LOTTO

Silver is now up almost 10% today. Over +170% YTD. +$50 oz so far this year. $28 to $78 There are several factors involved. 1) Starting Jan 1st, China has export restrictions on silver. China is the 2nd largest producer of silver in the world. 2) Globally, silver mines are not keeping up with silver demand. 5 years in a row demand has exceeded what the mines can produce. Industry has been consuming silver that was above ground in vaults. That supply is getting tight. 3) Companies like Samsung are going direct to silver miners and signing deals to buy silver production for years into the future. They are securing supply for their electronics manufacturing, which requires silver. 4) There is no way for mining companies to increase the supply of silver. Silver is mostly a biproduct of copper, lead or zinc mining. Mining companies get maybe 1% to 2% of their revenue from silver. They are not opening new mines because of silver prices. They don't care, it is not meaningful to their revenue. 5) There are very few primary silver miners that get more than 50% of their revenue from silver. It is limited to a handful of stocks. The two that I own are Aya (AYASF) in Morocco and Silver X (AGXPF) in Peru. 6) Gold is up over 70% YTD, but silver is up over 170% YTD. Gold is a monetary metal, but it isn't really consumed. It is only used for jewelry, which can be easily recycled back into a gold bars. Silver is actually consumed by industry, into electronics and other products. And much of it cannot be recycled. It is used and those obsolete electronics are often dumped into a landfill. That silver will never be recovered. They have tried, it is not profitable to recover the tiny amounts of silver in those products. But it adds up to hundreds of millions of silver oz per year, lost forever. What does it all mean? Silver is a critical metal. It is the best conductor of electricity on the periodic table. And we don't have enough of it.