Silver ETF Holdings

Silver ETFs continue to experience inflows, as gold ETFs experience outflows.

How To Buy Gold

How to Buy Silver

Silver EFT Holdings Increase.

Holdings in silver ETFs continue to rise as holdings in gold ETFs decline.

Last week gold holdings in ETFs fell 0.54 million ounces, while silver ETF holdings rose 2.4 million ounces.

This divergent trend started with the price drop in gold and silver in early 2013. Since then gold ETFs have continued to experience outflows, while silver ETFs have experienced inflows.

Silver ETF Accumulation

The increased inflows to Silver ETFs continue and reflect the growing physical investment demand seen recently at the United States, Perth and Canadian mints.

As the silver price has dropped in recent weeks, physical buying has accelerated.

Silver ETFs now hold nearly 900 million ounces of silver which is almost the equivalent of the the entire 2013 silver supply of 978 million ounces and greater than the 819 million ounces of silver mined in 2013.

Gold ETF Outflows

Gold ETFs now hold less than 70 million ounces of gold, down from a peak of over 100 million ounces in late 2012/early 2013.

In contrast, since late 2012 there has been an increase in the amount of gold moving from west to east, increased demand from Russian and Chinese central banks and increased physical delivery at the Shanghai Gold Exchange.

Do ETFs Faciliate Gold and Silver Manipulation?

By purchasing gold or silver via ETFs, you could be enabling manipulation as the custodians for many of the ETF’s including the largest ones SLV and GLD are the bullion banks, JPMorganChase and HSBC Bank USA, N.A., respectively.

Doctor Paul Craig Robert, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administraion and James Rickards, author of “The Death of Money” and “Currency Wars”, suspect that much of the delivery of physical gold done recently on the London Bullion Market Association Exchange (LBMA) has been accomplished via “borrowing” other clients’ gold held by the bullion banks and looting the gold trusts such as the ETF GLD for which JPMorganChase acts as custodian.

While there is some convenience in holding your silver and gold in ETFs, keep in mind these are financial instruments that do not allow you to take delivery of your metals, other than in extremely large amounts.

In addition, in the event of a stock market crash, markets may be closed precisely during the time you would want access to your precious metals.

If you don’t want to hold physical metals personally, many companies offer insured vaulted programs that allocate gold and silver in your name outside the banking system.

Here are the charts:

Weekly ETF Silver Holdings 2012-2014

Silver ETF holdings continue to rise.

Weekly ETF Silver Holdings 2010-2014

The Silver ETFs have seen a steady accumulation over the past few years.

Weekly ETF Gold Holdings 2012-2014

Outflows from Gold ETF have continued the past two years.

Weekly ETF Gold Holdings 2010-2014

Gold ETF Holdings have fallen sharply during the past two years.