bacterial infections in burn victims.

Health care centers also use wound dressings that are layered with fabric containing silver for prevention of secondary infections. Finally, the medical universe is also studying silver a bit more closely because it is being tapped for its microbicidal qualities.

As you can see, silver holds great importance in the way our industries run. Many experts and scientists believe that silver is one of the world’s most important commodities. Silver looks to have unparalleled investment opportunity for the future.

Silver’s unique properties, which make it ideal and essential for global industry, create a situation where there is simply no substitute. In addition, silver prices at times have been extremely volatile, making silver an attractive investment and trading vehicle.

Right now – and probably many years into the future, silver is going to be and remain a very solid investment. It doesn’t matter that the rice of silver is volatile, it only matters that the way some of the world’s leading industries use silver, there will always be a huge demand for it.

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Silver is the Most Popular Precious Metal

June 2, 2011 By 4 Comments

Silver is a precious metal that is actually a bit more scarce than some of your other metals, it is still readily available and the least expensive of all the precious metals. Mexico, Peru, the United States, Australia and Chile remain the largest silver producing countries. Sources of silver include; silver that is mined directly, silver that is mined as a by-product of gold, copper, lead and zinc mining, and silver extracted from recycled materials, primarily used photographic materials. Today, silver bullion stocks make up a significant component of silver supply.

The demand for silver is very high, as the price of silver is all over the place. No other precious metal price goes up and down as much or as quickly as silver. Silver is mainly used in three areas.

  1. Industrial Uses
  2. Jewelry and Silverware
  3. Photography.

You can narrow it down so much so to these three industries because they represent 95% of annual worlds annual silver consumption. Reason being is that that the properties in silver are very superior, which in turn makes it very useful as an industrial component, while at the same time allows it to remain one of the most sought after types of precious metals (jewelry, silverware, etc).

Industrial sectors such as imaging, electronics, jewelry, coinage, superconductivity and water purification are all in high demand of silver. Because of this factor, silver is not only sought after by individuals who want a nice piece of jewelry, but it is sought after by major companies who are looking to transform products to make our lives better.

 

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New Demands of Silver?

May 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The demand of silver is an interesting thing.  What accounts for the demand of silver has become a sought after question by a flurry of new investors heading into the market through such avenues as ETFs both short and long, as well as buying bullion from sources such as eBay and outlets that are easy to purchase single bars of silver at near spot prices.

So demand has a lot of new forces that weren’t there 30 years ago when the last major run-up in silver was observed.  Back then it was futures contracts on industrial uses and the occasional silver backed currency.  The demand for silver is looking like it’s being pushed by silver ETFs, the largest being iShares NYSE:SLV which has 1/3 of all available silver for purchase in the world. (source). If there’s a huge pullback in silver and the value of SLV drops, investors dump the shares of SLV forcing the fund to dump silver, the spiral could force the price of silver, not just the ETF to drop quickly.

That same sources reports estimates of silver industrial demand this year around 500-550 ounces down from a high of 575 last year. However this article brings up a really good point. Silver has a new growing demand. Silver used in photo-voltaic cells.

With government subsidies and a huge crop of new solar companies popping up to take advantage of homeowners that want to find savings and money anywhere they can, this may be a new big push to keep the price of silver on the up and up. That combined with the price of oil continuing to rise, may just be a savior to those bears saying industrial demand is flattening and will cause the price of silver to drop.

Of course more convincing data is needed, but we’ll definitely look into how the potential growth in new industrial and investor uses of the metal will cause the price of silver to sustain and or raise.

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