Certainly not at The Bucket Shop, which showed all quiet in the reports from the warehouses and deliveries yesterday.
As noted in an intraday post which you may read here, gold and silver were both hit in the usual manner shortly after the trade in paper opened up this morning.
That of course is not odd or interesting. More like the modes du monde these days. The markets open, and then attempts are made to cheat us. And then the nibbling continues on more subtly for the rest of the day. If we do not complain too much, they leave us alone, and just take a little bit from every trade through their algos and HFT.
No what was odd was that gold snapped back almost immediately from its hit, but poor silver went down almost 3 percent and stayed down, losing the fifteen handle.
Is any of this an efficient market mechanism, a 'level playing field' of price discovery?
No, it is more like a con game, with the basic structure of the old child's game of Snakes and Ladders. Or Chutes 'n Ladders as it is called in the States.
The snakes lie in wait for the passerby, ready to take them down a notch. And they use the ladders of insider knowledge and good old fashioned cheating to give themselves a leg up.
And no one notices. And if they dare say anything, they are assaulted with contrived nonsense that sounds good, sometimes so good that even people that one might think to be their companions in a righteous cause are taken in by it, and propagate it.
And for what? What does it profit someone, to betray their own cause and their associates? Is it money? That I can understand, although it certainly does make the act particularly craven. Perhaps it is something more amenable to rationalization, such as pride, or just an exhaustion in fighting a good cause for all the wrong reasons, and failing to receive the recognition and rewards one thinks that they deserve?
Who can remain standing, if they are merely standing on their own pride and self-interest?
We must all hold to something greater than ourselves, better than ourselves, or we will surely fail to remain standing in the winds that will soon be blowing across the land.
Have a pleasant evening.
