Ride, ride, ride the wild surf

I couldn’t get the to Kitco website this morning.

Either my Internet connection wasn’t working properly, or an awful lot of people are checking it out in the wake of gold reaching nearly $1,400 a troy ounce yesterday and silver surpassing $26.

I figure it is the latter possibility because I can reach other websites that I check on routinely.

Since silver hasn’t been this high since Christmas 1979, perhaps it is appropriate to address what happened then.

Silver was trading at right around $11 on Labor Day and by New Year’s was at $29.05. That was a heck of a spurt higher.

We didn’t know at the time this occurred the extent to which the Hunt Brothers were involved, but we were about to find out.

The first silver close of 1980 was $38.85, a one-day pop higher of nearly $10, or 33 percent.

Silver’s closing high of $48.70 was reached Jan. 17. It traded as high as $50 Jan. 21 and that is the number we have cited for many years because it is a nice round, stunning figure.

Silver rose by a factor of 4.5 times in about 4.5 months. Then the wheels fell off and it dropped to $10.80 on March 27, 1980, a round trip that occurred in a short seven months. The enforced unwinding of the Hunt positions speeded the fall.

It was wild. It made headlines. If it gets giddy again, don’t forget to take some profits. Don't take that one last ride.