WTF Just Happened to Silver?

Anyone watching the global spot market for silver right now? I have about 100k invested in silver and needless to say the 1% per minute drop before was scary as hell. Any ideas as to what caused it? And what silver will open at in the U.S. tomorrow? It's coming back strongly, but an 8% loss is crazy in so short a time/

For those who don't know...here's a chart. Today is the yellow line...

http://www.kitco.com/charts/livesilver.html

 

Down 10.5%. I had been looking at ZSL for a while and figured I'd wait for it to get around the $60-70 level before going in. I know precious metals, specifically gold and silver, are partially controlled by hedge funds and special boutiques (more so gold than silver). We had a guy at our school a few weeks ago, Bob Freidlich, talk about how much is held by hedge funds and I think for gold, he said 60% or somewhere in that area. Silver is a bit less but perhaps a hedge fund dumped their share and had a large stake in it.

What I find fascinating is that when they have so much money to take that big a stake in silver, they can play alternative investments with those in whichever direction the commodity is set to go in because of their investment.

 

But the margins were raised on Thursday (I think) and MF Global on Friday. idk maybe that helped, but I'm just surprised that it had such a large impact so fast, and so long after the margin limit was raised. w/e hopefully we get back to where we were by the time the markets open.

Reality hits you hard, bro...
 
mfoste1:
short covering on usd by asian players....much of those usd that have been sold over the past two months had been diversified into PMs. its just profit taking, good dip to long.
Heard something similar to this. Asian names stopped out of long silver short gold trade.
 

Ok, it looks like my heart attack was for nothing, silver's down about 6% from over 12% earlier. The prospect of losing (all together through connected investments) around $24 was not a good thing. lol

Reality hits you hard, bro...
 
Best Response

If you look at the volume when the sell-off was happening you'll know what this is about and who is doing this. Some markets are on holidays, it's easy to drive the price down and knock-out small longs. Take a look at what happened on Friday and get used to it as it's going to be like this quite often once silver crosses $50.

MMBinNC, I have a feeling there is going to be another raid in the morning, around 8am. Lots of orders are being placed to be executed at the open of NY from those who were overleveraged or could not meet their margins so all that will push silver down for a while but this is just a great opportunity to make some serious $$$.

Obama is about to address the nation at 10:30pm EST. Wonder what this is about...

" A recession is when other people lose their job, a depression is when you lose your job. "
 

CNN just announced it is a national security related announcement How crazy would it be if Obama announced that they are sending troops in to Libya?

" A recession is when other people lose their job, a depression is when you lose your job. "
 

Its a smoke-screen of an announcement. Obama's administration needed something badly. Fundamentals haven't changed.

" A recession is when other people lose their job, a depression is when you lose your job. "
 

Markets are reacting perfectly as I expected.

currently 3M across Asian ADRs which are doing like shit cause of market push towards "happy bin laden is dead"

I picked up $10million of SIVR at 9:30am... just closed couple Gs.

Markets are confident again, people moving out of silver and trading dows this morning... pushes on NFLX, PCLN, and ARMH...

The only problem i see today is Bidu and Sina are chasing the happy parade, which means that either those stocks are now a good pick by all investors or asian players are swapping ADR plays through the night.

All my buddies at gs, barcap, and citadel are warping through silver... its a safe bet.. GET IN WHEN YOU CAN!

.
 

Well since it was paper silver I didn't lose that much, reversed, put some $$$$ into ZSL, about even now....

Eventually it's going to rebound, but what is the fair price of silver? How much extra below is it going due to panic selling? (which I think a lot of this is) Not sure, but I want to eke out some profit, I don't think it's possible for silver to gain as fast as it falls, because a lot of this fall I think is triggered stops and margin calls. Won't happen on the upside.

Reality hits you hard, bro...
 
macro:
Word on the street is that some managed futures players got their portfolios liquidated earlier today. The margin clerks are sharpening their pencils. The volatility this week has been unbelievable, both in commodities and the momentum-driven stocks.

Hey my firm's energy, metal and minerals desks have been screaming "fuck this" all day..

How much leverage are you talking about the futures players? how many billions are we talking here...

.
 

I'm baffled how a finance community is not talking about the shit thats going on with silver. Panic selling? Oh you mean the MENA region is stabilizing, unemployment numbers are down, inflation expectations are down, Euro debt crisis is solved, the debt ceiling issue is gone and Zimbabwe Ben finally stepped away from the printer so silver is tanking? No wait! It's a "correction" because silver and gold are in a "bubble" because Fox News said so and so did Buffett and others who coincidentally started shorting silver last week.

Or perhaphs Osama's supposed elimination couple days ago is the driving force behind a 10% decrease in oil along with a sell-off of every other commodity today?

I'm at a such a loss for words right now that I can't even go to sleep.

