Central Perk

joi, 11 decembrie 2014

HTTP/2: A Fast, Secure Bedrock for the Future of SEO

Posted: 10 Dec 2014 04:16 PM PST

Posted by Zoompf

In prior articles, we've written extensively about website performance and securing your website, both factors Google has publicly announced as search ranking factors. These articles provide extensive tips using existing tools and technologies to improve your site performance and security (tips we highly recommend you follow). But did you know Google also developed and is championing a new web transport protocol called SPDY that addresses many of the inherent performance and security flaws in the web today?

In this article I will dive into more detail on how this new protocol works, why it is important to you, and how you can get started using it today.

From experiment to standard

Google created the SPDY protocol as a multi-year experiment to find a faster way for browser and servers to communicate. The results have been so positive that the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is using SPDY as the basis for HTTP/2, a replacement to the current network protocol that powers all Internet web traffic today. While technically HTTP/2 is still an evolving specification, many web browsers, web servers, networking devices, and websites already support both SPDY and HTTP/2 in its current form.

While there are some subtle differences between SPDY and HTTP/2, for the purposes of this article it's safe to use those terms interchangeably. As HTTP/2 rises to prominence in the popular vocabulary, the SPDY vernacular will fall out of use in favor of HTTP/2. For this reason, I will simply refer to SPDY as HTTP/2 for the remainder of this article.

What problem is HTTP/2 trying to solve?

To understand why Google and the IETF are creating a new version of HTTP, we need to understand the fundamental performance limitations we have today. It helps to consider this analogy:

Imagine if all the roads in the modern world were built back during the age of horse drawn carriages: narrow, bumpy and with low speed limits (still true in some cities...). Sure it took a while to get anywhere, but the delay was mostly due to the speed of your horse. Flash forward to today: same bumpy roads, but now everyone is driving a car. Now the horse is not the bottleneck, but instead all those cars piling up on the same log jammed road!

Believe it or not, most website traffic today is not far from this analogy. The original HTTP protocol dates back nearly 25 years. The most recent update is HTTP/1.1 which was standardized back in 1999. That is a lifetime in Internet time!

Like those narrow, bumpy roads of yore, the web back then was a very different place: smaller web pages, slower Internet connections, and limited server hardware. In a sense, the "horse" was the bottleneck. HTTP/1.1 was very much a product of those times.

For example, when web browser loads a web page using HTTP/1.1 it can requests resource (like an image, JavaScript file, etc) one at a time, per connection to the server. It looks like this:

You'll notice the browser is spending a long time waiting on each request. While HTTP/1.1 won't let us make multiple requests at the same time over the same connection, browsers can try and speed things up by making two connections to the same server, as shown in the diagram below:

Using two connections is a little better, but the browser still spends a lot of time waiting to get a download. And we can only download two resources at a time. We could try and making more connections to download more resource in parallel. Modern browsers try to do this and can make between 2-6 connections per server. Unfortunately this is still an poor approach, because each connection itself is used so inefficiently. Since the average web page has over 100 resources, the delay in making all those individual requests one at a time over just a few connections added up and your page loads slowly.

You can actually see this inefficiency by looking at a waterfall chart. We discussed waterfalls in a previous Moz post on optimizing Time To First Byte, and we also have a detailed guide on how to read waterfall charts. Most waterfall charts will show long green sections which represents the time the browser is waiting to download a resource. All that time wasted on waiting instead of downloading is a major reason why websites load slowly.

This inefficient waiting on resources is why optimizations like combining JavaScript or CSS files can help your site load faster. But optimizations like this are just stopgap measures. While you can (and should) continue to optimize our pages to make fewer and smaller requests, we're not going to truly evolve to the next level of performance until we "fix the roads" and improve the fundamental way in which the web communicates. Specifically, we need to find a better way to utilize those network connections.

This is where HTTP/2 comes in.

The solution: HTTP/2

At its core, HTTP/2 is about using the underlying network connections more efficiently. HTTP/2 changes how requests and responses travel on the wire, a key limitation in the prior versions of HTTP.

