Political Metals

Since the recent price take down, we’re inundated by stories of retail buyers not being able to buy physical coins and bars at the ridiculously low spot prices painted by the paper futures markets. For those fortunate enough to get their hands on any physical bullion, it will be at relatively large premiums over spot with long delivery lead times. The disconnect is growing with each dramatic take-down..

“Sold Out”

KH of InvestSilverMalaysia reported that,

Back in Malaysia, it has been a wild ride. With the recent collapse of gold & silver prices, PM suddenly becomes very hot. Lowyat is having comments like 5 pages/per day ever since that crash. Physical silver bullion dealers are not selling. They are either: holding up the stock or, stock have been completely drained. Replenishing takes 2-3 wks. Even so, many bigger supplier from the states are having the same problem too! Too many orders! I am guessing even those at the top of the food chain are having problem processing massive orders. Many smaller local websites just shut down - refusing to take orders. 1cheapsilver has yet to recover from that 26-dollar-fall. It is really a war zone here.

Here’s what greeted him at UOB when he personally went there to buy his gold bullion. Read his story here.

Here’s another story along the same line from the UAE, courtesy of ArabianMoney.

Several readers of ArabianMoney have written to us over the past two weeks to express their astonishment at the current price of silver because demand where they live is so high that stocks have run out.

Consider this comment: ‘I used to buy silver from a shop in Kobar in Saudi. From the last four weeks they said they ran out of silver. I cannot find anyone who sells silver in Saudi now. I asked them from where do they get their silver. They said the UAE. The problem is they only have 1kg bars…and I still cannot find any supplier.’

No stock

Well don’t bother coming to the UAE. Our information is that the 1kg bars mentioned here and featured in a video on the website last month (click here) are all sold out too. We’ve also had feedback about low or no stock in Texas and Australia from big private bullion dealers there.

Now what would normally happen when a commodity is in short supply is that the price would go up to encourage sellers to put some more into the market. That is presently not happening because the silver price is being artificially suppressed in the Comex futures market by the bullion banks acting on instructions from the Fed presumably, so why would you sell that silver cheaply if you happened to own some?

But something has to give and it is the price of physical silver rather than the Comex price of the shiniest of metals. If you can find any silver these days you will pay quite a substantial premium over the spot price. But pay it because that is probably still a bargain compared to where silver prices are going.

The truth is that silver is a rare metal, more rare than gold. Silver reserves have been estimatated at one-hundredth of gold reserves. Silver is after all consumed by industrial processes and reserves have dwindled over the years because the price has been kept so low for so long by market manipulation. Why is that?

Silver price fixing

This market manipulation dates back to the last silver boom of the late 70s and the spectacular $50 spike in the price in 1980. The central banks then saw suppression of the silver and gold price as a part of their war on inflation. They clearly lost that war but kept gold and silver prices down until this decade.

Thirty-one years later and we are still not back to those silver prices despite a seven-fold increase in the global money supply. On that reckoning silver ought to be $350 an ounce, not $30 today.

However, the snap back for silver prices now has the capacity to be sensational, and far beyond the mini-spike in the first few months of this year from $30 to almost $50 again. So those who go seeking out physical silver to buy at current prices are going to be very well rewarded and soon, not in 31 years!

ArabianMoney continues to stick with silver as our top tip for 2011 (click here) and that means a big rebound in the price before the end of the year.

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.. and watch what the Chinese are doing

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It is evident from the stories above that trying to catch the absolute intermediate bottoms during corrections and expecting to buy physical bullion at those prices may be illusionary. So, if there are no gold vending machines nearby, what can the ordinary man on the street do to take advantage of the recent violent take-downs (expect more to come) and the increasingly volatile paper gold & silver prices? Consider these 2 options.

(1) Cost averaging

While there’s a possibility that that PMs prices may be forced to step into the elevator shaft yet again, the probability of that happening is anyone’s guess. For serious savers who understand that physical bullion is the only financial asset with no counter-party risks and that the fundamentals for owning PMs have not deteriorated one bit, the recent market intervention by the Powers That Be (PTB) should be viewed as a generous gift and an opportunity to start (or continue) accumulating on a cost averaging basis.  Here’s an excellent article on Ounce Cost Averaging buying strategy.

