The Afterpay Ltd (ASX: APT) share price has continued its positive run and charged higher again on Monday.

At one stage the payments company’s shares were up as much as 10% to a new record high of $49.00.

Why is the Afterpay share price charging higher?

Investors have been buying Afterpay’s shares on Monday due to a combination of positive investor sentiment and the announcement of board changes.

In respect to the latter, this morning the company announced that Elana Rubin will become its Chair with immediate effect. She had been in the role on an interim basis but has been made permanent now.

Rubin will retire from the ME Bank board following its June 2020 meeting, but remain as a Non-Executive Director for Telstra Corporation Ltd (ASX: TLS) and Slater & Gordon Limited (ASX: SGH).

In addition to this, the company has appointed Sharon Rothstein as an Independent Non-Executive Director. She will formally join the board on 1 June 2020.

Rothstein is based in the United States and presently sits on the board of crowd sourced reviews business Yelp. She is also an Operating Partner at growth equity firm, Stripes Group.

What else is driving the Afterpay share price higher?

Investors have been buying the company’s shares this month after it provided a very positive update on its U.S. operations.

That update revealed that there are now more than five million active customers using its buy now pay later service in the country. This makes it the company’s largest geographic segment by some distance, despite it only launching there two years ago.

Impressively, more than one million new customers joined during a ten-week period at the height of the pandemic.

Nick Molnar, Co-Founder and U.S. CEO of Afterpay, commented: “At a time in which ecommerce has become the primary way people are shopping, there is a growing interest and demand among consumers to pay for things they want and need over time using their own money – instead of turning to expensive loans with interest, fees or revolving debt.”

Can its shares go higher?

I feel Afterpay’s shares are probably fully valued at this point. So, I wouldn’t recommend buying shares if you’re only making a short term investment.

But if you’re in for the long haul, then I certainly would be a buyer. I believe its global expansion and potential new product launches in the future will drive strong earnings growth and returns for investors over the next decade and beyond.

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Motley Fool contributor James Mickleboro has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool Australia owns shares of and has recommended Telstra Limited. The Motley Fool Australia owns shares of AFTERPAY T FPO. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Scott Phillips.

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Recent events indicate we are at the beginning of a silver bull market. The silver to gold ratio is larger than it has ever been in my lifetime. Industrial demand is starting to come back online, and the world is seeing increase industrial use for renewable assets and batteries. Also, I stack (or collect) precious metals and I cannot get any until July. 

Precious metals are not formed on earth. They come from the single most violent event in the universe, when a star goes supernova. They then land on earth and through geological processes end up in various types of deposits over millions of years. So not only are they rare on earth, they are some of the rarest metals in the universe!

I have been stacking precious metals for about 30 years now. In this time, I have learned two things about silver in particular.

First, it is very volatile. In US dollars, the gold price has rise by 11.4%, year to date (at the time of writing). Since the silver bull market started (around late April), the silver price in US dollars has risen 10.1% in a month. Second, it always seems to snap back to an average ratio. In the 48 years since 1970, it averaged 57:1. I buy gold when the ratio is close to average, and I buy silver when it is large. Today the ratio is ~103:1.

The silver bull market

South32 Ltd (ASX: S32) owns the silver and lead producing Cannington mine in Queensland. Cannington is one of the world’s largest and lowest cost silver mines. It produces 6% of the total world silver production. With an earnings yield of 13.6% at the time of writing, South32 appears to be selling cheap. For the 3 years it has been profitable it has achieved an average return on capital expended of 27%. This is a very good user of capital.

BHP Group Ltd (ASX: BHP) started out as a silver miner and still produces a lot of silver as a by-product. In FY2019, it produced around 2.9 Moz of silver. BHP is well placed across a range of commodities including the booming iron ore trade as well as future facing copper and nickel production. 

Of the major producers, Oz Minerals (ASX: OZL) processed approximately 630,421 ounces of silver in FY19 as a byproduct of its gold production. However, Sandfire Resources Ltd (ASX: SFR) is in the feasibility stage of a mineral deposit in Botswana with a known silver reserve of 14.6Moz. Its share price is likely to see a bump as the silver bull market takes hold.

Foolish Takeaway

Australia is well placed for the silver bull market – we have the third largest silver reserves on the planet. Our miners also have access to large deposits of silver across the world. We are very cost effective miners with a demonstrated capacity to bring production online quickly. 

More reading

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Motley Fool contributor Daryl Mather has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool Australia has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Scott Phillips.

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I think investors need to be smart about which shares they buy at the moment.

The first wave of the coronavirus seems to be passing, but we haven’t seen the full economic pain of it yet. There could still be a second wave.

I think smart growth share investors with $2,000 should go for ideas that which long-term growth potential but could see growth accelerate due to the current situation.

If you have $2,000, I’d be looking at one of these smart share ideas:

Bubs Australia Ltd (ASX: BUB)

Bubs is one of the lucky businesses seeing its growth accelerate during this period. In the update for the third quarter to 31 March 2020, Bubs said its quarterly revenue of $19.7 million was up 67% on the prior corresponding period and up 36% on the previous quarter.

Customers are stocking up on Bubs products. The infant formula business recently announced another impressive distribution announcement which will see more products sold in more shops.

I was pleased to see that the company generated a positive operating cashflow of $2.3 million for the period and ended with a cash balance of $36.4 million. Positive cashflow is an important step for a small cap. 

It may be too bullish of me to expect it to follow in the exact footsteps of other ASX infant formula shares, but it’s making some very promising moves.

Magellan High Conviction Trust (ASX: MHH) 

Many of the world’s best businesses aren’t listed in Australia. You could look to invest in them directly, or you could invest in them indirectly. I like the idea of this listed investment trust (LIT) which is invested in around 10 of the best shares in the world. You don’t need to worry about which individual shares to own.

Its top five holdings include Alibaba, Alphabet, Microsoft, Starbucks and Tencent. It also owns Facebook. Apart from Starbucks, I think the other top four are clearly in a good position to keep earning strong profits during this difficult period because of their digital business models.

We can sometimes buy this LIT at a nice discount when its share price is less than its net asset value (NAV) per share). At the moment that discount is around 5%, not bad.

Pushpay Holdings Ltd (ASX: PPH)

Pushpay is another share I think that can be a strong performer over the next three years. It already has been very good since the start of May.

FY20 was a great result and the earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation and foreign currency (EBITDAF) is expected to jump again in FY21 by around 100%.

I expect electronic donations to US churches to rise significantly because of the coronavirus. I like that Pushpay’s app also allows those churches to livestream their services to people who can’t be there.

Pushpay is a great share to invest in because its margins are rapidly rising. It’s starting to generate good cashflow and there are still plenty of countries and (non-church) charitable sectors to expand into.

Foolish takeaway

I really like all three of these share ideas. At the current prices it’s hard to pick between them, though I’d put Bubs and Pushpay slightly higher. I think they all have very promising futures.

More reading

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• Where growth, income, and value investors can invest right now
• 3 top ASX growth shares that could smash the market in the 2020s

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