I'm writing this page primarily as a service to my friends, to whom I've pitched the case for investing in silver. After explaining for the 15th time how to buy silver, I finally decided it would be more efficient to just write down my accumulated knowledge in a web article. If other people find the information useful, then great!
Here are some links to writers who make the silver case even better than I can, as well as some other silver resources.
The best forms to own physical silver in are 100 oz bars and 90% US coin bags. 100 oz bars sell for a small premium (20-30 cents) over spot, weigh about 7 lbs each, and are easy to stack (giving you maximum density). 90% bags consist of $1000 face value of pre-1965 quarters or dimes. These coins are 90% silver, and a bag typically contains about 715 oz of actual silver. The bags weigh about 53 lbs. I buy all my physical metal from APMEX. I've had excellent dealings with them. They ship promptly, and shipping and insurance are free on orders above a certain size. There are a number of excellent online bullion dealers out there, but as always, there are less-than-excellent dealers too. Do your homework.
Now that you have the silver, where do you put it? That depends on your situation. Below a certain amount, it's not too bad to put it in a large safe deposit box. If I had a house with an alarm system (my sister works at and recommends alarm.com.) with a decent hiding place, I'd probably feel pretty comfortable keeping it there. A large home safe would be ideal. No way anyone's carrying off a safe stuffed with silver bullion. If you're storing it in your house and are still concerned, you can probably get a special rider on your homeowner or renters' insurance that will cover the bullion. The downside is, as the price of silver rises (that is the point, after all), you'd have to keep upping your coverage limits.
If you buy physical silver, how do you eventually sell it back? There's a liquid market for both 100 oz bars and 90% bags. APMEX will buy both of them back from you. Local dealers will also buy it from you (look up coin dealers in the Yellow Pages), and you will avoid the hassle of shipping it back. But they probably won't give you as good a deal as APMEX. If you're enterprising and don't mind a lot of trips to the post office, you can make out very well selling the bars on eBay. Single bars fetch excellent prices there.
Past a certain investment size ($50,000 to $100,000, depending how physically fit you are) it starts becoming just too much of a pain in the ass to deal with the physical silver yourself. There are currently a few options available to you.
But there is nothing that says you must use leverage. It is perfectly acceptable to fully fund your futures account to the level of silver represented by the contracts you intend to buy. It is impossible to go broke in this manner. Commodities, unlike stocks, cannot go to zero, and even more importantly, you cannot lose more than your initial investment. If you decide you want to use leverage, you are better off using futures options, where your downside is limited to your initial investment (however it's easy to lose 100% of that, and fast!). Investing in options is beyond the scope of this article.
My preferred way for buying large amounts of physical silver is to buy futures contracts in nearby months where the trading spreads are smallest, and indicate to the futures broker that I intend to take delivery on my contracts. They may discourage you from doing so, but if you insist, they will let you do it. To take delivery, you must have the full cash cost of the contract in your account. A 5,000 oz. contract is delivered in the form of five 1000 oz. bars (weighing about 70 lbs each). Fortunately, taking delivery does not mean they actually drop it on your doorstep. All it means is that a warehouse receipt from one of the approved COMEX silver warehouses will be delivered to your account, listing the serial numbers of the bars that you own.
Typically, you will leave the warehouse receipts with the futures broker, and they'll take care of paying the monthly storage costs out of your account. Storage costs include insurance, and are about $4 per bar, per month ($240 per contract, per year). However, for the truly paranoid (also known as "geniuses," after something really bad happens), you can indeed take your warehouse receipts to the appropriate COMEX warehouse and pick up your bars. Hopefully you have a good suspension on your car, and a friend with a shotgun. Or, if that doesn't sound appealing, Brinks can handle transportation for you. If you want to be like Bunker Hunt, you can fly your silver to Switzerland.
