Although investments in alternative assets like real estate and commodities (including gold and silver) have increased, the vast majority of global wealth is now invested in stocks and bonds, which had experienced the best financial times in U.S. history prior to the 2008 crisis.18 The years since 2006 have been an amazing coda for the bond market, with returns that were unimaginable prior to the introduction of Fed-driven zero percent interest rates. Ironically, one of the most important reasons to invest in silver is the fact that it no longer matters in the financial systemThe greatest boom in stock and bond market investment returns in the past 200 years, dating back to Thomas Jefferson's first administration, can be seen in the 24-year period that ended in 2006.

Albeit various people, mutual funds, and little assets have been putting resources into silver, either through monetary business sectors or in the actual structure, silver has basically no significance in the realm of institutional venture: Equity and bond investments account for 87% of pension fund assets. Given the tremendous returns that the bond and stock markets have provided over the past generation, this is not surprising.

Pension funds, insurance companies, endowments, and sovereign wealth funds, which manage tens of trillions of dollars worth of wealth worldwide, have almost no silver holdings as a percentage of total assets. This is mostly explained by the small size of the silver market. The physical silver that all investors around the world bought on all markets last year was worth about $10 billion, which is the same amount of Apple Computer shares that were traded in one day. While much more than that is traded on the futures market in silver, which is widely regarded as paper silver, fewer than 3 percent of futures contracts are ever converted into the actual metal, making much of this activity virtually virtual.

The investment community has finally accepted gold as an asset class, and it is widely believed that it should have a certain position in well-diversified portfolios. However, despite the fact that it is more closely associated with gold than anything else (as will be discussed further on), silver is in a completely different situation: pension funds, which currently manage $31 trillion in global assets, typically hold less than 0.30% of assets in gold, which is to say, virtually nothing. 20Assuming any benefits subsidize owning any white metal, their possessions most likely record for under 0.05 percent of their complete resources.

Think about the following: After my pension fund invested less than one-tenth of one percent of its total assets in silver in recent years, Teacher Retirement System of Texas became the largest nonbank silver holder in the world.21 Big money has not invested in the silver market, which has primarily advanced due to individual investors, family funds, and hedge funds.

To argue that global investors are about to move significant investments away from stocks and bonds, such as $97,000 in commodities, $300, 3% gold, $15, and 0.15% gold: Typical pension fund gold holdings (in millions of dollars) SOURCE:Texas Teacher Pension Plan.

Introduce precious metals and 19 percent would be absurd. Stocks and bonds have established themselves as the primary assets on institutional balance sheets due to their superior risk-adjusted returns over time. Gold and silver are nonyielding assets that may not outperform traditional investments over the long term22, despite the current investment push into real assets. However, consider my assertion that the investment community holds almost no silver in its portfolios on the historical foundation: The highest generational returns on investments in two centuries were recently achieved by bonds and stocks. Despite the fact that conventional monetary resource classes have beaten silver for over 10 years, expansion has not even started to rise. However, the circumstances under which inflationary surges in favor of real assets like gold and silver have historically occurred are striking:

Leaders continue to use deficit spending to keep their economies growing despite our inability to grow out of a huge debt. The governments of the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Southern Europe run unsustainable deficits while their economies are barely expanding or are in a recession. Take into account the circumstances in Europe. Stock markets skyrocketed at the end of 2012 when it became clear that troubled Spain would eventually be allowed (and encouraged) to borrow even more money from other European nations.It is essential to keep in mind that all documented cases of hyperinflation, which are thankfully rare, were preceded by excessive government deficits. In an effort to boost economic growth, global central banks are printing money in what is now commonly referred to as "currency wars" to maintain weak domestic currencies."During the 1970s, when national banks were effectively endeavoring to check expansion, the price of gold and silver soar. They were unsuccessful until the Federal Reserve raised the Fed Funds rate above 20%. What can we anticipate now that global monetary authorities are directing their actions in the opposite direction, encouraging inflation by lowering the Fed Funds rate to zero, and that this is happening?