HTTP/2 works by making a single connection to the server, and then "multiplexing" multiple requests over that connection to receive multiple responses at the same time. It looks like this:

The browser is using a single connection, but it no longer requests items one at a time. Here we see the browser receives the response headers for file #3 (maybe an image), and then it receives the response body for file #1. Next it starts getting the response body for file #3, before continuing on to file #2.

Think of multiplexing like going to the grocery store and calling your spouse just once to get the full list: "Okay we need milk, eggs, and butter. Check." Compare this to HTTP/1.1 which is like calling your spouse over and over: "Do we need milk? Okay, bye." "Hello me again—do we need eggs too? Yep, okay.", "Okay sorry one last question, do we need flour too? Nope, good."

All of that data is interwoven much more efficiently on that single connection. The server can supply the browser with data whenever it is ready. There is no more "make request; do nothing while waiting; download response" loop. While slightly more complex to understand, this approach has several advantages.

First of all, network connections don't sit idle while you are waiting on a single resource to finish downloading. For example, instead of waiting for one image to finish downloading before starting the next, your browser could actually finish downloading image 2 before image 1 even completes.

This also prevents what is known as head-of-line blocking: when a large/slow resource (say for example a 1 MB background image) blocks all other resources from downloading until complete. Under HTTP, browsers would only download one resource at a time per connection. HTTP/2's multiplexing approach allows browsers to download all those other 5 KB images in parallel over the same connection and display as they become available. This is a much better user experience.

Another great performance benefit of HTTP/2 is the "Server Push" feature: this allows the server to proactively push content to a visitor without them requesting it. So for example, when a browser visits your website, your server can actually "push" your logo image down to the browser before it even knows it needs it. By proactively pushing needed resources from the server, the browser can load pages much quicker then was previously possible.

Last, but not least: HTTP/2 works best with HTTPS. As we mentioned before, both performance and security are an ever increasing component of search ranking. While the HTTP/2 specification technically allows for use over non-HTTPS connections, Google's earlier SPDY protocol required HTTPS. For compatibility reasons, most web server software will only use HTTP/2 over an encrypted HTTPS connection. Getting on the HTTPS bandwagon not only protects the security of your users and is good for your search ranking, but also is the most effective way to adopt HTTP/2. For more information, see our prior post on enabling HTTPS.

The future, today!

So clearly HTTP/2 offers some great benefits for both speed and performance, but what does this mean to you right now? Well, you may be surprised to learn, HTTP/2 is already available, and can be supported by you without impacting your old users running on HTTP/1.1.

You can think of HTTP/2 just like any other protocol, or even a spoken language. For it to work, you just need an agreement from both the sender and receiver to speak the same language. In this case, the "sender" is the web browser and the receiver is your web server.

Browser support

Since it's unlikely you will create your own web browser like Microsoft, Google, Apple or Mozilla, you will not need to worry about the "sender" side of the equation. Support for HTTP/2 in the web browser is already in widespread use across the modern browsers of today, with adoption only increasing as older browser versions age out.

In fact, the latest versions of all the major desktop web browsers already support HTTP/2. Chrome and Firefox has supported it for several years. Apple added support to Safari in fall of 2014 with Safari 8. IE 11 supports HTTP/2, but only if you are running Windows 8.

Similarly, there is already widespread HTTP/2 adoption on smart phones as well. Android's older web browser, helpfully named Browser, has support HTTP/2 for several years. The current default browser for Android is Google's Chrome browser. Mobile versions of Chrome use the same networking code as Desktop Chrome. This means that both Chrome on Android devices, as well as Chrome on iOS devices, both support HTTP/2. Apple added support to the iOS version of Safari with iOS 8.

Your best best is to look at your website analytics and see what web browsers your visitors are using. Chances are, the majority of visitors have HTTP/2 capable web browsers (you can check against this list of desktop and mobile browsers that support HTTP/2). In that case, you can safely move on to the next step.

