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The precious metals finished out the week on a strong note today as both gold and silver have rallied again.

The gold futures are up $13 to $4,377, not far off from the $4,409 high set during a brief spike yesterday.

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But silver is having the really big day, with the futures once again up more than $2 to $67.55.

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The silver futures also set another new all-time record high today at $67.67.

Yet perhaps just as significant as the latest leg of this rally is some of the commentary that’s coming out of Wall Street about silver.

Within the gold and silver community, I think it’s somewhat common for people to look at both metals as safe-haven assets. Although outside of the precious metals community, that’s not necessarily always the case. Perhaps the most poignant example being the central banks, where they’ve set records for the amount of gold they’ve purchased over the last few years, but for the most part have not been buying silver. There have been some deviations to that (with Russia and Saudi Arabia coming to mind), yet outside of precious metals circles, there’s still a difference in perception among the two metals.

However, that’s what made it so fascinating to see Robert Gottlieb’s commentary today (Robert was a former precious metals managing director at JP Morgan), where he mentions that silver is now on the radar as a safe-haven asset as Central Banks continue to diversify out of U.S. dollars.

Again, for long-time gold and silver investors, the idea of silver as a safe-haven doesn’t come as a new development. But that a public figure, who used to be in the upper levels of the world’s largest Wall Street bullion bank is pointing it out now does seem significant.

There are reasons that I still think it’s more likely for governments to make some sort of move towards using gold as collateral in the monetary system rather than using gold AND silver. Two of them being that while the governments can make a significant dent in their debt loads by revaluing gold higher, to revalue silver high enough to be able to achieve any debt repatriation would require taking silver to a price that would basically eliminate any industrial usage. Also, most of the governments and central banks don’t own any silver, so even if they revalued it, they wouldn’t get to directly benefit from that in the same way they would with gold.

Yet that doesn’t mean that a government or central bank may not look at silver as an important resource, or just a good investment. Obviously, we’ve already seen the US reclassify silver as a strategic critical mineral, and in the same way we were able to highlight the silver supply issues long before London got rocked by a shortage this past October, the investment case for silver isn’t all that complex that sophisticated investors and central banks can’t put two and two together.

I mentioned last week that there have been rumors circulating that a large investor has been standing for physical delivery of silver, and my guess is that, accurate or not, we will continue to see things like that float around, especially should the rally continue. There will definitely be unsubstantiated speculation mixed in, but I’ll continue to check and verify what I can, as this does remain an Achilles of the silver market.

So as much fun as this year has been, there will be plenty to keep us all fascinated in the months and years ahead. But most importantly, I do just hope you enjoyed yet another truly special week in the precious metals markets, and are getting set to have a safe and wonderful holiday season with your family and those you love.

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