There have been 5...F..I..V..E margin hikes in the last fucking 8 days! Hmm, does it perhaps have anything to do with JPM's short positions and that $1 million $25 July PSLV put bet couple weeks ago and the fact that COMEX is on the verge of defaulting? That couldn't be right, could it? Our government wouldn't do THAT? What other way to collapse a commodity in 4 days then to take away the ability of those with leveraged positions to raise cash? The fact that Asian markets are on a holiday, has absolutely nothing to do with the plunge of the spot price that began 3 hours before the Osama having been killed announcement.

Longs unable to raise cash have been forced to liquidate, thus causing further selling, which causes the price to drop which triggers stops and forces margin calls so more selling and so on.

The Silver market tanks and the exchange officials can now warn about Clearinghouse integrity and have more reasons to drive margins even higher as they point to the increased volatility, volatility which I might add, they created themselves by hiking margins to such an extreme degree.

When you have senior CTFC officials claiming there is blatant manipulation and COMEX telling the world it only has enough silver to settle something like 6500 contracts, what more do you want to hear? Let's not even begin with JPM and UBS and their short positions.

What a fucking joke! I apologize for cussing so much but this is not going to end well. If you think it will, I'd like to hear your opinion. I just can't believe people are not seeing this, that's all. You can make money in both directions and with the volatility in silver, it's a trader's dream.

Oh, by the way, those margin hikes are for silver only. Not oil, which has no speculation at all right? Right, Mr.Obama?

" A recession is when other people lose their job, a depression is when you lose your job. "
 
The.RealDeal:
I'm baffled how a finance community is not talking about the shit thats going on with silver. Panic selling? Oh you mean the MENA region is stabilizing, unemployment numbers are down, inflation expectations are down, Euro debt crisis is solved, the debt ceiling issue is gone and Zimbabwe Ben finally stepped away from the printer so silver is tanking? No wait! It's a "correction" because silver and gold are in a "bubble" because Fox News said so and so did Buffett and others who coincidentally started shorting silver last week.

Or perhaphs Osama's supposed elimination couple days ago is the driving force behind a 10% decrease in oil along with a sell-off of every other commodity today?

I'm at a such a loss for words right now that I can't even go to sleep.

There have been 5...F..I..V..E margin hikes in the last fucking 8 days! Hmm, does it perhaps have anything to do with JPM's short positions and that $1 million $25 July PSLV put bet couple weeks ago and the fact that COMEX is on the verge of defaulting? That couldn't be right, could it? Our government wouldn't do THAT? What other way to collapse a commodity in 4 days then to take away the ability of those with leveraged positions to raise cash? The fact that Asian markets are on a holiday, has absolutely nothing to do with the plunge of the spot price that began 3 hours before the Osama having been killed announcement.

Longs unable to raise cash have been forced to liquidate, thus causing further selling, which causes the price to drop which triggers stops and forces margin calls so more selling and so on.

The Silver market tanks and the exchange officials can now warn about Clearinghouse integrity and have more reasons to drive margins even higher as they point to the increased volatility, volatility which I might add, they created themselves by hiking margins to such an extreme degree.

When you have senior CTFC officials claiming there is blatant manipulation and COMEX telling the world it only has enough silver to settle something like 6500 contracts, what more do you want to hear? Let's not even begin with JPM and UBS and their short positions.

What a fucking joke! I apologize for cussing so much but this is not going to end well. If you think it will, I'd like to hear your opinion. I just can't believe people are not seeing this, that's all. You can make money in both directions and with the volatility in silver, it's a trader's dream.

Oh, by the way, those margin hikes are for silver only. Not oil, which has no speculation at all right? Right, Mr.Obama?

Yo can you post the link for the short positions or the data dump link?

Good post, but take it easy... in a Trader's world news is relevant in ~1 second ago, we apologize for our opaque views of the markets. I personally don't trade metals at my firm but I wouldn't mind finding out how to cash in on this fast.

.
 

where do you guys see the consolidaton price... a sell off like this usually overshoots the stabilisation price. If you look at it there are still no signs of buying or heavy support.

I'm sure some hedge funds have an idea to where the price should fall for them to start buying massively. Any guesses?

 

Guys are you kidding me?!?!?!?! PRICED IN?!?!?!! WTF IS PRICED INTO SILVER ITS A PURE INFLATION SPEC PLAY! Harvardorbust seriously get a clue as to how markets trade. Priced in... good lord i cant believe i read that

"Oh the ladies ever tell you that you look like a fucking optical illusion" - Frank Slaughtery 25th Hour.
 

Ut dolore libero deserunt et. Aut corrupti atque similique voluptatum id porro consectetur. Aut ipsam reiciendis ea fuga corporis porro aperiam ducimus. Eligendi sint quaerat laborum id veniam perferendis. Commodi libero cum aut quasi. Modi quis quia dolorem molestiae est ex odit modi.

Non dignissimos unde iusto in. Est itaque molestiae distinctio nihil. Commodi tempore culpa dolorem.

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