Silver crowd shrinks

This past weekend (Oct. 25-26) there were two major financial conferences for those interested in precious metal – the New Orleans Investment Conference in Louisiana and Silver Summit in Spokane, Wash..

I attended and gave a presentation at the Silver Summit as the financial incentives offered were more attractive.

Because both events were held at the same time, some speakers who would normally attend both were only able to appear at one of them. Some went to New Orleans and some to Spokane. The New Orleans event has more exhibitors and speakers and covers a wider range of subjects. As you might suspect, Silver Summit focuses on silver, from mining through fabrication and marketing.

The number of exhibitors and attendees at Silver Summit was well below that of prior years, more than could be attributed to some people who might have gone to New Orleans.

A good number of the speakers at Silver Summit represented mining companies, primarily those who derive most of their revenues from silver output. However, there were several high-caliber speakers covering the state of the silver market and other related subjects. Here are some insights offered:

Jeffrey Christian (CPM Group) – Silver pricing influence is shifting to Asia; 90 percent of the output of primary silver producing mines (which themselves contribute 28 percent of all newly mined silver) have cash costs of production below $13 per ounce of silver; pricing power is well dispersed.

Bob Moriarty (321.gold.com) – Commodity exchanges are not for the trading of the commodity, instead they are for establishing prices of the commodity; the greatest financial risk is the government; we’re going to see changes in the financial system like you never dreamed.

Michael A. Berry (Discovery Investing) – The current greatest concern of the Federal Reserve is interest rate risks; the Fed has consulted with me three times this year on this subject; by its nature, Bitcoin is anti-government.

David Morgan (The Morgan Report, Silver-Investor.com) – The way to be sure that you are able to sell your silver in any market is to spend it; the best investment you can make today is in yourself.

Jeff Berwick (Dollar Vigilante) – the decline in attendance at Silver Summit is an indicator that now is the time to be buying gold and silver; all currencies will fail within two to three years, with the yen possibly being the first as soon as two to three months, followed by the euro; as other currencies fail, a long line of people will switch to the U.S. dollar, which will eventually prove to be the wrong move; predicted that eventually it will not be possible to purchase gold or silver with any government currency; with weak currencies in Argentina and Venezuela, Bitcoin is growing in use there; predicted that U.S. stock markets will go down in real terms in one to two years but the indices will reach new highs; people who do not own silver already will never want to buy silver until it is too late to be able to do so; everyone will suffer financially in the next few years so that ones who will do the best will be those who minimize their losses.

Bo Polny (Gold 2020 Forecast LLC) – Predicted $50 silver and $2,000 gold by June 2015.

At this year’s Silver Summit, I received several compliments for my presentation last year titled, “Consumer Protection Tips When Buying Or Selling Physical Precious Metals.”

My program this year was titled, “Why You Should Own Some Bullion-Priced Physical Silver.” The speech this year was created as a basic presentation to the general public, where attendees at the Silver Summit already grasped much of the information provided.

If any reader desires a copy of either of these two PowerPoint presentations, just send me an email. My address is path@libertycoinservice.com. However, I may be slow to respond until towards the end of next week as I will be at the Baltimore show this weekend and tied up with other commitments early next week.

Patrick A. Heller was the American Numismatic Association 2012 Harry Forman Numismatic Dealer of the Year Award winner. He owns Liberty Coin Service in Lansing, Mich., and writes “Liberty’s Outlook,” a monthly newsletter on rare coins and precious metals subjects. Past newsletter issues can be viewed at http://www.libertycoinservice.com. Other commentaries are available at Coin Week (http://www.coinweek.com and http://www.coininfo.com). He also writes a bi-monthly column on collectibles for “The Greater Lansing Business Monthly” (http://www.lansingbusinessmonthly.com/articles/department-columns). His radio show “Things You ‘Know’ That Just Aren’t So, And Important News You Need To Know” can be heard at 8:45 a.m. Wednesday and Friday mornings on 1320-AM WILS in Lansing (which streams live and becomes part of the audio and text archives posted at http://www.1320wils.com).