Sour Grapes

OK, I admit it. Maybe I'm just bent out of shape because I gave you 1320 and 26.50 a week in advance and, for about 18 hours, I looked like frickin Nostradamus. Instead, I'm Nostradumbass.

I believe we have reached a rather interesting point. Everyone who knows anything about precious metal trading (myself excluded) from Harvey to Ted to Jim to Dan to Rob to Eric seems utterly confounded by the action in and out of the pits. Its almost surreal. Harvey tonight begged people to get out of paper metal, buy physical and look the other way. Ted Butler seems to have his head spinning so fast he doesn't know which way is up. Look at this freaking chart, for the love of pete:

I wish I had something witty or insightful to say but, the truth is, I'm out of ideas. I'm not just going to make something up and grasp at straws just to make you believe I have an answer for everything. I don't and I really don't now. As crazy as it sounds, the only semi-plausible explanation lies with those crazy silvergoldsilver bears and/or Lady Gaga (or whatever that email lady's name is).

The dollar is in the shitcan.
The Fed is forced to print infinite amounts of money to continue the ponzi.
The U.S. economy continues to sputter if only because of the ongoing, massive cash infusions supplied through the Treasury by the Federal Reserve.
The EU is an economic basketcase as many individual states are bankrupt and their debts are carried by the other, healthier states.
Yet gold and silver are being indiscriminately sold. Crude, too. And copper.

I'm open to any and all answers from our fine group of commenters. Please post your most rational and believable explanation below.

To close on a bright note, we exceeded yesterday's total pageviews by 10% today and set a new, single-day record at 28,560. We may soon approach the point where we need to move from blogspot to our own dedicated site. I'll keep you posted as I will definitely seek out your input if/when the time comes.

Turd out.


11:30 pm EST UPDATE:
First of all, thank to everyone for the moral support. This post was written right after I saw that 5-minute, 50 cent beatdown at 8:30 EST. Wouldn't it be funny if that ended up being the low?

OK, anyway, a couple of comments tonight were so terrific and interesting, I feel that they merit inclusion in the regular text. First up, my man "quintas" checks in with some very good advice:
"Turd - don't sweat it. Nobody can read the price action over the past few weeks, except those insiders who are causing it, obviously.

The Metals market has now, in my view, officially gone full retard. Sure there are people who've been calling for a pullback and they're getting one, but then, there's always someone (many people usually) calling for precious metals to crash, so when it does drop there's always someone who looks like they saw it coming and is therefore accorded visionary status by some.

I've been trading metals for quite a few years now, and what's going on at the moment feels substantively different from what has gone before.

Over time we have all become familiar with the games that the Bullion Banks normally play. OpEx smackdowns, chart painting, engineering big moves around jobs number announcements etc. Been there, done that.

I am guessing, and given the opacity of the PM markets that's all one can do, that we are near the endgame right here. I don't know if the talking bears are right. I have no way of knowing if the supposed Silver raid on the Comex next month is anything more than the crazed fantasy of a nut job with a keyboard and a Yahoo account, but I will say this:

There are far too many little signs to ignore, and they strongly suggest that this time it's different (I know, I know). Physical metal is genuinely difficult to obtain in quantity - look at Sprott's difficulties. We see backwardation in Silver on the LBMA. There are phenomenal, record sales reported by the US Mint, bizarre movements in Comex inventories on a daily basis and huge withdrawals from SLV and GLD.

Also, rarely if ever before have I felt the fundamentals to be SO far out of line with the price action, and the activities of the EE to be so blatant - as if they just don't care who sees what they're doing. I'm not suggesting that they care about the CFTC reining them in, but rather that they are blatantly running the risk of discrediting their own paper market in the eyes of the world. Why do that, risking killing the golden goose, if you don't have to?

For what it's worth, my read on all of this is that the crunch point is coming. Maybe soon. The EE is shaking the market to within an inch of its life to scare people away from taking delivery, and possibly also frantically accumulating physical behind the scenes. Smells like fear to me.

I feel like they have my nuts in a vice at the moment, but then again, how much bigger is the vice their nuts are in, being short half a year's global production of silver and facing a physical squeeze?

