So what's the new value/share or recommended trading price?
Wouldn't you be better off dividending it out to keep your price reasonable for anyone who wants to buy silver - or is there some way they can get their part of that 30 BTC if they turn shares in to receive silver?
We have already been doing this for the last three weeks. As well, all the other information you have asked for is in those reports (really). Please read them before asking questions here.
2013-04-24 10:02:24 1,222 ฿0.00800000 ฿9.77600000
2013-04-18 12:09:22 1,222 ฿0.00710000 ฿8.67620000
2013-04-11 11:32:50 1,222 ฿0.01700000 ฿20.77400000
2013-03-26 15:39:28 790 ฿0.00140800 ฿1.11232000
2013-02-23 08:28:28 800 ฿0.00128000 ฿1.02400000
Above you can see the payments made at the end of February and March, but you can also see the last three interim payments made before the end of April. These represent distributions made from trading and writing options, but I suppose primarily from trading in and out of positions in JAH and LTC-ATF.B1.
There are many reasons why making these payments was a good idea. You have mentioned some, but you do not have a complete picture. For example yes, having a large non-silver component to the fund makes it less attractive for investors -- but not for the reasons you assumed. There
is adequate value there to justify the price, but what makes it less attractive is that it does not provide a strong correlation to the price of silver. A lot of people get this point wrong. I just finished arguing with a troll on #bitcoin-assets who insisted my fund was garbage because it was so overpriced compared to silver. He refused to accept that we have about 50 BTC worth of coin and investments on hand and that is why we're worth a little more.
Also yes, as you mentioned earlier, having a large non-silver component also means investors won't want to redeem their ounces of silver. That is, you asked "is there some way they can get their part of that 30 BTC if they turn shares in to receive silver?" The answer to this is no, we don't do that. Now normally this is not a problem, investors could just sell their shares and buy even more real silver if they wanted. But a) that's needlessly complex and ruins the whole point which is that we stock and ship silver immediately upon request. b) it insinuates we are trying to run a fractional reserve scheme where we sell shares unbaked by silver -- which is a point I don't think you mentioned. Why does it imply this? Because we can operate in full knowledge no sane investor would redeem their shares. In a worst case scenario we could buy coins after the fact and pocket the difference. Photos and vault certificates would be meaningless in this case because we could have sold the silver and kept the money long ago. So keeping the price close to spot + coin premium + vault storage + shipping is actually a way to prove we're being honest. If we were jacking the books with a price very close to spot and the market moved against us we would instantly blow up. And consider this: we even make more money keeping prices low because as we send coins out to customers our long term costs for secure storage go down. Thus there is a three-pronged financial incentive for us to keep the price low.
In summary,
1. As you know, we have a 2% markup on sales of newly-issued shares. This is a financial incentive for us to keep the fund attractive to new investors (or those looking to redeem coins). We don't make any money if people buy and hold. Our storage costs actually go up. Therefore...
2. ...we have a financial incentive to allow customers to redeem all their coins at any time: our cost for storage goes down.
3. Keeping the price low not only makes the fund seem like a better value, but it shows we have the silver on hand because it encourages redemption. Trust drives customers to us like magnets because we are in the precious metals business.
