Talk about peasants with pitchforks taking on tanks, today’s supposed retail silver squeeze day is not going well.
When last I posted here – having been laid low for a few days since Thursday by illness – I predicted in the face of rising silver and gold prices that silver in particular was due to be manipulated lower in coming days.
The calendar provided convenient cover with the end of the month and the end of the quarter, along with President Donald Trump’s April 2 tariff day.
The very next day (Friday) after last I wrote, silver declined 29 cents an ounce. As I write this early Monday afternoon, the next trading day, it’s down another 23 cents at $33.84 an ounce.
Also, as noted in that previous story, gold has been much stronger than silver. Monday was no exception to that trend, with gold hitting record highs of $3,124 an ounce on the spot market while silver languishes about $16 (about 40 percent) or so below its all-time highs, set in 1980 and 2011.
The silver movement, noting this discrepancy, hoped to rally the masses on social media. Alas, it turns out it’s easier to find radicals willing to firebomb Teslas for a few bucks, than it is to find people willing to spend some of their own money on arguably the most underpriced material on Earth.
There had been much anticipation ahead of today, hoping that massive buying of the actual stuff, the silver bullion, would overwhelm the paper market. It is a fool’s errand.
Exchanges allow certain types to sell huge paper positions to force price downward. Again, as noted in the previous post about this, some bankers have been convicted of price manipulation. But that is thought to be a small percentage of those committing these crimes.
Simply put, when you don’t need the metal itself to sell short, you have unlimited capacity. People buying are limited by liquid capital and metal availability.
And that is why I half-kiddingly suggested Elon Musk add taking on silver manipulation to his Quixotic quests. That one should be simple for the world’s richest man. Just begin buying silver publicly and the terrified short crowd (those betting on a price decline) would need to start buying immediately to cover those shorts and avoid bankruptcy.
Silver had been down 40 cents more earlier in the trading today, so maybe silver squeeze people are turning the tide. I plan on waiting for further evidence tomorrow, ironically April Fools Day, along with April 2 to make my call.
I did sell some gold earlier today near the all-time high, expecting that surge to be blunted temporarily. But the gold market is so huge and there are so many institutions, from governments, to international banks, to Chinese insurance companies, looking to buy some for long-term wealth preservation, that will be a tougher nut to suppress than silver.
If and when silver manipulation ends, remember that, according to an online inflation calculator, what cost $50 — silver’s price in 1980 — should cost just under $193 today.
That would make the wait worthwhile in the extreme.
Sam Ross Jr's site 