No one knows the machinations of the day-to-day silver price better than Ted Butler.
Ted publishes bi-weekly commentary at www.butlerresearch.com, with a special focus on the silver market, which he's been closely following for over 30 years. Ted is an expert's expert.
So naturally, that's whom I turned to for an in-depth perspective on what's really going on with the silver price. As usual, Ted tells it like it is.
I think you'll be fascinated by Ted's tremendous insights...
Ted Butler on Silver Price Manipulation
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Bart Chilton Response to my Email |
Ted, you're widely recognized as the foremost expert on manipulation in the silver futures market. How do you define manipulation, and how are the main players benefiting from that?
Manipulation is another way of saying someone controls and dominates the market by means of an excessively large position. So, just by holding such a large concentrated position, the manipulation is largely explained. In real terms, whenever a single entity or a few entities come to dominate a market, all sorts of alarms should be sounded. This is at the heart of U.S. antitrust law. It is no different under commodity law.
Price manipulation is the most serious market crime possible under commodity law. In fact, there is a simple and effective and time-proven antidote to manipulation that has existed for almost a century, and that solution is speculative position limits. Currently, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is attempting to institute position limits in silver, but the big banks are fighting it tooth and nail.
As far as any benefits the manipulators may reap, it varies with each entity. But if you dominate and control a market by means of a large concentrated position, you can put the price wherever you desire at times, and that's exactly what the silver manipulators do regularly. This explains why we have such wicked sell-offs in silver; because the big shorts pull all sorts of dirty market tricks to send the price lower.
Could you tell us when and how you got started researching this matter?
It started around 1985, when a brokerage client asked me to explain how silver could remain so low in price (in the single digits) when the world was consuming more metal than was being produced. I accepted the intellectual challenge, and it took me more than a year to figure out that the paper short positions on the COMEX were so large as to constitute an almost unlimited supply. It was this paper supply that was depressing the price.
Who are the main players in this manipulation scheme? On average, what percentage of COMEX silver contracts are "controlled" by these main players?
Under U.S. commodity law, the names of individual traders are kept confidential. However, it is no secret that the commercial traders are the big shorts. It is also no secret that these big commercial shorts are mostly money center banks and financial institutions. Based upon government data and correspondence, the largest such short almost certainly is JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), who inherited their big silver short position from Bear Stearns when JPM took over that firm in 2008.
Together, the eight largest commercial silver shorts on the COMEX generally account for 50% to 60% of the entire net COMEX silver market, with JPMorgan alone holding around 25% or more of the entire market. I would hold that those percentages of concentration and control constitute manipulation, in and of themselves. By the way, there is no comparable concentration on the long side; only the short side of silver.
What exactly are the dominant players doing to manipulate the price?
The current exact mechanism they use to suddenly rig the price lower is High Frequency Trading (HFT). This is the placing of sell orders in great quantities by computer programs that suddenly appear as legitimate orders, but are really mostly "spoofs," or orders entered and canceled immediately (in the fractions of a second). When the sell orders first appear, they spook others into selling as they give the appearance of great selling about to hit the market. Instead, it is all a bluff, intended only to scare others into selling, as the vast majority of these original sell orders are never executed, nor were they ever intended to be executed. They were designed for one purpose only - to scare others into selling.
Through HFT, the commercials are able to push prices suddenly lower on very little actual volume. But once prices are put lower, the outside selling (from those who are frightened by the drop in prices) hits the market. It is that outside selling from technical traders that the commercials then buy. In a nutshell that's the HFT scam in silver. It is important to grasp the fact that the actual selling (and commercial buying) takes place AFTER the price drops. Most people think great selling is what causes the price to decline, but that's not true. The great selling only comes in after the price has been put lower, which is the purpose behind HFT in silver.
What impact, if any, has the arrival of silver ETFs had on the silver price, manipulated or otherwise?
A giant impact. The introduction of the big silver ETF in 2006 is probably the single biggest reason behind the climb in silver prices from the $7 area the year before. Investors have purchased close to 600 million ounces of silver in all the silver ETFs over the past six years. Without that buying, I doubt we would have made it over the $10 mark. While silver is still manipulated due to the concentrated short position on the COMEX, the introduction and success of the various silver ETFs has impacted the price tremendously. That should continue... Finish reading @Source
