Silver Prices Bounce Higher After Futures Manipulated 7% Lower In Minute

– Silver prices ‘flash crash’ before rebound
– Silver hammered 7% lower in less than minute in Asian trading
– Silver fell from $16 to $14.82, before recovering to $15.89
– Silver plunge blamed on another ‘trading error’
– Gold similar ‘flash crash’ last week and similar recovery
– Hallmarks of market manipulation as $450 million worth of silver futures sold in minute
– Trading ‘errors’ always push gold and silver lower. Why never higher?
– ‘Flash crashes’ increasingly frequent in precious metals, yet rarely happen in stocks and bonds
– Rapid recovery from frequent raids bodes well for precious metals
– Silver coins and bars accumulated on dips by ‘stackers’

Silver prices got a bit of a jolt this morning when spot silver had yet another so called ‘flash crash’ and fell by between 7% and 10% before recovering and bouncing sharply higher to not far below where the attack on the price began.

In a repeat of what happened to gold last week, a bout of massive selling hammered silver prices lower momentarily. Having hit an early session high of $16.18/oz, the spot silver price fell from $16 to as $14.82 in less than a minute. The price recovered as quickly as it crashed, rebounding to $15.89/oz.

Source: Thomson Reuters via Business Insider

This isn’t the first so called ‘flash crash’ silver has seen in the last month. It fell in tandem with gold’s 1% ‘crash’ on June 26th, by 1.3%. Prices did not rebound as quickly, silver has declined by nearly 3.7% between then and July 6th.

Yesterday silver appeared to be on the road to recovery having climbed 0.5%.

Many analysts are calling the flash crash a ‘trading error’ or fat finger.’ However, this is somewhat lazy and ignores a few pertinent facts and context.

The aggressive selling had all the hallmarks of market manipulation as $450 million worth of silver futures were sold in a minute. An entity appears to have wanted silver lower and the massive sell order achieved that goal.

This could be due to a hedge fund or institution having a short position. By manipulating prices lower they can liquidate their short positions at much lower prices, making sizable profits.