Web server support

While you have little control over which browsers your visitors use, you do have direct control over your web server. Put quite simply, to support HTTP/2 you need to select a web server that supports HTTP/2 and enable it. And of course, that server should also continue to support HTTP/1.1 as well because you will always have users using older browsers.

Continuing our "spoken language" analogy from before, you can think of HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2 as different languages like English or French. As long as both parties can speak the same language, they can communicate. If your server only supports HTTP/1.1, then visitors can only speak to it with HTTP/1.1. But, if your server also supports HTTP/2, then your users browser will also choose to speak (the faster) HTTP/2. And finally if your server does speak HTTP/2, but your users browser does not, then they will continue to speak HTTP/1.1 just as before, so there's no danger in "breaking" your older users.

Right now, both the Apache and nginx web servers support HTTP/2. nginx supports HTTP/2 natively, and Apache supports it via the mod_spdy module. Since Apache and nginx serve traffic for 66% of all active web servers, chances are good that your website's server can support HTTP/2 right now.

If you aren't using nginx or Apache you still have other options. There are a number of smaller, more specialized projects that support HTTP/2. You can also place a reverse proxy that support HTTP/2 like HAProxy in front of your existing web server to get the same benefit as having a web server that directly supports HTTP/2.

If you run your site through a hosting provider, check with them to see which web server version they are running. Major sites like WordPress.com and CloudFlare all already offer HTTP/2 support. If your provider is not yet supporting HTTP/2, let them know this is important!

Adding HTTP/2 support

As I mentioned, HTTP/2 is simply another language your web server can use to communicate. Just as a person can learn a new language while remembering their mother tongue, your web server will continue to know how to communicate HTTP/1.1 after you add support for HTTP/2. You aren't in danger of shutting anyone out from speaking with your site. People using newer browsers will communicate using HTTP/2, and older browsers will continue using the older HTTP/1.1—nothing breaks. If you have the time, there really is no reason not to update your site to support HTTP/2.

Remember, HTTP/2 is just a better way to transmit web content than HTTP/1.1. Everything else about your website (the URLs, your HTML markup, your redirects or 404 pages, your page content, etc) all stays the same. This makes adding support for HTTP/2 fairly straight forward:

Make sure your website is using HTTPS. See our previous article on implementing HTTPS without sacrificing performance.
Verify your server software or infrastructure can support HTTP/2.
Update and configure your server software or infrastructure to support HTTP/2.

That's it. Your website is now using HTTP/2.

Well hopefully it is. The steps involved to update/configure your website will vary depending on your what software you use, so we cannot provide you with detailed guide. However, we did built a free tool, SPDYCheck, which you can use to verify you have properly configured your website to HTTP/2 (aka SPDY). SPDYCheck works like a checklist, verifying each step of how a browser negotiates with your server to communicate via HTTP/2. It can tell you where in the process things are not working, and it also provides helpful recommendations like enabling Strict Transport Security. With SPDYCheck, you can be sure that everything is functioning properly, and verify that you site supports HTTP/2.

Conclusion

We all know that faster sites help improve search engine rankings, but faster sites also offer better user experiences. Faster sites engage your users longer, and promote sharing further sharing and linking. HTTP/2 is an amazing leap forward that can help improve the performance and user experience of your website. However, HTTP/2 is not a silver bullet. Optimizations like losslessly optimizing your website's images can have a big effect on your site's performance and will still be needed. In short, while you should add HTTP/2 support to your website, make sure you are doing other optimizations and following performance best practices to ensure the best possible user experience. If you are looking for a place to start, or want to see how your site is doing, Zoompf's free performance report is a great way to understand what you can do to make your website faster.

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Seth's Blog : Get the word out vs. Find the others

Get the word out vs. Find the others

If Sylvia makes the math team, there are two ways for the school to find out.

One method is that she alerts people she has a relationship with. Call this a hard network, a direct connection.

The other method is that people tell other people, that the word spreads in unpredictable, uncontrollable ways, from person to person. Call this a soft network.

