SLV Database 5 - Dark Bullion

Dark, I'm feeling Dark. Go ahead, bite me.

This is the fifth major article in the series of SLV bar list data analysis. I've become so obsessed with this bizarre niche topic that between the pills and the lingering after-effects of the last round of mystery drinks at GM's country mansion, not an hour goes by where my reprehensible soul* is not pondering what mysteries can next be pulled from the darkness of the void.

The concept of dark bullion was first written about in analysis #2 where it was noticed from the SLV data that some of the bars appearing as 'new' inventory had actually been listed some time prior. In analysis #3 and #4, we progressed the investigation and now we know that bars can go dark and resurface, sometimes reappearing in different vaults (and we can track their movement from London to Australia, for example). Hidden, juicy secrets! Exactly what are those bars are doing when they are not represented on an ETF's bar list? While we will never know, at least we can describe what we can't see!!

Let's start with a premise. The "Dark Inventory" concept in commodities is not a new one ¹ but it is fair to say the area is difficult to study because of the general lack of quality information. However, the silver and gold inventories provide an interesting opportunity to track inventory because (conveniently) each bar has a serial number. So ... what is available to find, and how do we find it?

Catching up on SLV and GLD (and other observations)

I was hijacked by my day job for about two months! During that time however I managed to keep track of most of the conversations going on. If only I could have bought shares in 'opinions about what gold is doing', for this is surely reaching into bubble territory. I don't want to add to that, rather just bring a few brief updates from the bar lists study corner - these are the low hanging fruit while I get myself reorientated.

Database confirms Max Keiser Guest statement (updated x 2)

Untitled

The biggest challenge of the BullionBars database is knowing what questions to ask of the data warehouse; at any given time there are a number of research streams in progress - but these do take time to build and mature. The biggest advantage (of having a huge chunk of data there) is the ability to run very quick random checks on anything bar-related. Today, Screwtape Files bolsters support for a particular story. Brought to my attention by Bron Suchecki this morning was a Max Keiser interview where guest Dominic Frisby makes a comment regarding Chinese gold bars (ref 20:30-21:15):

Dominic Frisby, Author/Writer

(edited for clarity) "... I had dinner about a year or two ago with the head of Gold at HSBC and one of the things that he described — and most of the world's gold goes through HSBC, at some stage — looking at the gold in his vault ... despite the fact that China is the biggest producer - he never sees bars, with Chinese stamps on them ..."

THIS OBSERVATION IS SUPPORTED BY THE DATA WE HAVE ON RECORD.

SLV Database 4

Thanks again for everyone’s positive comments on my research. This article is installment number 4 in a series and builds on earlier work.  I’ve also written another static snapshot to describe more about the data processing, for anyone interested (a separate write-up, here).

Let’s get straight to the point. The conclusion from my current round of database analysis is that some silver bars currently held in the GoldMoney and BullionVault funds, used to exist in SLV, the percentages are approximately 1 % and 7.8 % (of their LONDON holdings) respectively. As with SLV Database 3, we're calling these signature matches 'Vault Jumpers' because they appear to move between the funds. The hard data is in spread sheet format, with the detailed analysis described in a separate sub-article, here. For a discussion of how the conclusion was reached, and some of the implications, please read on ...

Got any Leased Bars?

Recently my database work hit a critical threshold and I'm working through how to present these results as well as re-checking the underlying data. I wasn't ready for the volume of data and it's only been recently that I've gotten a handle on it. The silver database records currently have over 104 millions rows (and 27 million for gold) - most of that is repeated information but it is a lot of data points to manage and index.

When to buy silver?

One of the more enjoyable rewards of writing for this blog, aside from the hedonistic pleasures of being GM Jenkins' official beard trimmer, is that I (and the others) often get nice emails from readers. Sometimes they're just to say, 'hi', or to say thanks for an article they liked. Sometimes they expand on points raised on the blog, or they ask for advice. I always do my best to reply to each one. But one common theme that comes up again and again is 'when should I buy gold/silver?' 'What's a good entry point?' Or, occasionally, 'Should I be selling?'