This article is not really about gold, but gold will benefit from the same macroeconomic trends that will benefit silver, and thus I own some. Gold is not used in industry in the same way as silver is, does not have the supply deficit situation or low above-ground stocks, but it has 5,000 years of history as money, and will maintain (at least) its purchasing power as the dollar declines. Either service mentioned above is fine for buying gold, although my preferred way to buy electronic gold would be BullionVault, which operates an extremely liquid exchange for gold bullion stored in New York, London or Zurich (my preference). I think BullionVault is an excellent way to supplement a few physically-held Krugerrands.
As I'm writing this, the shares actually trade at a premium of 9% over the net asset value of the gold and silver owned by the company. This premium is important to watch when buying CEF. I have tried my best to buy when the premium is 5% or under, but it is extremely difficult to predict what the premium will do over time. I would assume that the premium would decline if and when the silver ETF launches, but I can't guarantee it. In a hot gold/silver market, the premium could be maintained for some time. With the gold (and silver) ETF, shares are redeemable for bullion and vice versa (in large blocks only). This allows arbitrageurs to profit, which keeps the share price in-line with the bullion price. CEF does not have such a mechanism, which is why it can sport a premium (or discount). I don't consider the premium to be a reason not to buy CEF, if you determine it's the best or easiest way to own silver. The premium is only an issue because it makes this form of buying silver more expensive than other ways. However, in the long run, that very well may be compensated for by another factor I discuss in the next paragraph.
In my opinion, buying CEF is equivalent to owning physical bullion, without the storage and safety problems. However, there's another benefit to owning CEF which makes it even more attractive than physical bullion. In its infinite wisdom, the U.S. Congress has decided that gold and silver bullion is a "collectible." It is therefore not covered by the preferential 15% long-term capital gains rate. Instead, it is taxed at a 28% rate for long-term gains. This is equally true of physical bullion and the ETFs. Lobbying may eventually change this, but I wouldn't count on it. CEF, on the other hand, should be eligible for the 15% capital gains rate. However, because CEF is considered a "passive foreign investment company" (PFIC), it is normally taxed at very onerous rates! Fortunately, by filling out tax form 8621, and making the qualified electing fund (QEF) election, CEF should qualify to be a QEF. There is a document on their web site which addresses their PFIC/QEF status in detail. You must file this form in every year which you own the shares (outside an IRA or other tax-protected account). In a taxable account, acheiving a 15% rate vs. a 28% rate makes a big difference, and in my opinion fully makes up for the risk associated with buying at a premium, assuming you only intend to sell at much higher prices. However, because of the complications inherent in investing in PFICs, I highly recommend you speak to an accountant when buying CEF in a taxable account. It is possible to be charged up to a $10,000 dollar penalty from the IRS if you don't file form 8621 when you are supposed to!
The gold ETF (GLD) has been phenomenally successful since its launch, pulling in over $6 billion in assets. Many believe that ETF buying has put significant upward pressure on the gold price over the last several years. I believe that, and I believe that the silver ETF, should it be approved, will have an even more explosive effect on the silver price, given that the silver market is an order of magnitude smaller than the gold market. If the silver ETF were to acquire capital to its maximum current allowed size of 130 million oz., that would be less than $2 billion at current silver prices. But in practice, I don't think there's any possible way the ETF can accumulate that much silver at such a low price. That much cheap silver simply doesn't exist! In my opinion, launching the silver ETF is going to be the equivalent of unleashing a new Bunker Hunt into the silver market (a market which today is far smaller than at the time the Hunt bros. were operating). For this reason, I do not think it's reasonable to wait until the ETF is available to start buying silver, because that's what the general investing public will be doing. Better to invest in CEF or futures, and then switch into the ETF if and when it launches. Silver has run up significantly in the last month. At least some of this is due to ETF anticipation. When it launches, the ETF will be the best way to own silver in a tax-advantaged (IRA) account, because the fact that its gains are taxed at 28% is irrelevant in such an account.
Of these, I own good sized positions in SLW, SSRI and PAAS. I'll briefly give my reasons below.