My thesis is that it's not really hard vs. soft. It's both. The hard network of permission starts and amplifies the soft network of horizontal, unpredictable connection--if the story is worth spreading.

Industrialists, and the marketers who work for them, used to start with spam. Use money and effort to yell at everyone.

Over time, that has radically evolved into a new way to go to market. To talk to people who want to be talked to. Engaged marketers prefer this direct approach. It’s measurable, repeatable, predictable. It can be owned. Permission marketing lives in this sphere, the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them.

Permission is an asset, and it is the heart of what can be built online in the connection economy. But permission is notoriously unresilient. If the message doesn’t get through, nothing happens. If networks shift or systems change, nothing happens. As email gets more crowded, as follower numbers explode, we see again and again that hard networks don't carry enough data.

The soft network, on the other hand, begins with permission but then fills in the cracks. In a soft network, people tell other people, horizontally, relentlessly, as the word spreads.

When people asked Timothy Leary what they ought to do next, he said, "find the others."

Tribes form horizontally. Change happens from person to person, rarely from the top down. Organizations establish a culture, the way we do things around here, as much from the craftsmen on the shop floor as from what the CEO does in her office.

I'm seeing the power of this firsthand with the launch of my new book.

I asked some of the people who are already reading it to post on Twitter with the hashtag #YourTurn along with the name of their city. Feel free to add yourself...

Anyone searching on the term will get an instant snapshot of not just where interesting work is being done (and where the status quo is being challenged) but who is doing it as well. New people to follow and learn from. Connections, made. A critical step on the road to making change happen.

The unpredictable, organic nature of soft networks mean that they'll never be assets an organization can bring to the bank. But as we go mobile and immerse ourselves ever deeper in data, this is how ideas move. PS via Ivan, another way to think about this.

• Email to a friend •

miercuri, 10 decembrie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Illinois Passes Law Making it a Felony to Video Police; How to Stop Police Abuse; More on CIA Torture
Spain Seeks €60 Billion of Juncker's Alleged €315 Billion Development Fund; Vaporware Funding
US Army Major Replies to My Torture Post
I Traded Some Gold For Silver

Illinois Passes Law Making it a Felony to Video Police; How to Stop Police Abuse; More on CIA Torture

Posted: 10 Dec 2014 03:13 PM PST

How to Stop Police Abuse

There's one way and one way only to stop police abuse: Criminally prosecute it, then allow civil penalties.

In a podcast today with Chris Martenson, Chris suggested civil penalties should come straight out of the police retirement fund, not taxpayer pockets.

But as with CIA torture, government does not really want to stop abuse, they want to stop reporting the abuse.

Earlier this year, Illinois passed a law making videotaping of police illegal. However, the Illinois Supreme Curt struck down the law as a violation of free speech.

So what did the Illinois legislature do? They wrote an even worse law.

Illinois Passes Law Making it a Felony to Video Police

Via email from Jacob Huebert, senior attorney at the Liberty Justice Center, the Illinois Policy Institute's free-market public-interest litigation center.

Earlier this year, the Illinois Supreme Court struck down a state eavesdropping law that made it a crime for citizens to record conversations with police or anyone else without the other person's permission. The court held that the old law "criminalize[d] a wide range of innocent conduct" and violated free-speech rights. In particular, the court noted the state could not criminalize recording activities where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy, including citizens' "public" encounters with police.

Now the old law is back, with just a few changes, in a new bill sent to the governor's desk by the Illinois Senate on Dec. 4. The bill not only passed, but did so overwhelmingly with votes of 106-7 in the House on and 46-4-1 in the Senate.

The new version is nearly as bad as the old one.

Under the new bill, a citizen could rarely be sure whether recording any given conversation without permission is legal. The bill would make it a felony to surreptitiously record any "private conversation," which it defines as any "oral communication between 2 or more persons," where at least one person involved had a "reasonable expectation" of privacy.

When does the person you're talking to have a reasonable expectation of privacy? The bill doesn't say. And that's not something an ordinary person can be expected to figure out.

