Boiler Rooms And Silver Manias
It's not safe out there, folks.
There was quite a bit of chatter last week about the "hunters becoming the hunted," where that meant the Reddit crowd was on the prowl and hedge funds were the prey.
"A new warrior class of retail investor [is] roaming the equity savannah," SocGen's Albert Edwards wrote, calling the Reddit traders a "loosely organized retail mob" which is "gaining strength feasting off each hedge fund kill."
They dealt a grievous blow to Melvin Capital, that's for sure. The fir
Remembering back to 1979-80, when silver spikes supply appears. At $40 an ounce Grandma’s tea set became too valuable not to sell for scrap.
“Sorry Grammie, but money is money…”
Yeah, I was pulling coins out of my “collection” and selling them as scrap silver. Only regret was I left too many behind.
Of course today… nobody owns anything made of anything remotely real or valuable. Nobody I know could even imagine owning real wood furniture. Shit a set of wood handled steak knives is like $500. Until the price of MDF or particle board spikes there’s not much retail supply around of anything worth a damn.
The idea I think of this “attack” is ultimately to highlight that banks offering fractional reserve metal certificates are artificially controlling prices. If silver is $20 and oz but you can’t actually get any silver for $20 an oz then what exactly is that paper certificate? If they can highlight it’s a scam no more real than those tickets to heaven then they can get the practice to stop and maybe get politicians to acknowledge how incredibly F’d the American people are. It’s symbolic.
Can they pull it off? I certainly don’t know but I’m happy to see people at least trying something besides marches.
They are artificially controlling the price. More retail metals will be available. Will have to send commercial bars to the mints. What I’ve been wondering is that in the derivative market where the price is controlled, the master of the universe can make money just as easily on the way up. They could trade it up to $80 and make a killing for all along the way. I’ve never read why they don’t trade it higher. Best explanation I’ve seen in over 20 years of following is that the aim is to manage expectations for both inflation, purchasing power, and system stability.
We really are F’d. This is a symptom for sure. Beyond mere day-to-day operations that could seemingly collapse at any time, what systems work any longer? The economy, financial markets, government, healthcare, education, international trade, road repair?
Agree that is’t non-violent, at least to one’s person, if not ultimately to one’s trading account.
H, thank you for the ongoing warnings vis-a-vis the commentaries you interpret and comment on. Appreciate it.
It’s easy to want to forget where we are when the board is mostly green on a day like today (so far).
I am going to put these quotes, taken form freely available commentary from long-standing commentators, and tape them to my monitor. It’s an effort to help ensure discipline during these periods of instability. These are just from this morning!
“Indeed, ears were ringing this week from sirens blaring warnings of trouble ahead.”
Concern to “shift from herd immunity to herd insolvency.”
“We recommend { blank } for long-term asset preservation — not speculation.”
“It’s not only the market that could break down but the brokerage firms that service it.” …you will be at the mercy of the web portals; assume gateway timeouts or read-only access if you can login.
I’m going to sell some more stuff.
I need to do more smiling and waiving at the hep cats while i am out there metal detecting. Nice young folks indeed.