Of course the only truly honest answer to such a question is, 'Dear X. No idea, Guv. Yours, JdA.' That said, I also often think I could probably write 5,000 words on the subject without breaking sweat. It's such a big question, and one that all our readers and contributors probably ask themselves at least once a day.

I received one of these emails last week and so - rather than just giving my opinion - I thought it might be interesting for Screwtape to do its first ever joint post. So today five of us will be setting out our brief thoughts on this most pertinent and popular of topics. We all prepared our answers independently, with absolutely no collusion, to see what the results might be...

When should I buy silver?

Robert Leroy Parker: My non-expert opinion says not right now. In fact, imo, right now is the time to be exiting your silver positions in preparation for the next economic wave of catastrophe. The collapse of Bear Stearns was a 5-month leading indicator to the far more devastating collapse of Lehman Brothers. MF Global collapsed at the end of October, so if history rhymes, we’re getting closer and closer to the next Wall Street blow up. The MF Global debauchery continues to get worse as noted in the NY Times last week. How much worse will the next casino implosion be? On a scale of “not so bad” to “epic disaster,” my money is on “the Mayans were right.”

Anybody that has bought and held silver before mid 2010, whether it be ETFs or physical bullion, has done very well. At worst, you’re near a double with silver at $34/oz. You would have outperformed the S&P by 60% if not much more. However, anyone that bought silver pre-Bear Stearns had to sit through a greater than 50% fall in 2008. The volatility of silver is a sight to behold, and from my view, it’s best to watch from afar, especially when the criminals running Wall Street and Washington D.C. remain in power.

I’m sure many will disagree with this assessment, and will point to silver bullion’s lack of counterparty risk as an advantage against the system. And while I would agree with you in a different era, I don’t think it applies to our current situation. Unlike gold, silver is primarily an industrial commodity; a deflationary wave of sufficient force will drastically reduce both demand and price (e.g. 2008). I expect gold to suffer a similar massive price drop if such an event should occur, but there is a little thing called freegold that keeps my gold close to my chest. Perhaps some will point to a future of bimetallism, but that is unrealistic in my opinion. The return of silver specie would vastly encumber industry, and it is simply not necessary to have two metals performing the same function, whatever that function turns out to be.

Bimetallism is an interesting subject however, so here are a couple of Milton Freidman papers on the subject that you may enjoy on your spare time: The Crime of 1873 and Bimetallism Revisited.

To conclude: When to buy silver? Imo, it will be a good time to consider buying silver when the ashes of Wall Street have finally settled. When the IMFS is no longer in a state of vast uncertainty, silver fundamentals will be far easier to analyze, and issues such as peak supply will come into focus. Currently, demand for silver as a monetary commodity makes silver a hazy investment, but I expect the situation to clear up within a year or two.

Louis Cypher: This is going to be quick and dirty: TA method: magic 8 ball, chicken bones and human entrails.

Looks to me like Silver is rolling over, and I expect it to drop tomorrow [written Monday evening - Ed.] as will most commodities. I expect a choppy Wednesday. Thursday and Friday are make or break.

If it drops I will use palladium as the windsock to judge the bottom. I expect palladium to bottom out at $675-650 and that will signal the end of the plunge across all commodities. $650 absolute, absolute bottom for palladium.

Warren James: In a nutshell, it depends what your goals are. If you want price exposure (because you believe you can increase your cash holdings by being in the silver game) then an ETF is your best bet - it's easy to use and liquidate, and the premiums are low. I have no trouble recommending SLV because all evidence shows me that they do indeed have silver in the vault! In fact, I recommend it because it's not PSLV (which has a premium jumping all around the place ... gave a listen to this guy, who basically echoes my sentiment - don't take his advice, but do observe his growing realisation about Sprott's fund; p.s. drugs are bad).

If you want to buy silver because you think it's a hedge against the global financial insanity taking place, then you're probably better off holding the metal yourself. But bear in mind that each time you transact in physical, you're paying a small premium to the dealer each time you buy, and each time you sell, which means that with short term trades on physical stuff, you're losing out a little with each trade (that's how the bullion dealers make their money), i.e. if you're chasing the price on short term gains then you may as well be trading an ETF.