(2) Buy bullion like a professional

Retail buyers of physical bullion are so very far down the food chain that it’s very difficult to take full advantage of the sharp (deep and fast) drop in paper prices. This has driven some to consider PM derivatives like ETFs and pooled accounts. While these vehicles offer the advantage of capturing the narrow window of opportunity presented during price smashing operations by the PTB, the danger lies in the fact that these players end up buying and owning paper claims to PMs instead of owning the real thing. Living in the current financial system teetering on the verge of collapse, the more prudent among us would like to stay away from these investments carrying counter-party risks.

That leads us to the option of buying and owning physical bullion like professionals do - at the London Bullion Market. Of course we can’t do that directly. The way around is to use the services of established bullion dealers that act as the only middleman between us and the London Bullion Market. BullionVault, GoldMoney and AFE are 3 of the more reputable companies in this industry I’m familiar with, and they are reviewed here.

Learn more about buying and storage options, including discussions about Allocated Bullion Accounts in the comments section.

Updated: Oct 9

• Global Demand for Gold & Silver at Unprecedented Levels - KWN

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Here are two great interviews discussing the reasons & implications of the recent price action of gold & silver.
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Sean (SGT Report) discusses the recent silver price take-down with David Schectman.

• Place of technical analysis in a manipulated market
• Silver is so oversold “It’s a License to Steal”
• Difference between physical silver and paper silver prices
• Why hedge funds sold their winning positions in gold & silver
• While hedge funds, Soros & Paulson sold paper silver in the Comex, the Indians, Russians, Chinese, Arabs and retail buyers bought up all the physical silver they could get their hands on. (Make sure you watch part 2)

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Al Korelin (Korelin Economics Report) discusses the recent silver price take-down with David Morgan. Some key points:

• Have the fundamentals for silver changed?
• CME margin hikes favour the shorts
• Political events and how they affect the price of silver
• If you don’t want to lose any money, stay out of the futures market. They are for professionals
• Stay out of this sector if you don’t have a high degree of accumen in the industry or can’t take wild swings

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“When you own gold you’re fighting every central bank in the world”. Jim Rickards

To a great extend, that holds true for silver as well. This week, holders of Political Metals lost a battle, but certainly not the war. Measured against the USD, gold and silver are worth less compared to a week ago by 9.6% and 26.3% respectively.

It all started with Ben Bernanke’s statement, following the 2-day FOMC meeting, stating the obvious - that “there are significant downside risks to the economic outlook, including strains in global financial markets”. His antidote was a plan to purchase $400 billion of long-term Treasury bonds and to sell an equivalent amount of short-term debt. More commonly referred to as “Operation Twist 2″, this plan seeks to further reduce long term interest rates, after having pledged to hold short term rates practically at zero until 2013.

That announcement, made in the backdrop of the Eurozone debt crisis and news of slower growth in China, sent global stocks and commodity markets into a waterfall decline. This set up was ideal for the bullion banks who have massive gold and silver short positions. All they needed to do was to pull the trigger, and that’s exactly what they did on Thursday. Silver was pushed down sharply through its key 50 and 200 day moving averages, triggering an avalanche of tech funds selling the following day.

Going for the final kill of the week, news of yet another margin hike by CME (gold by 21%, silver by 16%) leaked into the market towards the end of Friday’s trading day. That further fuelled the selling, pushing silver briefly below $30 before closing at $31.08 - down 26.3% for the week.

In other markets this week, the Dow suffered its biggest loss since 2008. In four days U.S. stocks lost $1.1 trillion in value.  The MSCI all-country world share index (tracking thousands of stocks from developed and emerging countries) recorded its second worst quarter in 23 years and the 30-year bond rates dropped 55bps - the biggest move since the 1987 Black Monday.

So there you have it, Dr. Ben Bernanke, bullion banks & CME working together in perfect harmony. I don’t believe for a moment that the resulting market turmoil was any surprise to Bernanke. Despite saying that gold is not money, he’s smarter than most people made him out to be. After all, he achieved an SAT score of 1590 out of 1600, graduated from Harvard and has a PhD in economics from MIT. Contrary to its statutory mandate of foster maximum employment and price stability, this market turmoil I believe is a piece of precision engineering to achieve some larger agenda. This round is yours, congratulations Ben!

