By Melissa Pistilli-Exclusive to Silver Investing News

While I’m ecstatic every time I drive by the gas station and see the price ticking down daily, watching the loonie nosedive is etching premature wrinkles on my face as I stress over how much of my hard earned Canadian dollars I’ll be handing over to Uncle Sam for my monthly U.S. student loan payment.

It’s hard for me to maintain any sort of optimism-I’ve always been a pessimist, but for good reason-in the face of what many are dubbing “the next Great Depression.”

No doubt, many of you are finding it more and more difficult to remain positive as you watch your investments, retirement funds and value in your home disappear, learn about more and more job cuts in your sector, and take in all the doom and gloom reports on CNN.

If you’re reading this now, you must have an interest in or a love for silver investing. So, let me give you a little ray of sunshine.

Perhaps you’ve wanted to take advantage of silver’s bargain prices in the paper market but also have the security offered by physical silver only to find that high premiums and low supply make it almost impossible to get in right now. Well, there is a way for serious investors to take advantage of low paper market prices while actually benefitting from the high premiums in the physical market.

Serious silver investors may want to take a cue from precious metals analyst and founder of silver-investor.com, David Morgan. Mr. Morgan has recently bought a 1,000 oz. mini silver future contract and taken delivery. According to Sean Brodrick of Money and Markets.com, Morgan has said other investors are engaging in the practice of arbitrage (the purchase and subsequent sale of the same securities, commodities, or foreign exchange in different markets to profit from unequal prices) between the silver paper and physical markets.

Entrepreneurs, said Morgan could “take advantage of the discrepancy between physical and paper silver – these people could take gold and silver off the exchanges at the spot price and turn it into gold and silver coins and reap the large premium now available.” Besides a mini 1,000 oz mini silver contract, investors can also purchase 5,000 oz silver future contracts on the COMEX.

Although there appear to be several bearish factors influencing the price of silver as far as the paper markets are concerned, Brodrick points to a few reasons the outlook in the physical markets remain bullish.

1) The supply and demand imbalance. The discrepancy between the supply of and demand for physical silver has been widely discussed by many in the silver investment community. If you want more detailed information, Jason Hommel is a good source of information as well as David Morgan.

2) Increasing Investor Demand. Brodrick points to the growing interest among silver enthusiasts in iShares Silver Trust and other silver ETFs, which allow investors to get into the physical silver market without actually having to take position of or store the silver themselves.

3) Silver is cheap compared to gold. The gold/silver ratio is way off its historical mark because the worldwide economic downturn has scared away industrial metals investment. But as the global financial crisis deepens, silver’s historical value as a precious metal and safe haven will take on more importance.

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