So like any investment, it's purely an assessment of risk - what's acceptable to you and what's not. I personally am of the opinion that silver will continue to be volatile - mostly because I see that a pump is occurring ... from my research there appears to be no real shortage of silver, despite the many stories (and talking bears) ... and the big traders are using this to their advantage to skin the little people. The two silver corrections of 2011 personally made my nose bleed although I gained overall. I have realised that for my own purposes (of long-term wealth preservation) I am probably better off buying gold. If I was after quick cash then I would have done just as well (if not better than silver) with Jeanne's recommendation of buying Lloyds TSB (article link).

So, once you've done an honest assessment of (1) your personal investment goals, (2) your risk appetite and (3) your liquidity needs, then the rest of the answers are just a matter of putting in solid research and finding the guys who know their stuff (recommended link). For bullion purchasing, I recommend the Dollar Cost Averaging strategy - works nicely. For trading the spot price, I recommend reading GM Jenkins's weekly charts and paying attention to MACD and RSI. My recent strategy involved buying a big bunch of Silver ETF after the price plummeted dramatically. The strategy worked (for $ gain), which lent some confirmation bias to the idea of buying when there is blood in the streets.

Following from that, if you're actively trading the silver price then the recent $26/ounce was a gift. If you believe, like I do, that there are agents out there with an active interest of gunning the silver price up and ramming it down every four months, (and missed the recent one) then around about April or May you should have another opportunity shortly so keep your powder dry (or you could chase the pump). Some more hints to this timing including watching the premium action on PSLV, as well as the intensity of silver rumours - yes, I'm watching the strategic placement of silver memes in the social media, and using this as a leading indicator (go figure).

PS: I worked really hard to trump GM's cougar-on-coke analogy, but couldn't.

Jeanne d'Arc: I'm not a buyer at the moment - I'm a seller. I just sold a tranche from the silver stash I picked up recently at $26 - 28. If the price goes up, I'll sell another tranche, and so on. The final tranche will be sold hopefully just before silver inevitably crashes again or if (if) it hits $40 - whichever happens first. If the price goes down, I'll hold as I doubt it will crash far below my cost average, and my profits from selling the other tranches will cover any losses if it does. I will not buy silver priced above $30 for many years, as even this level is above the post-2009 trend line.

I'm something of a bête noire to the silverogosphere (perceptive regular readers may have picked up on this) - I trade silver to (hopefully) make a quid or two, and I don't have the slightest emotional attachment to it. It's not money, and it isn't going to be. I ditched it like a stone in April 2011 when the RSI went mental, and my only mistake was then getting back in too early, which cost me all my April profits (silly JdA).

As for all stocks, commodities, bonds, whatever, the decision about if/when to buy depends on (a) your planned holding time, (b) your risk appetite (and, linked to this, the scale of your proposed investment), and (c) the opportunity cost from not using your money to buy something else.

For (a), I don't think now's the time to be thinking too long term. If Greece exits the Euro, which it still may, then there will be a 2008-style crash, no question. The recovery may in fact be swift, but for a time money will pour into the dollar and you can say hello to $22 silver before you can mutter "I think I'd better log into my trading account". That's when you should buy.

Conversely, Mr Bernanke announcing QE III would give silver a lovely boost, certainly, but the same can be said for all stocks and commodities and frankly I think the upside is going to be greater for them than silver. But if you are thinking long term, and have the stomach to live through several silver crashes, then you could buy now. It's not at a crazy price, and there could be some nice upside left. But that brings us to (c) - what is the realistic upside for silver compared to other choices? My deliberately polemic article on silver vs. banking shares was essentially all about this opportunity cost. Where is the smart money going now?

But if you do really want to buy some silver, then the answer's pretty simple in my book. Do what the successful traders do. Be patient. Wait for the next crash. For silver, you can almost guarantee that you'll get one within 12 months (more likely six). Wait till the heart-ripping plunge is over, and for the dead-cat bounce to finish, and then buy. In the meantime, if you can't sit on your hands, then use your trading account to buy other things that have just been punished and then sell on their dead cat bounces, so that you can have more money with which you can buy your beloved silver when the time comes.

If you must.

