However, I do believe that this capping is secular, as it was last year in December. The 'big shorts' do not wish to mark their accumulated losses to market at a high price, preferring to hide their losses while they trade around them and take positions for the next leg up in higher beta wagers like miners.
Here is a brief comment from Ted Butler:
"The one good thing about this week’s price smash in silver (and gold) is that it should have removed any doubt that it had nothing to do with anything except COMEX price manipulation. By anything I mean the smash had nothing to do with physical market fundamentals or the trading of metals in any other market; this was a COMEX production pure and simple.
It was actually refreshing that it was so clearly a COMEX generated smash, as it made any attempt at alternative explanation look silly. If one doesn’t see that paper COMEX trading was the cause of this week’s sharp price declines, it can only be because of a refusal to see the clear facts.
The fact is that paper positioning on the COMEX silver futures derivatives market is overwhelming the price influence emanating from the host world market for physical silver, or in other words, the tail is wagging the dog. Real supply and demand go out the window and artificial and manipulative pricing have replaced it. The commercial paper traders, led by JPMorgan, are involved in a private big money speculative trading war with other speculative traders called technical funds and that war, because it is so much larger at times, is dictating the price of silver to everyone else in the real world – miners, users and physical investors.
That’s why so many are scratching their heads trying to explain the price swoon this week – it made no sense from a real world perspective. While I was quite upset with the circumstances of this week’s smash, I certainly was not scratching my head as to how it occurred. Hopefully, that goes for you as well. I’ll have much more to say after the usual review.
As I have been reporting, the signals from the real world of physical silver have been unusually bullish in that they all point towards tightness. The signals from the paper market have been bearish, mainly in the form of JPMorgan’s large concentrated short position. This remains the one negative in silver against a wide array of positives.
It came down to which was going to dominate the other in the short term, as in the long term the physical world will win out. It still comes down to paper versus physical to my mind. Clearly, the crooks at JPMorgan and the CME had their way with the price this week, with the wimps and incompetents at the CFTC looking on. It is entirely possible that the crooks may succeed in inducing more technical fund selling with lower prices from here. But there are also increasingly strong signals from the physical silver market that the crooks won’t prevail for much longer."
Three Experts on the Gold/Silver Price Drop
Merry Christmas!
