Silver markets

Silver is one of the precious metals which was first located during 3000 to 2500 B.C. in the area of Armenia. It is unusual among the metals in the sense that most of it is not produced from silver mines. Over 75% of the global silver is produced as a by-product of another metal. Silver production is influenced by a far wider range of factors other than those relating specifically to the silver market.
Most of the silver production activity is therefore relatively insensitive to the price of silver, even though the demand for silver has surpassed supply for many years. There are not a lot of primary silver producers in the world and the world mined silver supply has been constant for years now.Modern technology have revealed the remarkable range of electrical, mechanical, optical and medicinal properties that have placed silver as the key metal in many applications today.
Silver consists of two types of markets—Physical markets, which are operated by bullion dealers, banks and commodity dealers; and the paper silver market. The London Bullion Market is the leading physical market, the global hub of OTC (Over-the-Counter) trading in silver, is the metal’s main physical market. Metal industry participants use the exchange for hedging, to protect themselves against adverse fluctuations in metal prices. In this a bidding price generates a daily reference price known as the fix.
The New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) is the largest physical commodities futures exchange in the world. The exchange trades in oil, gasoline, heating oil, natural gas, propane, silver, gold, platinum and palladium. The COMEX (Commodity Exchange) division’s silver futures and options contracts are used by wide variety of market players in the silver industry to hedge price risk. Silver futures are used in investment portfolios. Options contract are not yet valid in India. Silver is invariably quoted in the US dollar per troy ounce.