Grundlemaster Jenkins: Though my contract explicitly states I'm obliged to write only one post per week, I have agreed to briefly contribute to this symposium in exchange for a small sack of adderalls that JdA keeps in her purse.

When should one buy silver? Right now! I arrived at this conclusion through a proprietary algorithm it took me several years to develop, which involves Markov chains, Bessel functions, Fourier-Stieltjes transforms of spherical harmonics, and the Quadratic Formula. But since I've heard that silver investors aren't the smartest lot, I'll explain my rationale using a somewhat simpler measure [don't lose your audience, GM... Ed.].

When was the last time silver traded flat for 15 straight trading days (I'll define flat as +/- 2% of an average value)? If you increase the range (percentage-wise) a bit, you'd have to go back to when silver traded between $17.50 and $19.25 throughout the summer of 2010, after which it did the straight shot to $30. The other two times in the recent past that silver traded flat for an extended period (though fewer than 15 days) was December 2010 and October 2009 (and check out the RSI during those periods: very similar to the action now). In December 2010 it popped up to close the year, and in October 2009, though it sold off ~8%, that only lasted 6 days, followed by a lightning fast 20% jump to its yearly high.

So, in short, if you wait, you might miss a strong move up, and even if you're lucky and it rolls over, you may not have a lot of time to get in at a lower price anyway. As I wrote in my post below, I don't see another waterfall correction in the works, so start building your position.

[Please consult your medical professional before taking my advice, as side effects could include dizziness, high blood pressure, glaucoma, and loose stools. This is silver after all].

Conclusion

To finish, let me point out that all of the above are just personal opinions, philosophies and rants. It is not investment advice (please read our disclaimer at the bottom of the page if unsure about this). In fact, it is the opposite of investment advice: this is a quick and simple exercise to show that there's no such thing as a guru who knows it all, who has privileged insight into the future, or who can painlessly guide you onto the path to fabulous wealth. Ask five blog contributors, and you'll get at least six opinions.

Sadly, the opposite is all-too-often true, and blindly following those who claim 'to know' will send you to the poor-house. So perhaps 'no idea, Guv.' is actually by far the best investment advice anyone could ever give...

What's the real premium for bulk silver purchases?

Strewth, cobber, the controversy surrounding premiums for bulk buys of silver continues to rumble on.

The basic premise was that the seriously wealthy would face huge premiums of up to 30% if they wanted to buy silver in large quantities. This figure is not as random as it might appear: it first started doing the rounds when Sprott's PSLV hit a premium of above 30% (peaking at 35% before his secondary offering on 18 January). In other words, such an extraordinary premium had to be justified in the silverogosphere by grounding it in fundamentals, viz. such an astonishing premium must imply a huge shortage in the silver supply.

This shoddy thinking reached its glorious nadir in Zero Hedge's abysmal pump of PSLV, as discussed here by Screwtape's Brian O'Flanogan; a number of commenters also waded in to patiently add to the debunking.

If that wasn't enough, Sprott's second issue caused the premium to collapse to 6%. This really should have been the death-knell for one of the most ludicrous of all the silver memes floating around on t'internet. I mean, if a premium of 35% implies a shortage, then presumably one of 6% implies a sudden glut in supply? Which would mean that Sprott's sudden large purchase of silver had somehow increased supply! It's enough to make one weep. This chart (courtesy of gotgoldreport.com) shows quite clearly just what a bad deal the holders of PSLV got in comparison with those of SLV:

But, one should never underestimate the resilience of silver religionistas memes. The facts never get in the way of a good bit of propaganda, even if all it takes is about five seconds' thinking to realise that the propaganda makes no sense at all. The great and the good of the silverogosphere continue to chant the new axiom that silver is unobtainable for less than a 30% premium when buying in bulk. The meme has legs, and all efforts to kill it at birth by the more rational parts of the community have failed.

