Hedge Funds Feasting on Small Specs in Silver

If you want to get some sort of idea how the big sharks eat the little fish alive, take a gander at the following Commitments of Traders chart for the silver market.

Here is the chart:

I dropped out both the Swap Dealer Category and the Other Large Reportables Category for the sake of keeping the chart cleaner and more readable.

The Blue line is the NET POSITION of the hedge funds. The Red line is the net position of the Small Spec or the General Public. The other line is the Commercial category.

What have the hedge funds been doing in silver for the last few months? Answer - liquidating longs and adding shorts. In other words, they have been SELLING.

What has the general public or the minnows been doing since then. Well, some longs have liquidated so there has been some selling but look at their position. They are still net long in the silver market!

What has silver done since the peak in July on this chart? Answer - it has collapsed in price from near $21.50 to today's low near $15.50. That is nearly a 30% LOSS in 4 month's time.

I cannot count the number of emails that hit my inbox from the gold cult members yapping about HIGH OPEN INTEREST in silver as if somehow that is yet one more reason to be long the precious metals. When pointing out to them that the interest is both from increasing numbers of spreads, and from speculators interested in SELLING THE METAL, I am usually greeted with derision and condescending rebuttals as if somehow I am ill-equipped to understand the esoteric secrets of the strange universe that they are privileged to inhabit.

Some love to argue even more throwing around such insightful comments as, "Mr. billionaire fund manager asserts with great confidence that sometime this year, silver goes north of $50" as if somehow that settles the matter.

And yet, look at the chart. What does it tell you? Answer, a long silver position has butchered those who were foolish enough to think that they knew more than the market especially Mr. billionaire fund manager who is now probably Mr. millionaire fund manager.

The thing about this which is even more tragic, is the sheer size and extent of the losses that this erratic metal can inflict on the account of anyone who gets on its wrong side. A $1.00 move in silver is $5,000 per single contract. Do the math and you get the idea how much money the hedge funds took out of the pockets of the inept general public who continue to listen to the siren-songs of those self-proclaimed market experts who keep pushing them to buy it in spite of the obvious.

Now, this late session bounce in silver is interesting as it indicates some decent buying came in late, very late, in the session but in looking over at the mining share indices, they stink, having barely managing any sort of significant closing bounce heading into the weekend.

That today was also the end of the month, a day on which one can expect to see a great many big price swings and a day on which some funds tend to realize some paper gains for the sake of their monthly statements, and the fact that those mining indices closed so poorly, one has to be skeptical that the bounce higher in this metal signifies the end of the downtrend. It could very well just sit down here for a while and move sideways while it consolidates its severe losses from this week.

I will be watching closely next week to see what kind of follow through to the upside, if any, we might get. The ability to push back above $16.00 is constructive but we will know whether or not it has any staying power early next week. Until then, the general public remains LONG and WRONG and is serving as fodder for the hedge fund bears who are mercilessly goring them to no end. A lot of would-be trading careers from the small public were ended this week by the devastation suffered at the hands of this most fickle of metals.