Silver Lives Up To 'The Devil's Metal' Name on Employment Data (SLV, GLD, SIL, SLW, PAAS, HL)

The ADP report on jobs managed to come in much better than expected.  This has somewhat dampened the hope that the FOMC will need to immediately begin new stimulus measures via the so-called QE3.  The news pushed out the chance that the Fed will need to start printing money sooner than it will eventually.  What we are tracking here is the big move in iShares Silver Trust (NYSEMKT: SLV) versus the move in gold via the SPDR Gold Shares (NYSEMKT: GLD).

NY Gold is at $1,606.90 per ounce, down $7.70 or -0.48%; and NY Silver is at $27.295, down $0.619 or -2.22%.  iShares Silver Trust (NYSEMKT: SLV) is down 1.85% at $26.62 while the SPDR Gold Shares (NYSEMKT: GLD) is down only 0.5% at $155.73 so far today.

The reason that silver is performing worse is in part because it is a much more speculative metal than gold.  It is called “The Devil’s Metal” for a reason, but let’s just refer to silver as “The poor man’s gold” trade.  If gold will climb higher and higher, the logic is that silver has to follow suit.  Besides that, can you imagine a modern world where we have to trade gold at the street level for bartering?

We would like to note that a review of the SLV chart at the stockcharts.com image below that silver is also so far today showing a failure to break out above its 50-day moving average for traders. Meanwhile, gold is still testing its 50-day average.

Elsewhere, we see that Silver Wheaton Corp. (NYSE: SLW) is down 1.05% at $27.25, Pan American Silver Corp. (NASDAQ: PAAS) is down 0.8% at $14.82, and even the Global X Silver Miners ETF (NYSEMKT: SIL) is still down 0.5% at $18.18 on the day.

In the last hour we have seen a recovery from the lows but the key silver players look down big. There is at least one troubled silver player going against the grain for the better today.  Hecla Mining Co. (NYSE: HL) is up 0.9% at $4.54 so far today.

JON C. OGG