I'm going to have one last go, before giving up. In recent private correspondence I was challenged to find ways of buying a million ounces of silver without incurring hefty premiums. So, I borrowed $34,000,000 from GM Jenkins (using the indentured slavery of my first born as security, as per his usual terms) and decided to do a bit of silver shopping. Here's what I found:

1. I could buy some silver futures contracts on the COMEX and stand for delivery. This way, I will get the silver at a spot price that I think will be a good price in the future (e.g. a few weeks ago, I could have easily picked up some futures for silver at $28 an ounce, which would have been a great deal; but even today, I could buy some futures at $34 an ounce quite cheaply). The costs associated with this will be the broker's contract fee and commission for the trade (a tiny fraction of a percent for such a large trade) and some storage or delivery costs once the contract is closed (again, this would be a tiny fraction of my $34 million order), plus some insurance. A bonus for conspiracy fans out there is that by doing this I'll be contributing to the collapse of the COMEX [/sarcasm].

2. I could buy and redeem SLV. Basically, this needs to be done in 'baskets' of 50,000 iShares. So my $34,000,000 will get me 1,031,553 iShares of SLV (before open of play on 29 January, silver is at $33.99 per ounce and SLV is at 32.96). So, let's say that I'll buy a round million iShares which will get me 20 baskets. The 'premium' will be what the iShares prospectus describes as 'applicable fees, taxes, expenses and charges'. One of these fees is $2000, which is neither here nor there if you're splashing out on $34 million of silver with GM's hard-earned cash. The rest adds up to just a few percent [if anyone can do this calculation more precisely, then I'll be grateful, and will add it to this post with an acknowledgement].

3. The Perth Mint is (at the time of publishing) selling silver 100-oz bars at 2.4% over spot (i.e. $34.65 as opposed to their last quoted silver spot price of $33.84 spot price) So, I'd need 10,000 of those. However, the Perth Mint Depository’s standard premium for 1000-oz bars is $0.20 per ounce over spot, which in practice would usually be stored in their vault. But for buyers of size (High Net Worth individuals), they will do “cash and carry” if requested and - for delivery to the USA by sea - an additional three to five cents over spot should cover freight. So purchase and delivery would come in at a rather tasty 0.74% premium. [Many thanks to Bron Suchecki of the Perth Mint for this information.] I'm sure every other major bullion seller around the world would also have similar fees and services for HNW clients and I wouldn't be surprised if there were some quantity discounts of list prices.

4. GoldMoney: If you don't trust the evil SLV, then perhaps you'll have more confidence in a White Knight in the form of James Turk. Here you can see GoldMoney's rates. Not surprisingly, the more you buy, the lower the rate. So a million dollars or more will get you a rather nice 'premium' of 1.99% for physical silver. And they'll deliver it to your house, if you like (although that will cost you a couple of percent extra).

I found about a million (well, half a dozen) other ways of getting my bulk purchase of silver for a low premium, but I don't want to labour the point...

So, to answer the exam question, 'what is the rate for bulk purchases of silver', it is between almost zero and 2%. That's quite a long way from 30%, I think you'll agree. Now, the die-hard cynics amongst you might say, 'well, that's all well and good in theory, but can you give an example of someone who has actually recently bought a large amount of silver without paying 30% premiums?'

Funny you should ask that. In fact, I know of a certain Mr E. Sprott of Toronto, Canada, who - according to the publicly available records of the PSLV Trust - has just bought 8 - 9 million ounces of silver (and rumour has it that he didn't even need to borrow the fiat off GM to do so...) I don't want to blatantly plagiarise someone else's work, so please check out Kid Dynamite's analysis, which shows quite clearly that Eric picked up his shiny stuff at very close to sp(r)ot(t) price.

Now this should come as no surprise. There are three incontestable facts about billionaires. The first is that they are very, very rich. The second is that they didn't get to be very, very rich by paying a 30% premium for something that they can get for almost no premium at all. And the third is that they tend to employ very smart, efficient people, who lose their jobs very quickly if they waste their employer's money.

So Sprott probably just got his people to buy his silver on the COMEX, at virtually no premium. Sprott cheerleaders on the silverogosphere then went around implying (again) that silver was in a shortage, and the premium-to-NAV proved this (even after it crashed).

It is, in fact, precisely this level of chutzpah which distinguishes filthy-rich billionaires from unpaid small-time bloggers whose eldest children are now condemned to spending the rest of their years darning GM Jenkin's socks...