This engineered global markets take down could be part of the deflationary phase that Mike Maloney talked about, which is a prelude to the hyper-inflation phase. They have to assist the bullion banks cover their shorts and bring the Political Metals price down to a lower base before starting the next round of QE or equivalent. Marc Faber told ThomsonReuters that “if the S&P drops to around 900-950, we’ll get QE3 for sure”.

Four ways to view the developments over the past week

If you’re reading this blog, you’re not a professional or a day trader, possibly someone already invested in gold or silver, someone holding some Political Metals (I distinguish between investing & holding here) or someone in the process of researching the matter. As non professional traders, we have to look through and not at the turmoil unfolding before us. All of the bloody carnage above are on “paper” or bits on silicon - illusionary financial derivatives of something tangible (like gold and silver) or derivatives of something totally virtual and non-physical (like interest rates, bonds, debts, CDS, etc). Real or imaginary, they are all derivatives backed by nothing more than a promise or lies of a third party.

Unfortunately, in so far as gold & silver is concerned, the outcome of the imaginary paper price wars above gets applied to the physical world. Price discovery currently comes from the paper derivatives market. Banks and multi billion dollar hedge funds throwing thousands of futures contracts or bets at each other (most of which are done through computerised High Frequency Trading algorithms) determine the price of the coin or bar you pick up at your local bullion dealers. Until such time when this absurd situation of the tail wagging the dog changes, I suggest 4 possible ways for you to view the developments over the past week, using silver as an example.

There’s a big difference between Investing(1) & Holding(2). If you adopt approach (1), and are smart enough to handle scenario (3), congratulations! Trading this dip or swapping silver for gold just before the GSR shot over 56 would have reaped a handsome return. After years of following newsletter writers, both paid and free, I came to the conclusion that attempting to achieve (3) is at best illusionary, and at worst risky. This is particularly true in a manipulated market. Take a look at some of the forecasts by well respected industry players here. Either they missed this week’s price action or are not telling us something. Richard Russell puts it this way:

I look at gold and silver, not as a play for profits, but as an accumulation of hard assets, in a world that it drowning in fiat money, and a world that will probably print trillions more of irredeemable paper.

Finally, if you’ve been waiting patiently (4) or have spare dry powder, congratulations! While the paper price of gold & silver gets whacked, physical demand is very strong. KWN reported that Sprott Money temporarily runs out of physical silver. So, get ready to pick up your discount. Not necessarily immediately, but then again, picking the absolute bottom can also be illusionary. Best industry advise is cost averaging.

Updated:

• 28 Sep “On the basis of the hard information available early this week, it is highly likely that gold and silver prices were pushed down rather than fell as a result of free market trading.” Read Patrick A. Heller’s take on how the recent gold & silver market manipulation was orchestrated.
• 30 Sep “Engineered fall in gold and silver; Trying to scare people out of precious metals“ Gerald Celente

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by Theodore Butler - Butler Research | August 11th, 2011

Here’s an excerpt from an update sent to subscribers on August 10, 2011. For subscription information please go to www.butlerresearch.com

It is important to try to understand, as much as possible, what are the dynamics behind the large price moves recently. It is human nature to accept any plausible-sounding reason offered if it is in conformance with the price direction. In a big price move, we demand an immediate explanation and then we accept any explanation offered, even if it doesn’t stand the scrutiny of further analysis. For instance, big price declines in copper and crude oil are immediately explained and accepted as being due to weakness in the world economy. Yet we know that the world economy and copper and oil fundamentals can’t possibly change quickly enough to be the real explanation. Please allow me to offer what I think is the real cause behind all the crazy price volatility and then to suggest something constructive you might want to do about it.

What’s behind the volatility is unbridled speculation and computer-type HFT trading gone wild. Oil didn’t drop $20 a barrel or copper 25 cents a pound because there was a sudden fall-off in demand or increase in supplies. This was all about speculative trading gone haywire. Let me be more specific. The whole premise of the economic justification behind commodity futures trading has been bastardized. US law has sanctioned the trading of commodity futures for the express purpose of allowing legitimate producers and consumers to hedge or transfer their price risks to speculators. But the wild price swings we are witnessing are not related to legitimate hedging. The volatility is as a result of speculators battling speculators, with real hedgers largely on the sideline. This is relatively easy to demonstrate.

