Metals on the Move

Love lorn locked in silver. Heavy to carry in a snow storm.......

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I just had a thought. The only way for those banks to get out of this is to invest in silver, not against it.

 

Oh I am as that’s a different concern.

 

Yep
To paraphrase Shakespeare, It’s an ill wind that benefits nobody

 

Ted Butler accused them of criminal activity for decades and they never said a word. Also the exchanges where the banks traded never stopped them.

Perhaps, what's needed is criminal charges. They may be too big to fail but none of the owners or employees are too big to get into one of the country club prisons. Fat cats or no, they'll fit right in.

Let's see how this plays out though since nobody really knows.

I know one thing though it is getting more and more dangerous from this point forward to risk breaking the law. It's also getting more dangerous to put on naked shorts and to sell more shorts to cover existing positions. The fall out is already going to be bad enough if I'm right.

 

I think we'll know when the panic starts because it will be right about the time that the shorts start trying to cover in a market where there are already no sellers.

 

Palladium up 16% on the week
I hope US banks didn't short Palladium too lol
Note just about all the Palladium in existence comes from Russia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe (BRICS Nations)

 

Tin is another metal that could become a problem. It's only twenty times more common than silver but it is fast running out. Most of the things tin is needed for can be done by something else but I'm not sure what price would lead to substitution. It will be going up but not necessarily by a lot. The last of the world's tin mines are being played out now.

There has been no conservation in many decades. Monied interests shut down mass transit in the 1940's and we've been wasting everything ever since.

 

If silver ratchets up overnight the banks might try to start covering their shorts in the morning. They'll try, and fail, to do it quickly.

 

Oh man! I thought this was the Music thread.

 

Are people on here saying the banks are doing naked short selling, or what? I've tried to understand what short selling even is, and as a simplistic "investor" it sounds stupid to get involved in, especially with something like silver. Here goes.

You "borrow" 100 ounces of silver at $25/oz - $2500 worth. You have to put 50% into a margin account - $1250. You immediately sell the borrowed silver and add $2500 to your account. You're betting the price goes down to $15/oz, when you'll spend $1500 to buy back the silver and give the 100 ounces of borrowed silver back. You made $1000 profit. But instead, silver goes up to $40/oz, you now owe them $4000 worth of silver, you only have $2750 in your account, you have to return the silver, and you lose $1500 by buying and giving it back. Meanwhile you also had to pay interest on the borrowed silver, commissions etc, and you never actually owned any silver. Does that about summarize the concept?

Now the naked short selling part, which I have trouble believing. One article I just popped into says there are 408 ounces of "paper" silver for every ounce of physical silver. Isn't borrowing and selling stuff that doesn't exist illegal?

Regardless, a bank like JPMorgan has $3.5 trillion in assets. A billion dollars in silver losses is hardly even a blip to these banks. I'm not heading into the doomsday bunker over this.

 

I, for one just think it will shake the markets, not bring them down.

There's no reason any panic that might arise will necessarily spread beyond the silver markets. However, there would be bleedthrough into gold and we do live in a house of cards where any significant move in gold could spread to the stock and bond markets.

Panic is never good and it can only exist at all because of its tendency to spread. There are numerous counterbalancing forces now days that didn't exist before 1987. There are many entities that can step into and positively impact any market. But nobody can make cell phones without silver and most of the "silver" in the world is really just paper.

 

Evidently the practicing of borrowing and selling stuff that doesn't exist isn't illegal...it doesn't have that much in the way of repercussions to outweigh the gains...so I guess that's why it's called shorting instead of Gambling.

As for the paper silver...that can be paid back in dollars so it doesn't matter what the paper is written for? It could be marbles or tulips.
It's just another way of Gambling.

 

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/naked-short-selling-illegal-still-110030542.html

The way I read it, naked short selling is in fact illegal. However, apparently there are loopholes, most of which involve making it hard to detect (i.e. catch us if you can). Hard to believe major banks can be doing this and get away with it, but obviously some think they're so big that they can do whatever they want. (Wells Fargo I'm talking to you).

 

Ted Butler called them "criminals" for decades before his recent death. They never sued and he said there can be no basis if the charges are accurate. The regulators eventually agreed and stopped some of what he said was illegal but not all of it and he continued IMS.

Financial entities are continually changing the terms of the contracts they have and all of them essentially say they can take your first born any time they want. Even service agreement with internet providers and credit cards include provisos to change the terms on a whim. Try reading them. It's 50 pages of protection for anything at all.

It's the silver "deposits" that worry me the most. Some people are playing around in these markets believing a bank holds a lot of their silver and odds are they do not. They become liable for their trades but they own no silver. The bank gets the government to bail them out but the little guy is left twisting in the wind.

Again though, this could be a garden style bull market just playing a little catch up or topping even now. It could be a bull trap. But i don't believe it is and that we are in the early stages of a buying panic where there is no silver at all and billions and billions of dollars seeking to buy. Meanwhile the bank losses are stacking up.

 

I wouldn't even trust the futures markets because the temptation to sell what you don't own when you know you can manipulate the price ever lower is overpowering. Like the embezzler who is sure betting company funds on a horse is a sure thing.

One of my chief concerns is derivatives. It is these that make the system a house of cards because they can provide outsized profits on small moves. No one can predict how these would play out if there is any disturbance to the status quo. Nobody understands even one of these computer traded instruments and there ae thousands that are all interconnected. Our economy has proven to be "robust" despite changes but there has never been this situation with political, international, and strategic forces all working at once with every force tending to create more demand for silver. The banks must unload their shorts but doing so is likely to ignite the panic and prove largely unsuccessful. I believe it will require government intervention and that it will be global.

 

It all just seems stupid to me. Bet on the price dropping while trying to pump up some sort of panic to cause that, get caught with your pants down, then have to buy a bunch of it to cover your stupidity and end up causing the price to skyrocket. This is why I stay out of the greed-infested markets and focus on stuff that is real or at least FDIC insured.

 

It is crazy. I honestly we live in times where the only safe bet is yourself….. I see prime property sit because money is too expensive to use. There is so much restlessness and schemes at play in the markets that I wouldn’t put a thin dime in them. Honestly the only thing I believe in financially is myself. So I play my cards as best I can and hope for a decent hand down the road. I sure don’t trust anyone else’s motives with my hard earned cash.

 

I've felt this way since 1987 and moreso with each passing year. I used to be able to pick stocks and have a gut feel for many of the markets but after the Dow went to 0 everything just feels like it's manipulated. Perhaps much of this is being caused by derivatives and computer trading actually manipulating things but I believe it's more that there is intent behind it. It seems like our economy is a zombie that died that day and is being animated by bankers and fiat. Our leaders no longer pass law or handle problems but instead leave it up to lobbyists and bureaucrats and kick them down the road where they fester and grow.

But they are going to find trying to keep a lid on silver might have the same effect as more tightly wrapping an explosive. It's going to go off. The economy won't run at all, zombie, or otherwise without silver and despite what any banker believes you can't make silver or cell phones out of paper.

Perhaps they can kick it down the road even as long as another ten or fifteen years. But I doubt it.

 

People have been running around like Chicken Little about how you should put everything into gold or silver because it's all going to crash, for like 30 years. This too shall pass. All this fear mongering gets old.

Personally, I date the start of the stock market situation to the early 1980s when the 401k stuff started ramping up. The DOW was flat for decades prior to that, and then suddenly millions of people started dumping their retirement money into the stock market - people who would never have gotten into the market otherwise. You can easily see that the DOW has skyrocketed ever since. The big players regularly suck out the money, because why not. More money constantly floods in.