There is no silver short squeeze happening. NONE. NEVER.

by MarioBuzo

Silver might go up nicely and for a time but don’t get high on hopium, this is not gonna go in the 100s.

twitter.com/michaeljburry/status/1356111612759789568

We are primarily funded by readers. Please subscribe and donate to support us!

A corner in the silver market has been tried before – and let’s be clear, that is what is being attempted now. In 1980, a rule change by the government destroyed the corner. #silverthursday.

www.britannica.com/topic/Silver-Thursday

Silver Thursday, the dramatic fall in the price of silver on March 27, 1980, following the Hunt brothers’ attempt to corner the market on the metal.

Apart from a handful of reigning monarchs and despots, Nelson Bunker Hunt (1926–2014) was the richest man in the world at the start of the 1960s. Like his father, the legendary oilman H. L. Hunt, Bunker gambled big and got lucky. By 1970, although his wealth was accumulating faster than he could spend it, he foresaw a volatile economic future. Prevented by Franklin Roosevelt’s 1933 prohibition on U.S. citizens owning gold, Bunker and his younger brother William Herbert (b. 1929) chose silver, then standing at $1.50 per ounce, as their speculative hedge. Their initial caution vanished after Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi nationalized the Bunkers’ Libyan oil fields in 1973. Furious, and paranoid that paper money would soon be worthless, the Hunt brothers then bought futures contracts on 55 million ounces of silver, eventually accumulating an estimated 100 million ounces of the precious metal. But instead of selling the contracts like normal commodity traders, they took delivery of the bullion and chartered three Boeing 707s to air-freight it to Switzerland.

By 1979, they had engineered a genuine shortage of the metal. The Hunts owned $4.5 billion-worth of shiny, glittering silver, safely stashed in Swiss vaults. Still the price climbed, until on January 17, 1980, an ounce cost $49.45. Such rampant speculation and profits triggered new government oversight, prompting the Federal Reserve to suspend trading in silver. The boom was suddenly over, but the Hunts still had to honour contracts to buy at prices over $50. The day the market plunged—March 27—silver fell to $10.80, the metal’s biggest single collapse. Upon losing some $1.7 billion, prompting Bunker to quip, “A billion dollars isn’t what it used to be,” the Hunts had become the (then) greatest debtors in financial history, and though New York banks allowed them $1.1 billion credit towards clearing their obligations, they were personally bankrupted and later convicted of illegally trying to corner the market on the precious metal; the brothers were fined $10 million each, in addition to the millions they owed to the IRS, and banned from future trading on the commodities market. The Hunts had gambled that silver was undervalued, but they failed because they had made the price of silver too attractive for its own good.

To pay off his staggering debt, Bunker was forced to sell off his beloved stable of thoroughbred horses, three of whom were named Extravagant, Goofed, and Overdrawn. William Herbert remained a billionaire into the 21st century. The character of J. R. Ewing in the original TV series Dallas (1978–91) and the Duke Brothers in the movie Trading Places (1983) all drew inspiration from the Hunt family and their larger-than-life careers and personalities.

 

 

Disclaimer: This information is only for educational purposes. Do not make any investment decisions based on the information in this article. Do you own due diligence or consult your financial professional before making any investment decision.

Views:

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.