SLV Database #2

(Guest Post by Warren)

A quick update from the SLV database. I was looking at the SLV inventory over the last two weeks of April. I cobbed together this chart (click for larger view) which compares the closing price of SLV vs. the inventory held according to the ounces published. It's a bad graph, but one of my first composite charts so be kind.



The graph is curious because on the 20th of May, the number of bars held takes a big drop and then peaks again on the 27th April with the high in silver (the gap in the middle is the easter holiday).

I have always wondered about the bars which disappear and then show up again. It stands to reason that because the 1000-oz bars are quite heavy, that movement in and out of the vault will probably be more like allocations rather than actual shipping (as highlighted by Bron).

So using the 13th April bar list as a reference point, I set out to find out how many bars showing up in 27th April list, were already present in the 13th April list, with a temporary absence of leave on the 20th April (in between).

After crunching the numbers in the bar serial numbers database, I have an answer - 8.3 percent of the amount added to the inventory between 20th April and 27th April. i.e. between those dates, some 9,954,185 oz of silver was added to SLV, and of that amount 1,197,039.8 oz (8.3 pct) was already sitting in the vault on the 13th April (14 days before). The table in the database for those date ranges is called "SLV_Analysis" so you can check my maths if you want - the connection information for the database is here.

I used this exercise to cut my teeth on the data processing and I give no personal guarantee about any numbers, this exercise was about 5 hours of work. I'm happy to share any details if anyone is interested (and again, the data is all there if you want to check).

What to conclude? Not much - approximately 1197 bars probably never left the vault and went 'dark' for a few weeks while SLV shuffled its data around, reappearing 14 days later. Either that or those bars left the vault and then got redelivered within a few weeks. I am personally more inclined to think that they have shitloads of silver - more than you can imagine - and they shuffle the allocation as best as they see fit to manage the price and futures, all that stuff, to make lots of money from hapless investors. Certainly it's more likely a change of ownership registration than a physical move, but it means that we've got more hard work ahead to identify these dark pools of silver. If anyone out there has any comments that can enhance my understanding, please let me know your thoughts, many thanks.

NOTE: This analysis indicates the SLV Serial Bars data is about right. If it were claiming all the bars were brand new, that would be unusual, and if all the inventory showed up a second time, that would indicate shenanigans, but a 8.3% seems about right.

[Update: 2012]

Since this analysis, we got a bit more sophisticated. For a full list of all future articles in this series, please check out http://screwtapefiles.blogspot.com/p/bullion-bars-database.html

SLV Database (Guest Post by Warren)

Time to test some claims again. Todays spotlight of scrutiny turns to SLV, the world’s largest stockpile of physical silver. For those of you looking for conspiracy, you will NOT find it here. What you will find, is analysis and questions of CLAIMS being made. The people running the trust CLAIM they have 366 million ounces of silver. Others CLAIM they don’t. Who is correct? And darn it, there’s money to be had depending on who is right or wrong.
Following GM Jenkins fine example of putting a chart to opinion, here is an anecdotal chart drawn from information available in the blogosphere. Note that each party has their own line of reasoning backing their stance (if I have unfairly presented anyone here, let me know):



First, why does it matter? Well first up – it’s a very big pile of silver. If the real silver is there as CLAIMED by the iShares Silver Trust, then most of the other stories we’ve been hearing don’t make sense. After all, it’s a simple case of whoever wants physical silver just buys a bunch of SLV shares and redeems them at spot price. No premium-laced cash settlements necessary. No 22% NAV premium required. No tightness of physical market. No delivery problems.
Now, I could write a book (or a very good action movie) about all the various counter claims – unless living under a rock then you are familiar with them already, and therefore I won’t discuss them in depth. Instead I want to focus on doing some hard concrete objective analysis. I also want to expose the methods for my research, to demonstrate that I’m not making any conjecture. Then I want to go to the extra step of making this accessible.
Here’s the gambit:

1. SLV publish their bar serial numbers in a new PDF every week. Very transparent.
2. There’s a lot of (public) information there, but it’s difficult to study because of the format.
3. Let’s collate this information so that we can analyse it better (a relational database).
4. Let’s put the database online and open it to the public so that anyone can access the info.
5. Let’s graph this data and slice and dice it.

