Eric Sprott, founder of Toronto-based investment firm Sprott Asset Management, is generally considered to be of Canada’s best investment managers. More recently, Sprott has carved out an international reputation as The Canadian Silver Bull.

Originally entering the investment industry in 1981 as a research analyst at Merrill Lynch, he founded Sprott Securities (now called Cormark Securities), which is one of Canada’s largest independently owned securities firms. After spinning-out Sprott Asset Management in 2000 as a separate entity, he divested his entire ownership of Sprott Securities to focus solely on the investment management business. At that time, Sprott was one of the few asset managers to openly state that mining, and the mining of gold in particular, was the place to be. Sprott staked the future of Sprott Asset Management on these beliefs.

In 2009 Sprott began to shift his attention from gold to silver, and has since been a vocal advocate of silver investing. On November 3rd, 2010 Sprott Asset Management launched the Sprott Physical Silver Trust (TSX:PHS.U), a closed-ended fund that invests only in physical silver bullion via an IPO that raised US$575 million. The trust is inter-listed on the TSX and the NYSE Arca.

Despite the recent spike in silver where it peaked at almost $50 an ounce, Eric Sprott still considers the metal to be “the best recommendation anyone could make this decade”. Silver was hit hard after its high on April 24th and reached a low of $32.32 on May 12th, a dramatic decline of 35% over three weeks. Sprott’s response to the sharp decline was somewhat pragmatic, “Last week’s dramatic drop in the price of silver was perhaps due to some unnatural circumstances. My personal feeling is that it was manipulated. The price went down six dollars in 13 minutes.”

On that same day that silver found its recent bottom, Eric Sprott connected with fellow silver stalwart and fiat currency critic Max Keiser for an interview. In the interview, Sprott reiterated his love affair with the shiny white metal. Silver is currently trading at $34 an ounce.

From the Keiser Report: