Supply and demand analysis
Gold production and world reserves are scarce, so the price of gold is about 80 times that of silver. Because of its rich content and high output, silver minerals have high output in all countries. In 2008, China became the third largest silver producer in the world, while China was also a traditional silver consumer and exporter.
Silver, like gold, is a precious metal with a long history of application. Humans began to mine silver more than 4,000 years ago. At that time, the mining amount of silver was very small, which was more expensive than gold. In BC 14- 16, the Egyptian code stipulated that the price of silver was twice that of gold. Even in Japan in the17th century, the government stipulated the equivalence of gold and silver. The common people's concept of silver mostly focuses on silver dollar, silver ornaments, silver tableware and so on. In fact, due to its unique physical and chemical characteristics, silver is still an important industrial raw material, which is widely used in electronic and electrical, photosensitive materials, pharmaceutical and chemical industries, disinfection and antibacterial, environmental protection, silver jewelry and products. With the great development of electronics industry, aviation industry and electric power industry, the industrial demand of silver has increased steadily and rapidly in recent years. ① Electronic and electrical materials: Electronic and electrical equipment is the industry with the largest amount of silver, and its uses are divided into electrical contact materials, composite materials and welding materials. Silver and silver-based electrical contact materials can be divided into pure silver, silver alloy, silver oxide and sintered alloy. At present, the annual output of silver and silver-based electrical contact materials in the world is about 2900~3000t, and composite materials are prepared by composite technology, which are divided into silver alloy composite materials and silver-based composite materials. From the point of view of silver saving technology, silver composite material is a new material with great development prospect. Silver welding materials such as pure silver solder and silver copper solder. Photosensitive material: silver halide photosensitive material is one of the fields with the largest silver content. At present, several photosensitive materials with the largest production and sales volume are photographic film, photographic paper, X-ray film, fluorescent information recording film, electron microscope photographic film and printing film. In 1990s, the world photographic industry used about 6000 ~ 6500 tons of silver. Due to the development of electronic imaging and digital imaging technology, the amount of silver halide photosensitive materials has decreased, but the application of silver halide photosensitive materials is still irreplaceable in some aspects, and there is still a great market space. ② Chemistry and chemical materials: Silver has two main applications in this respect. One is silver catalyst, which is widely used in redox and polymerization reactions to treat industrial waste gas containing sulfide. Second, industrial preparations for electronic plating, such as silver paste and silver potassium cyanide. ③ Craft ornaments: Silver is favored by people (especially women) because of its attractive white luster, high chemical stability and collection and ornamental value. Therefore, it has the reputation of "women's metal" and is widely used as jewelry, decorations, silverware, tableware, congratulatory gifts, medals, commemorative coins and so on. Silver ornaments have a broad market in developing countries, and silver tableware is welcomed by families. Silver commemorative coins are beautifully designed, with small circulation, and have the function of maintaining and increasing value, which is favored by coin collectors and coin investors. In the 1990s, the amount of silver used for coinage alone remained around 1 1,000 ~11,500t every year, accounting for about 5% of the silver consumption. ④ Medicine and antibacterial materials: In medicine, Ag-Pd alloy is widely used in children's optic nerve repair, spinal cord bending and other rehabilitation devices; Silver-based casting alloys and silver-copper-tin alloys are important materials for dental restoration. Silver-based inorganic antibacterial materials have the characteristics of durability, broad spectrum, good heat resistance, high safety and no drug resistance. Its bactericidal performance is nearly 2000 times stronger than that of zinc. Antibacterial materials can be made into medical gauze, antibacterial cloth, antibacterial daily necessities, public goods, personal disinfection products, etc. With the continuous improvement of people's living standards, the industrial prospect of silver-based antibacterial materials is very broad.
Of course, we can easily find silver products in major shopping malls, such as silver necklaces, silver rings and other silver ornaments.
(2) Dollars and gold
The impact of the dollar on the gold market is mainly in two aspects. One is that the US dollar is the quoted currency in the international gold market, so it is negatively related to the price of gold. Assuming that the value of the gold price itself has not changed, the price of the gold price will rise if the dollar falls. On the other hand, gold is an alternative investment tool for dollar assets. In fact, in the years before 2005, one of the main factors for the continuous rise of gold prices was the sharp decline of the US dollar for three consecutive years. According to the statistics of the historical data in the past 30 years, the negative correlation between the US dollar and gold is about 80%. From the data of the past ten years, as shown in the following figure, from the correlation chart of the US dollar and gold from 1995 to 2003, it can be seen that the relationship between the US dollar and gold is approaching-1%. Therefore, when we analyze the trend of gold price, the change of US dollar exchange rate is an important reference.
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