Ted Butler: Another Opportunity

Commitments of Traders (COT) Report for COMEX silver futures featured the largest ever concentrated short position by the four largest traders and a new record large total commercial net short position. As I have been intoning for years, nothing suggests a possible market manipulation being in place than a large concentrated position. This is not my opinion alone; I’ve basically learned this from the CFTC. The only reason the agency calculates and publishes concentration data in every regulated futures market weekly is because an extremely large concentrated position is the first tip-off of potential market manipulation.
A concentrated position is a large market position held by a small number of traders that could grow large enough to overly influence price. Think Hunt Bros. in silver or Mr. 5% in the Sumitomo copper manipulation, where a few buyers caused prices to be much higher than warranted by actual supply/demand fundamentals. While it’s easy for most to understand how a concentrated long position could result in a price considered to be artificially high, it’s harder for many to understand the concept of concentration on the short side, due to the nature of short selling being difficult for most to grasp.
Commodity law does not distinguish between an upward or downward price manipulation and the CFTC calculates and publishes concentration data on both the long side and short side of all regulated futures markets. The problem is that while the CFTC publishes the data that indicate that COMEX silver has the highest level of concentration ever seen on the short side of COMEX silver futures, thus providing the strongest possible evidence of a downward price manipulation, the agency refuses to do anything about it or even acknowledge it in any way. But thanks to the unexpected confluence of events as described above, there may be an opportunity for you to pressure the regulators to address the concentrated short position in COMEX silver futures. And let me not beat around the bush – silver would be substantially higher in price were there to be no extreme concentrated short position. That’s a personal guarantee based upon simple market mechanics.

This post was published at Silverseek