Silver Standard owns a nicely diversified portfolio of silver properties giving it the largest primary silver resources of any company. Its properties are for the most part located in politically safe areas. Currently they are not operating or building any mines. They are waiting for higher prices, at which point they can build mines or flip the properties to someone else with the capital to do so. SSRI effectively represents an open-ended call option on the price of silver. SSRI also holds a good portion of their cash in silver bullion -- my kind of management!
Pan American Silver is probably the best-managed primary silver producer out there. Bill Fleckenstein, whom I respect highly, is a director. My only caveat is that a large portion of their silver output comes from Peru, and may be subject to political risk if Humala is elected, however, Humala seems to be softening his rhetoric recently. I think it's something to keep tabs on, but not something to scare you away from the stock completely.
Finally, Silver Wheaton is a different animal entirely. They call themselves a mining company, but they don't actually mine any silver or own any silver properties. What they actually own (and seek to buy) are streams of silver production from non-primary silver producers (like gold and zinc miners) who want or need to hedge the price on their future silver production. They have long-term contracts (15-20 years) to buy silver production at a fixed price of under $5/oz. They sell this silver on the open market throughout the quarter as they receive it. Because of this unique business model, operating costs are extremely low -- the company has only five employees. Thus, SLW represents a pure leveraged bet on the long-term price of silver. However, note that the leverage factor will naturally decrease as the price of silver goes higher.
There are maybe 20-40 smaller silver mining companies out there as well. Many of these companies do not yet trade on American exchanges (most are based in Canada and trade either on the TSX or the Toronto Venture exchange). The Silver Strategies web site has a larger list and a nice comparison chart that ranks the larger of these companies in several different ways. I have a number of smaller positions in some of the smaller silver companies, and I think that a basket approach, with some due diligence, is the right one to take here. A rising tide will lift all boats. Look for companies with good properties and good (experienced) management that are making consistent progress towards actually operating a mine. Also look for companies that provide you with a low cost of silver in the ground (market cap divided by ounces of reserves or resources).
As I noted above, many of the smaller silver companies don't trade on American exchanges. That makes them difficult to buy using most online brokers. The broker I use is called Interactive Brokers. This broker is really designed for active traders, so the trading interface is this really whiz-bang Java app which is pretty confusing to use at first. However, once you learn it, it's pretty intuitive and efficient to use, and their commissions are rock-bottom. You can also trade the CBOT e-mini silver futures (1000 oz. per contract) through the same interface, but you can't take delivery of silver contracts through IB.
Futures trading is treated differently than stock trading. All open positions are always "marked to market" at the end of each trading year, and the net cash gains for the year are taxed at a blended rate of 60% long-term and 40% short-term. This is a better rate than the 28% collectibles rate, but remember, you have to pay taxes every year! There's no such thing as an unrealized gain in a futures account (for tax purposes). That means it's difficult to just keep rolling over futures contracts for their full value (because you will owe tax on the accumulated gain every year). This can lead to getting into significant hot water when things get volatile (to the down side) -- you could potentially owe more tax then your position is now worth! This is why I recommend the safer approach of taking delivery on front-month futures contracts. Warehouse receipts are subject to the 28% bullion rate, and are not marked to market at the end of each year. You only pay tax when you sell.
The Central Fund of Canada is in the unique position of being the only way I know of to invest taxable funds in bullion at a 15% long term rate. This is not likely to change unless the tax laws do (don't hold your breath). The downside is that only 50% of your money goes into silver (the other 50% is in gold). If you're really afraid of filling out the tax form every year, then buy CEF in an IRA. But trust me, the form is really not that difficult to fill out. You just have to remember to do it!
Some people might point out that you could dribble out silver bars on eBay, and the government would never know that you had sold your silver. I certainly would not endorse such a strategy. Be happy with your gains, pay your taxes, and lobby to change the tax code. In my humble opinion, gold (and maybe silver too) should be considered like money, and shouldn't be subject to capital gains tax at all.
Full disclosure:
I own positions in the following stocks which were discussed: CEF, SLW, SSRI, PAAS.
None of the above represents a solicitation to buy or sell securities or constitutes
investment advice.