RESOURCES & STOCKS

Current supply and demand situation

The silver sector has been in deficit for more than 17 years.
Altogether more than 1.6 billion ounces were taken away from the stocks ever since.
The reason for this development is the fact that the annual consumption is about 100 to 150 million ounces higher than the annual production.
However, the deficit was suppressed by reducing the stocks.
But the current situation is sharpening more and more because the worldwide stocks are nearly entirely consumed.
That’s why one can expect increasing prices for silver because of the following reasons:

- permanent increasing fields of application for the white metal
- increasing industrial demand
And most essentially:
- worldwide stock reserves are nearly completely exhausted for the first time in history

Collapase of stocks

After World War Two the worldwide silver stocks counted 10 billion ounces.
The US government possessed alone 4 billion of these 10 billion ounces!
Then the silver stocks melted down to less than one billion ounces, which meant a decrease of more than 90 percent! This development took place around the turn of the millenium (years 1999/2000).
Today there are no stocks left worth mentioning because of the further diminishing supply in the following years.  
It is now a hundred years that US government doesn’t possess any own bullion, since they were used for the production of the “American Eagle”.

These both cubes might be a surprise for you as it is to be seen that we have a lot less silver immediately available than gold.
Theodore Butler, a famous silver expert, proceeds on the assumption that about 5 billion ounces of gold in the form of bullion, coins and jewelry are today available on the planet,
against only 1 billion ounces of silver. It’s true that about 40 billion ounces of silver became produced and found in the course of history, but this amount got nearly completely consumed and has finally disappeared on garbage dumps and dispersed in the sea.
Nobody can exactely say how much of it is still left, but it’s probably less available silver than gold in fact.
Gold doesn’t get consumed and all the gold ever to be found in history is still there today. Furthermore the existing amount of gold increases about 2000 tons every year.
It’s true that around 20 000 tons of silver get produced by industry every year, but this huge amount becomes entirely used-up and the existing stocks decrease since many years.

It is estimated that about 250 000 tons of silver still lie dormant in the earth which are worth being produced to today’s current prices.This signifies that there’s no silver left in about 10 years if strongly increased prices don’t lead to a different consumer and exploration behavior.