I will not surrender any physical metal right now. At the risk of sounding a bit tinfoil-hatty, 'That's exactly what they expect me to do'. Hedge with paper? Yes. Sell? No"


Next, and I must admit that I laughed out loud when I saw this, apparently "Wynter Benton" cited yours truly as a "great technician". Oh, if he/she only knew...
"Turd,
Sounds like this wynter_benton knows you.

This seems to be her latest:

"I am not a technician like Turd Ferguson and other far more accomplished technical analysts so I'll leave it up to them to interpret the charts from a purely technical viewpoint.

But in my opinion, the low in silver has now been reached. I base this conclusion on the fact that Blythe could not puncture yesterday's low point. Not even close. Gold got blasted right through 1322 like a hot knife through butter yet silver stubbornly clung to the $27 level and was no where close to the $26.50 level. Believe me, if Blythe wanted silver to crack $26, she has the firepower to do it easily.

The reason that she didnt was because she must somehow realize that the people she was selling her Mar contracts to were going to be standing for delivery. Believe me she knows when these people are buying.

Which gets me to my original post. This whole slam down in precious metalsm was all about silver. Gold was just the unfortunate mechanism and instrument by which Blythe worked her magic. She slammed down gold because she knew eventually traders would not be able to stand for delivery in Feb. The gold market is just too big. But you can buy every ounce that the comex CLAIM to have with a mere $2.8 billion. Blythe has access to that type of money in the folds of her couch at The Morgue's HQ.

You can see clearly now why she needs to suppress the price of silver and force traders to cough up the Mar contracts. Once the slam down in gold no longer has the desired effect than it is time to abandon that strategy. My guess (and it is only that for now) is that we have seen the low for silver.

If she is at all competent, then she will be sending the price of silver up by at least $2 by Feb 8 to make it more difficult for hedgies to raid the Comex. But we'll have to see. Either way as long as hedgies and big investors cough up about $5 billion in Feb, then Blythe and The Morgue will be in a world of hurt.

I want to clear up another point. Some people are interpreting that I am predicting a default in March. That is definitely NOT what I am predicting. All I am predicting is that there will be massive contracts that will be standing for delivery and each one of these contracts will be offered a huge premiums which will be settled in cash. You see, it is always more profitable to buy the Mar contracts settle in cash and then buy the May contracts and do it all over again.

It is as if you buy $1 billion worth of silver, sell it for $1.2 billion and buy the exact same position for $1 billion again. You really don't lose anything and someone automatically gives you 20 percent and you get to keep your position exactly as it was before. Well not exactly because the equivalent May contracts are slightly more than the corresponding Mar contracts. It's up to you what you want to do with your money but since it was so easy in December, why not do it again in March and then again in May?

It's as if you show up with 1 ounce of silver, The Morgue pays you 120% of the value of your holding, and you go back into the pits and buy it back at face value. Nothing could be easier and they are defenseless to stop it.

I know for a fact that the silver shorters are desperately trying to come up with physical silver from anywhere they can get it--from the SLV, the US Mint, foreign ETFs, anywhere they can get physical silver. Too bad it still won't be enough.

So watch for February and see how high silver spikes up. This whole slam down was The Morgue trying to get people to stop hoarding silver, so keep buying physical silver and they will fail. Good luck to all physical silver holders. Our time is close at hand."


And finally, our friends at silvergoldsilver stopped by again. I, for one, can't wait for the next video. I just hope they work the name "Turd Ferguson" somewhere into the text. 
"I am the bears. You can listen to me at http://www.youtube.com/user/MrSilvergoldsilver?feature=mhum
for now until my site gets back and running as an information site, no more bullion selling. I am a former wallstreet trader. I once rigged the game. Come over and listen. I warn you-I am the merchant of truth, sometimes my bluntness is blunt."


OK, that really is it for tonight. Tomorrow is a big day. I'll tell you why in the morning...TF


I lied...one last thing...I mentioned on ZH earlier that the Egyptian "rebellion" could be contained by the Mubarek government IF the Muslim Brotherhood stayed out of the fray. According to debka, they are about to join the fray. Not sure what it means for metals prices but this is definitely something you need to keep an eye on: http://www.debka.com/article/20598/