A law must be clear enough for citizens to know in advance whether a particular action is a crime. This bill doesn't meet that standard, which should be reason enough for a court to strike it down if it becomes law.

But lack of clarity isn't the only problem with this bill.

Although it appears to be designed to accommodate the Illinois Supreme Court's ruling striking down the old law, the bill actually is designed to continue to prevent people from recording interactions with police.

The bill says it would only be a crime to record someone where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy, which should mean that recording public encounters with police would not be a crime, and the old law's fatal constitutional flaw would no longer exist.

But the bill doesn't really fix the problem. Again, citizens can't be expected to know for sure precisely which situations give rise to an "expectation of privacy" and which don't. The Illinois Supreme Court said that police don't have an expectation of privacy in "public" encounters with citizens, but it did not explain what counts as a "public" encounter. So if this bill becomes law, people who want to be sure to avoid jail time will refrain from recording police at all, and the law will therefore still effectively prevent people from recording police.

The bill would also discourage people from recording conversations with police by making unlawfully recording a conversation with police – or an attorney general, assistant attorney general, state's attorney, assistant state's attorney or judge – a class 3 felony, which carries a sentence of two to four years in prison. Meanwhile, the bill makes illegal recording of a private citizen a class 4 felony, which carries a lower sentencing range of one to three years in prison.

There's only one apparent reason for imposing a higher penalty on people who record police in particular: to make people especially afraid to record police. That is not a legitimate purpose. And recent history suggests it's important that people not be afraid to record police wherever they perform their duties so that officers will be more likely to respect citizens' rights, and officers who do respect citizens' rights will be able to prove it.

The bill might also provide an excuse to scuttle body cameras for police. Police may argue that using body cameras to record encounters with citizens outside of "public" places would violate the law, as citizens have not consented to being recorded.

We should mention one more thing about this bill. It was introduced on Tuesday, Dec. 2, as an amendment to an existing bill on a completely different subject. The amendment removed all of the bill's previous content and replaced it with the new ban on recording. The House passed it the following day, and the Senate passed it the day after that. So the people who would have cared most about this bill probably didn't notice it in time to object. They might have had their attention focused on other issues that were in the news, such as the recorded police killing of Eric Garner.

Even if this bill were constitutional, it would still be unnecessary and a terrible idea. Most other states allow a person to record a conversation with only one party's consent and don't try to scare people out of recording police by threatening them with felony charges.

Despite its bipartisan support, Gov. Pat Quinn should do one more thing to bolster his legacy before he leaves office and veto this bill.

Jacob Huebert
Senior Attorney, Liberty Justice Center

How to Stop Torture

The way to stop CIA torture is the same as the way to stop police abuse: criminal prosecution.

Obama's fluff statement "we won't let this happen again" will only be believable if it comes with criminal prosecution from the top down, preferably at an international war crimes tribunal.

UN Calls for Prosecution

Yesterday, Ben Emmerson, United Nations Special Rapporteur on counter terrorism and human rights, called for prosecution of CIA officers and other US Government officials.

International law prohibits the granting of immunities to public officials who have engaged in acts of torture. This applies not only to the actual perpetrators but also to those senior officials within the US Government who devised, planned and authorised these crimes.

As a matter of international law, the US is legally obliged to bring those responsible to justice. The UN Convention Against Torture and the UN Convention on Enforced Disappearances require States to prosecute acts of torture and enforced disappearance where there is sufficient evidence to provide a reasonable prospect of conviction. States are not free to maintain or permit impunity for these grave crimes.

It is no defence for a public official to claim that they were acting on superior orders. CIA officers who physically committed acts of torture therefore bear individual criminal responsibility for their conduct, and cannot hide behind the authorisation they were given by their superiors.

However, the heaviest penalties should be reserved for those most seriously implicated in the planning and purported authorisation of these crimes. Former Bush Administration officials who have admitted their involvement in the programme should also face criminal prosecution for their acts.

Dick Cheney and CIA Director are War Criminals

So far, the Only Person Jailed for CIA Torture is Man Who Reported It!

