Silver, often known as the poor man’s gold has become a boring metal with little movements. In the past five years, the price of an ounce of silver has ranged between a low of $13.73 and a high of $22. Its one-year chart shows a metal struggling to find direction and one that is hard to trade.

For starters, silver is a very important precious metal. Of all metals, silver is the best thermal and electrical conductor, which makes it ideal for use in, electrical. It is also used in jewelry manufacture because of its high luster and reflectivity. It is also a highly malleable metal, which makes it easier to flatten into sheets. It is also a highly ductile metal, which makes it easy to be converted into wires. In short, unlike gold, silver has many industrial uses.

A small quantity of silver is used as a store of value.

An interesting tale

Anyone who has traded silver for a long time will tell you an interesting story about how two brothers that tried to corner the silver market. They created one of the biggest bubbles of all time.

William Hunt was a rich Texan landowner who spent thousands of dollars buying property. One of his land in Texas became known as the East Texas Oilfield because of its significant oil resources.

When he died, he left his wealth to his two sons, Herbart and Nelson.

With the new found wealth, the sons had many options on how to invest it. They could buy real estate, build an industrial conglomerate or even, start a bank.

The two brothers saw silver as an ideal market for them. They expected silver to one day become as valuable as gold. So, they went on a shopping spree, buying all silver that they could. Singlehandedly, the two brothers made the price of silver soar from less than $20 to a high of $50.

To corner the entire market, they borrowed heavily from financial institutions.

In late 70s, the CFTC ruled that no individual was allowed to own more than 3 million ounces of silver. To cut the story short, the two brothers lost all their money and filed for bankruptcy.