ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR INVESTMENT PROFESSIONAL BEFORE MAKING ANY INVESTMENT DECISION
November 11, 2021 | Unintended Consequences
The recognized commodities exchanges, long-perceived as bastions of the free market and the embodiment of the law of supply and demand are anything but. In fact, the mechanics of these exchanges subvert the markets working at every turn. All exchanges are run by the insiders who set the rules in accordance with their own best […]
October 18, 2021 | Silver Eruption
Silver purchased in retail forms tends to be held for long periods of time, often sometimes over a lifetime and passed on to heirs. To some extent that’s because of the rather few opportunities silver investors have had to cash in at high-enough prices. While silver has yet to visit price levels where most investors […]
October 7, 2021 | More Critical Than Ever
Readers know that I am firm in my belief that silver prices have been manipulated for years by large trading firms on the COMEX. I have raised the issue with the CFTC and the COMEX since 1985. Since uncovering the mechanics of the COMEX silver manipulation back then, I have been steadfast in attempting to […]
September 14, 2021 | A Gold Whale Surfaces
Compelling data in recent Commitments of Traders (COT) reports point to the emergence of a very large buyer in COMEX gold futures. The last four COT reports, starting with the report for positions held as of August 10, show a dramatic increase on the long side in gold for the 4 largest traders (not to […]
August 30, 2021 | Major Market Event Ahead
Conditions have aligned for the occurrence of a significant market event in silver and gold. Extreme technical considerations and supply/demand fundamentals have combined to create the likelihood of this event. By “significant market event,” I mean the sudden upward movement of several dollars or more in silver, and an equivalent price move in gold in […]
August 15, 2021 | The Bad, The Ugly and The Good
In the space of two trading days, the world of gold and silver prices was turned on its head. On Friday and Monday, silver plunged to its lowest level of 2021, gold touched its low for the year and the silver/gold price ratio also rose to its most undervalued level for silver of the year. […]
July 2, 2021 | Cheating
Silver is manipulated and suppressed in price and has been for decades because large traders on one side of the COMEX – traders labeled as “commercials” on the short side – are cheaters. Cheating is a deliberate attempt to evade the rules of the game to achieve an unfair advantage. Where do I get off […]
June 21, 2021 | How Much Longer?
How much longer can silver prices be capped in the face of facts so bullish that one can only marvel at the tight grip the on price? To be fair, silver and gold prices have advanced significantly from their price bottoms of last March, with gold hitting all-time highs last summer and silver hitting 8-year […]
May 25, 2021 | Short Subject
Again and again, I have stressed that silver has been suppressed in price for decades by the concentrated short position of the 4 and 8 largest traders in COMEX futures. Many have come to accept this, but my findings do not have universal acceptance. That’s too bad because it’s all that matters in determining price. […]
May 6, 2021 | The CFTC’s Response
At just shy of the two-month mark, I received a response from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission yesterday to my letter of March 5. I had raised highly specific questions regarding the concentrated short position of the four largest traders in COMEX silver futures, both over the week ended Feb 2 in which these traders […]
May 3, 2021 | The Twilight Zone
While many financial developments in the world seem quite strange to me of late, a new observation has me feeling as if I truly entered the Twilight Zone, the TV series that ran from 1959 to 1964, created and hosted by Rod Serling, in which the characters find themselves in disturbing and unusual situations. I […]
April 13, 2021 | A New Piece of the Puzzle
Suddenly, out of nowhere BankAmerica has emerged as a major participant in precious metals OTC derivatives. This new fact is contained in the latest release of the Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) Quarterly Derivatives Report for U.S. banks. The report covers derivatives contracts in the over the counter (OTC) market […]
March 31, 2021 | Turmoil
The core issue in silver remains the concentrated short position in COMEX silver futures – the persistent massive short position held by 4 traders that has artificially suppressed the price for decades. The short position in silver is larger than that of any other commodity in terms of real world production. The CFTC is the […]
March 30, 2021 | New Twists in Silver
On Jan 5, the 4 big shorts held just under 81% of the total commercial short position in silver. Two months later he concentrated short position of the 4 largest traders in silver is even more concentrated. There is great physical tightness, and a budding shortage in both retail and wholesale forms of silver. There’s […]
March 5, 2021 | A Time To Act
Interest in silver and concerns about its price being artificially suppressed by excessive short selling are now at levels never seen before. While those concerns are well-founded, in my opinion, too often the remedy for what to do about it is less clear. Since silver and silver futures trading is regulated by the US Commodity […]
February 8, 2021 | The Cat’s Out of the Bag
In the latest Commitment of Traders report (COT), the issue I have nearly beaten to death for decades – the concentrated short position in COMEX silver futures – took center stage to a degree that had me check and recheck the data. It seems the 4 largest shorts in COMEX silver doubled down and added […]
February 1, 2021 | No Good Reason To Be Short
The current short position in COMEX silver is mostly held by 8 major financial firms. We can only guess who they are because their identities are protected. According to the COT reports, the biggest 4 are short nearly 60 thousand contracts and the next 4 are short nearly 20 thousand contracts. That’s a total of […]
January 24, 2021 | The Silver Shorts’ Last Stand?
I started calculating the financial plight of the 8 big shorts in COMEX gold and silver on a twice-weekly basis around June 2019. That’s when gold moved higher. The big shorts had added quite aggressively to short positions early in the move and when gold rose $100, the big shorts were out $2.2 billion. As […]
January 19, 2021 | Silver Change
The silver story has changed radically over the past year. No longer are the big shorts capable of putting on major short positions knowing that they will get out with big profits. The biggest threat to the big shorts in silver is that investors seem to be awakening to the fact that silver is the […]
January 4, 2021 | Silver History
My involvement with silver began as a commodity broker in the early 1970’s, so I lived through the rise and fall of the Hunt brothers. Before the price peak of $50 in 1980, I brokered what was at the time, the largest retail transaction ever at Drexel Burnham – a tax straddle involving tens of […]
December 8, 2020 | Man Bites Dog
Getting back to gold, it’s not just this week’s increase in the concentrated short position of the 8 largest traders or the sharp increase in net buying by the other large reporting traders that stands out. In a truly “man bites dog” affair, this week’s new concentrated short selling occurred on, essentially, lower prices (save […]
December 1, 2020 | Comex Shutdown
The managed money traders (hedge funds) and the large reporting traders have a combined long position of 244,000 net gold contracts (24.4 million ounces). This just happens to nearly match the concentrated short position of the 8 largest commercial shorts of just over 249,000 contracts. I’d ask you (and the regulators) to think about this. […]
November 18, 2020 | The Most Remarkable Statistic in a Most Remarkable Year
I’m already on record as declaring 2020 as the most significant year ever for silver. Considering all that has transpired this year throughout the country and the world that may not be saying much. After all, you would have to have lived on a different planet to argue otherwise. So let me get a lot […]
October 2, 2020 | The DOJ/CFTC/JPMorgan Settlement
As widely telegraphed over the past week, the US Justice Department and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (along with the SEC) have settled the precious metals spoofing/manipulation case which first came into view in November 2018 with the announcement of a guilty plea by a former JPMorgan trader. The total fine of $920 million was the […]
September 30, 2020 | Rock, Paper, Scissors
Way back in prehistoric times, before electronic gaming, children used to entertain themselves with certain hand games. I was always more of an “odds or even” gamer in which the choice was to display one or two fingers and outguess your opponent. The more sophisticated version was “rock, paper, scissors” which given the slightly greater […]