I thought the federal government can regulate interstate commerce? If speculators are causing the rise/fall of a commodity that effects the lives of the citizenry and causes swings in the economy, then, by the power of the constitution, it does have that power. Sorry to burst your bubble.

1) If they did, I might agree with you, but the vast majority of disinterested studies have concluded the opposite. For every buyer, a seller and all that.

2) If they do, such speculation simply moves offshore and has no effect on worldwide commodity prices. [and can make local ones even more volatile, and likely most certainly will as supply moves offshore to where it can be sold for the highest profit margin.]

Sorry to burst any further bubbles.

Am I misreading you, or are you saying that speculation does not cause bubbles?

Am I wrong in thinking that silver(and even gold) are basically following simlar to the market in general(sp500 etc..) now? If so, fow how long will this trend continue?

Gold and silver can correlate with the euro or equities risk on risk off from time to time but dont confuse them together. Just google gold to dow ratio graph for the last ten years.

The answer to your first question is yes, you are wrong. So there is no answer to your second question. Why, you say, am I wrong? Well it seems I owe you an explanation of some sort.

Silver's correlation to the market overall is anywhere from 0.80 to -0.35 over a five year period. Highest correlation of this period was in early 2010. Lows in the summer of 2008. Currently 0.35.

So in general there is currently a positive correlation, but it is not strong enough to generalize what you have.

Gold and silver are correlated at roughly 0.90 as a longer term norm, but now have spread a bit to 0.80 after dipping down to 0.70 (April-Late Summer 2010).

Over longer periods, greater swings of correlation have occurred.

In baseball cards and thinly traded micro-caps, yes, as part of a conflation of many issues starting with faddish-like herd behavior among several others.

For hugely liquid commodities traded worldwide like oil, no.

Does speculation cause crashes, or only prices to rise? As more and more people enter the market to sell or buy goods, the prices will necessarily change.

If demand/supply changes dramatically while supply/demand is constant, you will get bubble/crash-like behavior by definition - speculation doesn't need to enter into it.

I find the entire discussion of 'speculation' tedious, as the oil trader for Soros or MS or Rich is called a 'speculator' when in reality he is probably one of the sharpest 'investors' of that commodity in the world.
Can one speculate over long periods of time?
Can one 'invest' for a day? If you think WMT is 10 pts undervalued and plan to hold it for a while until it gets there, and it gets there tomorrow, why wouldn't you sell and re-allocate? Etc.

Getting closer...is capitulation coming this week? Will HFs be liquidating to pay off June withdrawals? Should be exciting...

I agree that speculation doesn't necessarily have to enter the picture, but isn't it frequently the case that dramatic changes in demand are a result of people watching price history and purchasing with the expectation that the trend will continue? Then you get the self-validating feedback loop that Soros calls "reflexivity" and suddenly you're in bubble territory.

weeeee, 20s here we come!

I was waiting for silver to hit $32 before buying some to bring down my average cost. Are there reasons for me to wait for it to go below $32?

1 reason would be that 'bringing down your average cost' is not a good reason to buy in and of itself.

Your decision should be based on the current and your estimated future prices of silver...the price you bought silver for in the past should not be a factor at all.

Correct. I'm long silver

Unfortunately, I don't have trust in the USD, so once I cashed out my poker funds after BF, I went and immediately parked a chunk of it on silver (the real stuff) at $48/ounce - please don't berate me.

However, I'm still confident in silver and want to get my average cost down to ~$40, so I'm waiting for it to hit $32 before making another purchase.

Advice would be greatly appreciated.

talk about the double whammy! ouch

Yes.

The amount of aggression in selling vs buying in the SI futures
since 5/30 is -12,000 contracts vs the 1st swing low on 5/6 @ -4K contracts.

It's something I've been watching, while it doesn't provide a certain outcome it does increase the probability that a "thin"
area between 31.000 and 32.340 will be tested.

Whether or not price is rejected THROUGH that area or OFF that area no one knows.

The area to watch below is 30.8 down through 28.385.

There is no rush to buy silver. The 1 minute chart has to turn before the 5 minute, before the hourly, before the daily.

No one in here is intraday trading silver futures I would imagine. You'll be much better off buying the green upticks than fading the red down ticks.

as a side note I recommend APMEX for buying and selling physical. I've bought and sold ~280lbs of bulk silver coins from them (1 buy 1 sell).

They paid me my monies, had no issue, except the bitch of it was packaging it up in registered mail boxes (also you have to pay for shipping back to them, but not to you, cost about 1K but took a lot of time and frustration and obv dealing with the post office...

).

GL.

PS The aggressive selling seen in silver is the opposite in gold. Not quite as aggressive but the buying is there.
Certainly this doesn't guarantee you to have a winning trade long gold, just an observation from the futures market

Long silver end of June imo.

Frequently? No. I'd say the opposite - rarely so.

I'd also say virtually everyone - value, growth, n00b, or other investor purchases things on an upwards chart with expectation it will continue...or they wouldn't buy it. How many people do you know that actually think they can pick the bottom/turning point? I'd say less than 1% and I invest with lots of people who are as good as anyone in the world at what they do.

A lot of 'analysis' of 'speculation' is circular logic at the core. And without 'speculators' there'd be no one to hedge with. Just hedgers and no one [or almost so] on the other side.

I'm just a budding value investor but to me I'm not trying to pick the bottom turning point, if something has been eating **** for a while and gets to a price I think is way too cheap I'll buy it. I'm not expecting to exactly nail the bottom, I'm just expecting it to trade at a price more in line with its intrinsic value later.

Examples: CSCO and DSX (and for an example thats gone much worse so far, GNK), all of which I'm long. I'm not trying to pick a bottom (and if I was I'd be doing a not very good job so far), I'm just trying to buy things that I think are cheap cause the market hates em, because by and large you're right and people don't want to buy stuff thats dont nothing but go down in recent memory. Once a stock/sector has just been performing ****ty or excellent for a little while, people just start getting way too scared/optimistic.

Do you know why DSX is being predicted to have -7.40% earnings growth next 5 years? Their numbers look pretty good in the past.

Too much supply not enough demand

Anyone know of a good online retailer that sells 90% junk silver at or below spot?

Tulving.com, $1.20-$1.10 below spot for 90% bags.
$1000 bag min

Anywhere to get a $100 bag below spot?

That is their buying price.

They are selling for spot-20cents

Not off the top of my head.

Indeed, mi faulto, $0.20 under spot.