I’ll be working on the premise that good forgery is very difficult to do consistently – particularly with large amounts of data. I have no way of telling whether some interns have a full time job fabricating data records to make it look real – we can only look at the data presented to us and see if any anomalies exist.
I need to advise that some earlier studies have been done on the same. I currently am aware of at least two:

1. The excellent weekly analysis of the Silver ETF bar numbers, here. We are very appreciative of the folk at http://About.Ag/ as they shared a bunch of data with us. You should check out their site for a very detailed and comprehensive analysis of all things related to silver.
2. The Project Mayhem July 2009 investigation, who tried very hard to conjure a duplicates bogeyman, but has since been really well dissected by Bron Suchecki here.

Given that some analysis already exists out there, my strategy is slightly different and there are 4 phases to this project:

1. (DONE) Construct a database and make it publicly accessible (using SQL Azure).
   
2. Make a general call out there for all historical silver bar serial number files that people might have – both from SLV and other funds.
   
3. Some kind of website component that people can put on their website to do an easy bar serial lookup (e.g. an investor could verify that a bar they received from SLV was actually held in their stock).
   
4. Over time, with enough data it might be possible to cross-reference data from various funds and check for any multiple claims on the same metal.

The most important element of this is that it’s all independently verifiable. What is there is merely a copy of what was previously publicly available. If you have TSQL skills, or you can hire a data monkey who does then you can easily check and double check the claims that I make about the claims. There’s nothing to hide here, you can test everything yourself. If you don’t have access to your own data monkey then I can help (in exchange for some benny bucks).

  Database Server: erwzbgqjg0.database.windows.net
  Database Name: BullionBars
  User Name: slvreadonly
  Password: *12345screwtapefiles



If you have access to some OLD serial bar lists which you may have downloaded in the past and would like these to be added to the analysis data, please get in contact me at this blog, we would love to have a larger data picture.

If you have some ideas for some charts and graphs, requests changes and ideas: Submit Ideas Here

Disclaimer: I don’t accept any responsibility for the accuracy of the data however it is easily verifiable from visiting the source of the original documents (listed in the database). I may change the database schema and data at any time and I may revoke access to the public login if I desire. Making the database public is NOT an acceptance that the SLV bars are real. Do not make any trades based on the information I present, however please feel free to use the information as part of your own due diligence.

Currently I have loaded data from mid-March 2011 to present, with more historical data to come (I am in possession of files from July 2010 onwards). I’ve done a little bit of analysis so far. Here is a quick profile of bar weight distribution. Dead boring – there is nothing to see here except that the shape is pretty close to what you would expect and is the classic distribution of bar size.



Then something more interesting, here is a chart of inventory by ‘country of origin’ for the refiner who produced the bars. This graph goes not currently show movement in-and-out (or movement over time), but one thing is clear – it has lots of silver from Russia and China. Again this only proves that SLV claims to have lots of silver which originates from refiners in Russia and China. Someone might be able to call the significance on that – I don’t have enough knowledge to make a judgement. Note these don’t necessary represent new bars being made, just a representation of what SLV claims to hold @ April 27.



Wading through all the data has been quite an exercise – there are a lot of records. On the surface it looks quite real to me, and the idea about JPM being long physical silver looks real when you stop to think about it. Personally we have to come up with a better theory … for example let’s say they do have the silver but can’t release it because it forms the collateral for all their leveraged paper trading then that also makes sense of what we’re seeing, and the real value for that underlying silver is worth more to them, than an 80% premium, i.e. perhaps everyone is right but for the wrong reasons. The key to this whole thing appears to be ‘derivatives’ and I’m trying to find the right interpretation of it. Discussion is encouraged and I’ll be adding extra dimensions to my analysis and database over time, but I would really welcome some notes from Amber/Wynter_Benton if you’re out there. And Kid Dynamite, just so you know – my database does not PROVE the silver is there – it simply makes the existing CLAIMS more accessible for analysis (to everyone). Paul D. Bain, I’m interested in some of your theories too if you had a comment (you owe me one).