The big price moves are the result of moving averages and other technical signals being violated. Technical funds and other momentum type traders rush into and out of the markets, often on an intra-day basis, as a result of these price changes. Against those technical type traders are aligned the “commercials” that take the opposite side of these transactions. But these commercials are also speculators and are not the legitimate hedgers they purport to be. Real producers and consumers don’t hedge based upon changes in moving averages on a daily basis. Real hedgers don’t day trade. Real hedgers don’t engage in HFT. The fact is that the commercial traders are just trading against the tech fund speculators and this makes the commercial traders speculators as well. This is an important distinction. It is why the big commercials in COMEX gold may be in trouble, namely, they weren’t hedging in the first place and their short speculation may have been a serious miscalculation because it wasn’t a legitimate hedge originally.

If my analysis is correct, then most of the volatility is due to one giant sick game of unbridled speculation. The speculators include not just the obvious and visible speculators, but also the commercials pretending to be hedgers. These commercial speculators in drag include the largest banks, like JPMorgan. How has it gotten to the point where our insured deposit taking institutions are among the biggest speculators? This speculative trading activity on the part of banks has greatly increased the current price volatility and increased the dangers of systemic risk. How is that good?

We’ve gotten to this point because our financial system structure has encouraged more and more speculation on the part of our important financial institutions. Leading us on the way to ruin is the criminal enterprise, also known as the CME Group, which has become dependent of encouraging more of the mindless daily speculative trading to fatten its bottom line. So harmful is the CME’s role in all of this that in order for the CME to be blessed, the public must be damned.

What can we do about this sorry state of affairs? Quite simply, what we have been doing, namely, to petition the regulators to enforce the laws governing manipulation and disruptive trading practices. I know that many are tired of petitioning the CFTC because there has been little visible response from them regarding the silver manipulation. Yet I am still convinced that this is the best and perhaps only constructive route. I’m not going to beg you to contact them if you feel it’s a waste of time. Likewise, I’m not going to promise you that the agency will do the right thing, as that’s up to them. All I do know is that silver is manipulated by virtue of a concentrated short position on the COMEX and that is against the law. You must always do what you feel is right, regardless of how it may turn out or how many times you tried in the past or whether someone else will also do the right thing.

I know I’m going to send this article to the CFTC (as well as to the CME and JPMorgan). I invite you to do likewise if you are so inclined or write in your own words and ask them to break up the concentrated short position in silver. I would ask that you remain respectful if you do write so as not to distort the intent of your message. I know most of us are sick and tired of the silver crime in progress and the regulators failure to deal with it, but you must rise above your emotions to be effective.

Theodore Butler
Butlerresearch.com

For subscription information to Ted Butler’s private newsletter, please go to www.butlerresearch.com

Theodore Butler is an independent Silver Analyst who has been publishing unique precious metals commentaries on the internet since 1996. He offers a subscription service with once or twice weekly commentaries including detailed analysis of the Commitment of Traders Report, regulatory developments, supply/demand considerations, and topics of interest to investors in precious metals, with an emphasis on silver. Always outside the box. You can subscribe to his service by clicking here.

Some key points raised by Eric Sprott, CEO and Chief Investment Officer of Sprott Asset Management in this May 16 interview with Max Keiser.

• Silver-Best recommendation anyone can make this decade
• Investment dollars going into silver is same or greater than that going into gold, which is trading at a 40:1 ratio. “I can’t see the price ratio staying in this range.”
• On silver’s recent parabolic move: “it’s going to be way more parabolic than we have today”
• Last week’s decline was premeditated, orchestrated
• Recent silver “Raid” was more to get the Shorts off the hook than to reduce the speculation of the Longs

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When someone like Ted Butler says “It was something I had never witnessed before”, it must be something we should take cognisance of, considering the fact that he’s one of the most authoritative, if not the most authoritative silver guru around.

Here’s a summary of last weeks silver price action followed by Ted Butler’s take from his Weekly Review of May 7, 2011.

