Wow!
The last time there was as large a disconnect between gold and silver was never, the closest we have come is briefly in 1991-2, and again in 1941. The gold silver ratio has now seemingly surpassed those previous peaks.
Over the previous few years, silver has loosely tracked the rise and fall of gold - while consistently under-performing. However, last week or two gold set a number of 7 year highs while silver continued to correct. Now, either gold has become the best thing since floating soap or investors, increasingly without reasonable options (think negative real and negative nominal bond yields, a over-extended equity market built on debt fuelled share buy-backs and cheap credit now in correction territory, gold USD1700 an ounce), might be looking around for good deals in commodities / hard assets (they wont it in housing that's for sure). It doesn't leave many options if you take bonds, equities, gold, and property off the table does it?
I bought silver in the first place because I felt that it was undervalued relative to gold, and intended to trade in silver for gold once the goldsilver ratio got below 45. This was always a trade, and not a short-term one either (original horizon set at 2-5 years). So I found low premium dealer with ultra-low storage charges and started to buy regularly. I will be adding about 10-20% this week when we see price in my blue "buy box" range. I have some concerns relating to the fact that silver is primarily an industrial metal, and I don't think people yet grasp the degree to which the economy will be shuttered in the US shortly - personally I assume the shut-down will be more extensive than anything seen in multiple generations. However, I see silver and also Platinum benefiting from purchases by investors faced with almost certain losses in equities and certain losses in bonds looking towards silver after seeing gold as a little too expensive. Remember, money-printing will go into even higher gear soon, and may include helicopter drops (as seen recently in Hong Kong), and we are basically in potential hyperinflation territory. Is inflation possible? Well, we will see as those shop shelves become more and more sparse as manufacturers, shippers, and logistics operations go off-line. Jeez, sorry I didn't mean to go all post-apocalypse. Anyway, people will see relative value in silver vs gold and start buying - so Investment demand could very easily take up any slack from Industrial demand, considering the amounts of money in play. I was interested in miners, but is on hold right now because miners are just as exposed to this outbreak as anyone else and they rely heavily on corporate credit markets - which may freeze up.