A Quick Update I wrote the following year-end review several days ago, before the price swoon of the last two days. Therefore, some of the numbers I used will be somewhat off, but the context of the article remains the same. I would like to offer some comments on the current price smack down. There should be no doubt as to why we are selling off. This is a price rig by commercial interests (most likely JPMorgan) to trip off as much technical fund long liquidation as possible, by driving prices below the most recent lows. It is exclusively a COMEX-related affair. Whether it will be successful remains to be seen. It is both painful to existing investors and beneficial for new purchasers. The more liquidation that takes place, the better the prospects will be for the next rally, which I still believe could be the…

One Consequence of Lying Last week, I wrote how the CFTC appeared to have been caught in a lie with their May 2008 report denying that a short side concentration caused silver prices to be manipulated. The CFTC's failure to acknowledge that JPMorgan needed to assume a massive short position from Bear Stearns, in order to keep silver and gold prices from exploding, contradicted the essence of the report. Once again, I thank those who took the time to write to CFTC officials about this severe breech of the public trust. I left out what this deception of the public trust means to investors. This was intentional on my part, as I did not deem it appropriate to both condemn the CFTC for their misleading report and also celebrate the consequence of their action to silver investors. Additionally, I chose to make public the condemnation article in order…

Market Update Since there is no audio interview with King World News this week, due to the holidays, I thought I would offer some brief comments on silver and gold. I plan to publish more in-depth research over the next couple of days, but I thought some interim comments were in order. I have been under the opinion recently that the sell-off in silver and gold has been or will be ending and a spirited silver rally will soon develop. I hope I have conveyed that clearly in my suggestion to deploy any remaining dry powder in silver. That is still my opinion. While new price lows are always possible, my sense is that even if those lows do occur, they will prove brief, as the major path of least resistance is upward, particularly for silver. I haven't mentioned it recently, but I am still convinced…

One Lie After Another Sometimes, you can overlook something that is right in front of you. That just happened with me. I'm talking about something I should have seen before now in silver and gold. A year and a half ago, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) published a 16 page public report denying there was any manipulation in the silver market, due to concentration by large short traders on the COMEX. The report, issued on May 13, 2008, by the agency's Division of Market Oversight (DMO) went into painstaking detail about how the short concentration in silver was no big deal. Certainly, the title, “Report on Large Short Trader Activity in the Silver Futures Market” is very straight forward. Here's the report – http://www.cftc.gov/ucm/groups/public/@newsroom/documents/file/silverfuturesmarketreport0508.pdf While the report didn't refer to me by name (except in the footnotes), it was an obvious attempt at refuting the allegations…

Here's a new audio interview with King World News for Dec. 19, 2009. Please allow a few moments for it to download http://www.kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/Broadcast_Gold+/Entries/2009/12/19_Ted_Butler_on_the_Metals_Market.html