• 30% decline in a week
• Biggest price loss in 31 years
• $6 takedown in 12 minutes on Sunday evening (May 1, US time) on light volume
• 8 years of global Silver supply changed hands last week (on paper!)
• 84% increase in silver margin, 5 increases in 8 days

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Theodore Butler | silverseek

The historic decline this week in silver creates strong emotion. Watching great amounts of wealth disappear, quite literally in minutes amid disorderly trading conditions is a genuine fear for any investor. Worse is seeing no obvious legitimate reason to explain the carnage. If that doesn’t scare you, nothing will. Especially if you already harbored unease about how the whole silver market operated.

But fear is an emotion that burns out fairly quickly. A human being can’t stay in an intense state of fear of financial catastrophe without selling out at some point or mentally adjusting to the new level of price. Then the conditions that led to the fear in the first place are replaced by some other emotion. If evidence exists that the sudden financial loss could and should have been prevented, the new emotion becomes one of anger. Anger at who or what might have caused the loss and who should have prevented it. I think there is compelling evidence pointing to who and what caused this silver crash as well as who should have prevented it.

The first thing we must recognize is that this was an unusually intense price smash. Silver fell 30% for the week, its biggest price loss in 31 years. The decline was highlighted by record trading volume on the COMEX and in shares of SLV. From any objective measure, the trading was disorderly, indicating little true liquidity despite the record volume. That’s because much of the trading was conducted by high frequency trading (HFT) computer bots whose clear purpose seems to be to cause disruptions to prices. These are the same disruptive traders that caused the flash crash in the stock market last year. I believe it was these traders who started the price decline with the $6 hit in 12 minutes on last Sunday evening. Their primary reason for existence seems to be causing prices to collapse.

Why these HFT cheaters are allowed to pollute our markets is beyond me. The only clear beneficiary to their trading is the exchange itself which pockets fees on every contract traded. After they crashed the stock market last year, I believe the HFT computer bots toned down their stock market activity due to regulatory pressure. That’s fine, but why were they then allowed to infect silver trading with their disruptive practices? This is just one question I have about this week’s events in the silver market and I will list them all in a moment. First I would like to get something off my chest.

I am appalled at what happened in silver this week for a very special reason. I can’t say this latest blatant take down looks out of place for a manipulated market which I have been alleging for 25 years. In fact, not that we needed additional proof that the silver market was rigged, but this intentional price smash provided that proof in spades. Admittedly, I look at silver differently than most folks, but there was something very special about this week. The special reason I am particularly appalled this time is that this is the first silver price smash for the record books that took place during the tenure of Gary Gensler as Chairman of the CFTC. There have been some multi-dollar price declines since Gensler was confirmed in May of 2009, but this week’s smash is the first mega-down move under his watch. That makes it very special to me.

As you know, I have put Gensler on a pedestal, repeatedly referring to him as the greatest chairman in CFTC history. Considering my past experiences with the agency, I still marvel at my transformation. I think he has done more than anyone ever to reform commodity regulation, including working diligently, although very quietly, to end the silver manipulation. As you also may know, I have generally come under great criticism and disagreement from many of you about my opinion of Gensler. I have respected that criticism and have used it to reflect on and test my continued belief in the chairman.

This week’s events in silver have created what may be a seminal moment. I still hold a deep belief in Gensler’s character and purpose, but it is important to judge how he and the Commission react to this week’s silver price plunge. Certainly, Gensler doesn’t answer to me, but he does answer to the public who he has sworn to serve and protect. The public was not protected this week in silver. I don’t think he had any inkling beforehand about what transpired this week in silver, but he is too smart not to grasp the significance of the silver price plunge and the circumstances that caused it. How he reacts to his first real-time case of blatant fraud and manipulation in silver will be a key test for him. I sure hope his reaction is different from the typical CFTC reaction before he arrived. You know, the three monkeys’ see, hear and speak no evil reaction.

Gensler is fully aware that there have been more public complaints and comments and agency investigations concerning silver over the years than for any other issue in agency history. The public has done whatever has been suggested or required by the Commission to make its voice known on silver. Cumulatively, there have been tens of thousands of public and private comments to the Commission regarding silver, from position limits to pointing out specific instances of trading abuse. While I suspect progress has been made behind the scenes, that progress is not visible to the public. Here we have a case where the public couldn’t possibly be more vocal to the prime regulator about wrong-doing in silver and is then subject to the most egregious takedown in history.

