January 29, 2006
there is only one way to have a silver etf. one with a limited number of shares, otherwise, the market is so small that another hunt ordeal may well be in the offing.
if people want to own silver they can buy the physical and pay a nominal storage cost, or keep it somewhere. an etf will only create a venue for someone or a group to move in and try to control the market by creating a shortage.
full disclosure: my family and myself own physical silver, and invest in gold and silver stocks. i personally do not want a fiasco on our hands such as with the hunt brothers, where the market spikes stratospherically high and then crashes. the market the way it is currently will let water seek its own level. since silver is an industrial metal there may well be a run on the metal to lock in prices and create a market situation which you may have to more closely monitor than the gold etf. as you know silver is a byproduct of other mineral production. very few pure silver mines.