iShares Silver Trust ETF - SLV Approved

Trading SLV.A to begin trading today, April 28th, 2006

SLV - 150,000 shares initially available

iShares Silver Trust to launch on Amex on Friday
Fri Apr 28, 2006 8:41 AM ET

NEW YORK, April 28 (Reuters) - The first silver exchange-traded fund will begin trading Friday morning on the American Stock Exchange, its developer Barclays Global Investors said.

The iShares Silver Trust, which is listed under the symbol SLV will launch when the market opens at 9:30 a.m. EDT (1330 GMT), a Barclays spokeswoman said.

WASHINGTON, April 27 (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Thursday that the registration statement for Barclays Global Investors' iShares Silver Trust was declared effective, removing the final regulatory obstacle to trading in the innovative fund. "The registration statement for the iShares Silver Trust was declared effective at 10 a.m.," SEC spokesman John Nester said.

The SEC has Cleared the Barclays Silver ETF (Exchange Traded Fund). The ETF will allow investors to buy silver as easily as they buy stocks, and the trading symbol on the AMEX should be SLV, and could start trading as early as tomorrow, or by the end of next week.

Interestingly, Barclays has only deposited 1.5 million ounces of silver with their bullion custodian, not the 130 million ounces that was anticipated. Thus, the significant silver buying has not yet started, and is still to come, especially as the large pension funds with hundreds of billions of dollars start buying.

Most of the large funds cannot buy silver unless it is in the form of an ETF, and the ETF was built to enable these funds to buy silver. If even 1% of just one of the largest funds is invested into the Silver ETF, it would be over $2 billion, which, at $13/oz., is over 153 million ounces of silver, which is far more silver than is available at the NYMEX, the large commodity exchange in New York.

According to a regulatory filing yesterday, Barclays has deposited the 1.5 million ounces of silver with JPMorgan Chase Bank in London to back 150,000 shares of its ETF with each representing 10 ounces of silver.

Barclays intends to offer to the public these 150,000 iShares at a per-iShare offering price that will vary depending on the price of silver and the trading price of the iShares on the AMEX at the time of the offer.

The ETF is slated to trade on the American Stock Exchange under the ticker "SLV." According to the SEC, the approximate date of the ETF's "sale to the public" will be "as soon as practicable after this Registration Statement becomes effective."

The silver market is not driven by day to day news, but rather, by a trend that is over 100 years long, the trend of demonitization, which started with the introduction of the gold standard, and the end of the use of silver as money. With renewed investor demand through the ETF, silver is being saved as a store of wealth again.

The other long term trend is silver's use in the age of electronics, which is a 60 year long trend that started around the end of World War II. This trend, with the industrilization of China and India, is only accelerating. Silver has been consumed by industry, and there is very little silver left over for any investment demand. Silver prices are sure to go up, up and up some more, probably for decades to come.