Silver investors are not second class citizens, yet they are being treated as such. Generally, they are among the most God-fearing, family oriented, hard working, law abiding, productive and patriotic members of society. Chairman Gensler and the Commission know this from the comments that silver investors send in continuously. Then why are silver investors not offered equal protection under the law that the Commission has sworn to uphold? Is there something about “and justice for all” that specifically excludes those that invest in silver? If what occurred in silver this week had instead took place in the stock market, corn, cattle, or any other market, there would be non-stop congressional and CFTC inquiry and debate. Instead, silver investors are confronted with a non-stop barrage of propaganda indicating they were idiots for considering silver.

Please allow me to be blunt and specific. These are the questions that Gensler must confront and address–

One - the $6 takedown in 12 minutes on Sunday evening on initial light Globex volume was clearly intended to get silver prices rolling downhill. It was something I had never witnessed before. There were no fundamental developments in silver to account for it. Therefore, this was not true price discovery, but price-setting and manipulation. What is the Commission’s take on this matter?

Two - the series of margin increases by the CME Group had the effect of adding downward pressure to a market already intentionally rolling downhill. At best, the margin increases prove that silver margins were previously much too low and the CME is incompetent and negligent in setting margins and that function should be taken away from them. At worst, the CME intentionally raised and timed silver margins to aid and abet its most important members in causing the price of silver to crash. In other words, the CME resisted raising margins on the way up as that would have damaged the insider shorts and waited until prices began moving lower to hurt the longs and reward the shorts. I’ve learned from experience that it is best to view the CME as a criminal enterprise. What is the Commission’s opinion on this?

Three – the record high trading volume and 30% price smash indicate there was little true liquidity present. This is due to a disproportionate share of trading being performed by HFT computer bots. Why are these traders allowed to exist and control so much a share of silver trading?

Four – there has been much media and other commentary about silver being in a bubble that burst due to large leveraged speculative buying. This story has been repeated so often that it is now accepted as being true. Yet the CFTC’s own data in the COT reports indicate that no such speculative buying occurred in silver futures prior to the price crash. Commodity law holds that it is a criminal violation to spread false market information. Why is the CFTC allowing this false market information to be disseminated unchallenged? By remaining silent and not setting the record straight, the Commission itself may be in violation of the law.

Five – while outside its direct jurisdiction, the Commission is aware of the allegations of manipulative impact the short selling of shares in the big silver ETF, SLV, has had on the price of silver. What is the Commission’s position on this and has the agency referred this matter to the SEC or taken it up with BlackRock, the trust’s sponsor?

Since the last official denial by the CFTC that anything was wrong in the silver market in May 2008, the agency has issued no further denials. Instead, they initiated a new investigation in September of 2008, but little has been said about the findings of this ongoing silver investigation. I think that the denials of a silver manipulation ceased primarily because of Gary Gensler’s assumption of office two years ago. From day one, he has said and done the things which were consistent with the termination of the silver manipulation. That’s why I have publicly (and privately) expressed my admiration and respect for him.

But this week’s intentional price smash in silver brings us to a critical junction. No, I am not worried about the price of silver in the long term, as the realities of the supply and demand factors are stronger than any manipulation. What I am concerned about are the principles of market integrity and the rule of law. In those terms, what happened this week is the worst thing possible. The public has warned the Commission to no end about wrongdoing in the silver market, only to see that wrongdoing blatantly displayed again. There are many legitimate questions about what actually took place, such as the ones I have listed above.

I think I comprehend the magnitude of the difficult task confronting Gensler in silver. But it is the difficulty of the task that defines the true character of a man or woman. Fixing simple problems and answering easy questions do not lead to greatness. With no pain, comes little gain. Had there been no historic and intentional price crash in silver this week, it would have been appropriate to allow the agency the time necessary to resolve the manipulation. But for the Commission to remain silent now would diminish us all. It’s time for Gensler to speak out on silver and this week’s events. For our collective sake, I hope he does.

Ted Butler

May 7, 2011

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Related Read:

Anatomy of Silver Manipulation (May 1-6 takedown) - By Avery Goodman | Seeking Alpha