back in november, otto told us that silver was a base metal. congratulations if you ignored otto's advice (which was dead wrong) back then, and bought silver at or near its exact bottom. the metal itself is up about 50% since then:

"In my view it tells us that we can throw out the gold:silver ratio for the time being, as silver and the miners that produce silver will perform as a direct function of the broad economy. Or in other words, silver is operating as a classic commodity. Stick the Ag price up on the kitco basemetals page and strike it from the main website page as of this moment."

http://incakolanews.blogspot.com/200...

but now otto has changed his mind. he thinks silver is a precious metal again:

"The ETF for silver (SLV) up 1% at $13.47. In November I posted this, saying silver was acting more like an industrial metal than a precious metal...totally true at the time (even though it pissed some people off). But now look at the recent action in silver compared to gold and the DJIA (using SLV and GLD as proxies)."

"Yep, silver has changed back from Mr. Hyde and is all peachykeen Dr. Jekyll on us again. Interesting, no? Be careful with silver...it has a split personality."

http://incakolanews.blogspot.com/200...

so now silver has the good housekeeping seal of approval, and it is officially a precious metal again.