Cheney's defense of torture (see CIA Torture Reports: Frozen to Death; Rectal Rehydration, Broken Limbs; 54 Countries Assist US; Dick Cheney War Criminal) makes Cheney and various CIA directors my top choices for prosecution.

Torture Counterproductive

The sad thing about torture is the CIA often gets innocent victims, and torture does not work even when they get the right guy (See US Army Major Replies to My Torture Post).

Today, USAM responded ...

"I am certain torture simply creates more enemies. For example, it's well known that Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Al Qaeda #2, went into an Egyptian prison in the early 1980s a simple fundamentalist Muslim, and after years of unspeakable torture (including being tied up and raped by prison dogs), came out a blood-thristy butcher. How many more terrorists has this CIA program created? I shudder to think."

What does the CIA and the state of Illinois want to do about abuse? Sad answer: Stop reporting abuses, and make it illegal to record them.

Addendum: A Conversation With Friends

I had the following email discussion regarding the Illinois law with two close friends. Seldom are we in complete agreement on things.

First friend: Two words. Rodney King

Second friend, a lawyer: That is one of the dumbest, anti-democratic laws I have ever heard of. In my view, it is unconstitutional. What a bunch of morons.

First Friend: God! All three of us are on the same sheet of music!

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Spain Seeks €60 Billion of Juncker's Alleged €315 Billion Development Fund; Vaporware Funding

Posted: 10 Dec 2014 01:01 PM PST

Yesterday, Spain Requested €60 Billion of Juncker's Alleged €315 Billion Development Fund.

Via translation from La Vanguardia ...

Economy Minister, Luis de Guindos, said Tuesday that Spain has submitted projects worth around 60 billion euros to the President of the European Commission, Jean Claude Juncker, who aims to mobilize 315,000 billion euros.

Guindos stressed the priorities for the Government are energy interconnections, transport and R & D. Juncker said the plan is a "key initiative" of the new Commission, "with the appropriate times, quickly and effectively."

Vaporware Funding

Spain wants €60 Billion. How much will France want? Greece? Portugal? Germany? How far will €315 Billion go?

The answer is not far. As I commented on November 24, Juncker's €315bn EU Slush Fund is €299bn Sleight of Hand Magic.

Juncker's €315bn EU Slush Fund looks like this.

95% Leveraged Magic, 5% Fund

€16bn from the EU budget
€5bn in guarantees from the European Investment Bank (EIB)
€299bn is magic.

Supposedly, private money will come up with €299bn based on €5bn in guarantees.

Of course someone has to administer this action plan. So Juncker unveiled a new "investment advisory hub" run by "financial professionals" with direction from the European Commission and EIB.

After padding their own pockets, the group will decide which projects to undertake, no doubt based on kickbacks, bribes, and political favoritism to friends.

To make the deal even sweeter for their political cronies, the EU will offer a "first-loss" guarantee, where the EU money would absorb any initial investment losses in an effort to "crowd in" private investors looking for more secure upside.

Given that it's all funny money anyway, I have a question: Why not provide €50bn in guarantees raising €2.99 trillion in the process?

Leverage Math

Out of a grand total of €16bn from the EU budget, Spain seeks €60 Billion.

Taking into account Juncker's leveraged magic, if Spain got every penny of what it requested, it would get about €3bn from the EU budget. Leverage would provide the other €57 Billion.

That really going to work?

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

US Army Major Replies to My Torture Post

Posted: 10 Dec 2014 11:17 AM PST

In response to CIA Torture Reports: Frozen to Death; Dick Cheney War Criminal I received an interesting response from a U.S. Army Major.

USAM writes ...

Hi Mish,

Just thought I'd write to share my opinion the recent torture revelations:

"I'm sad and horrified to read the details of the CIA's torture program. To me, it represents the sickest form of consequentialism, one that has run roughshod over any type of moral authority the U.S. can claim in offering its leadership to the world. I'm further upset that my fellow brothers and sisters in uniform will most likely underwrite this disastrous program, as the enemy will now be all too eager to respond in kind to any American serviceman or woman unlucky enough to endure capture. I only wish we had the moral courage to make those responsible accountable for these unmistakable atrocities."

All you've written on the subject is very well said.

US Hypocrisy

That response was unexpected even though USAM has emailed several times before in general agreement with things I have stated. I withheld his name for obvious reasons, even though USAM did not request me to do so.

For change to happen, it must come from within. Sadly, president Obama cannot lead at all, and Bush-Cheney led us in the wrong direction.

Clearly, CIA torture is US hypocrisy at its very worst, yet supported openly by Vice President Dick Cheney, a chickenhawk who commented "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service".

Ironically, one of the arguments Bush-Cheney used to invade Iraq was "Saddam Hussein tortured people".

Of all the US hypocrites who deserve to rot in hell forever, Cheney surely must be near the top of the list.

Unfortunately, Obama will do nothing but push all of this under the rug. Worse yet, many leaders in both parties support US-sponsored torture, yet whine at the slightest opportunity when other countries do the same.

Salute!

USAM makes me want to stand up and salute. It's not often I say that in complete sincerity about anything related to US military service.

Followup Post:

Illinois Passes Law Making it a Felony to Video Police; How to Stop Police Abuse; More on CIA Torture

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

I Traded Some Gold For Silver

Posted: 10 Dec 2014 01:16 AM PST

Last Friday I decided the gold:silver ratio was so out of line that I swapped some of my gold for silver. The ratio is a measure of how many ounces of silver it takes to buy an ounce of gold.

Exchange Rate

My exchange rate last Friday was as follows: "USD 38.2355/goldgram & USD 16.3589/silver ounce" where 1 gram (g) of gold Equals 0.032 troy ounces (oz t) in gold.

Simply stated, I traded some of my gold at $1194.859375 for an equivalent dollar amount of silver at $16.3589.

This does not constitute a recommendation, I am merely stating what I did.

Previous Physical Metal Transactions

On April 27, 2011 I announced Taking Silver Profits - Swapping Silver for Gold.

I have held physical silver and gold investments continuously for 5 years, and on and off before that. Today I cashed out of silver, trading it for an equal dollar value of gold.

For the sake of full disclosure, my physical precious metals holdings are now entirely at GoldMoney and I have an affiliate relationship with them.

At the time, silver was roughly $46 and gold roughly $1500. Since I sold every ounce I had that was a good move. My next move wasn't that great.

On May 1, 2012 I announced I'm Swapping Some Gold for Silver.

Fortunately I only bought back about 1/3 of what I sold. Here was my exchange rate: "USD 53.4986/goldgram & USD 30.9600/silver ounce".

My expectation all along was for silver to dip to the low $20s but a couple rebounds from the high 20s to the 30s caused me to change my mind.

Fortunately I had more patience on this add, and I just bought the rest of my silver-relative-to gold allocation.

Time will tell if "gold at $1194.859375 for an equivalent dollar amount of silver at $16.3589" is a good trade, but I like my chances.

Gold-Silver Ratio

The above chart courtesy of Nick at Sharelynx Gold, also known as Gold Charts "R" Us. Nick has a free week on his charts. Gold Charts "R" Us has 1,000's of pages and over 10,000 charts on a subscription basis, but you can check out the site for free until December 14.

Ratio Synopsis

In late 2008 it took 85 ounces of silver to buy an ounce of gold. That was a great time to buy silver relative to gold.

In April of 2011, when I sold all of my silver, it took roughly 33 ounces of silver to buy an ounce of gold, a great time to dump silver for gold (or as it turns out, an even better opportunity to go to cash or treasuries).

It remains to be seen if this is a good opportunity to buy silver, but I like my chances, not only because of the gold-silver ratio, but because I believe precious metals in general represent a good buy opportunity at this time.

Metal-to-Metal Swaps

Swapping one precious metal for another is an easy transaction at GoldMoney.

For further discussion, please see Physical Gold and Silver vs. Paper Gold and Silver: How Much Markup Are You Willing to Pay?

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com