This sort of thing is counter-intuitive. CNBC has been blaming speculators for the rise in oil prices lately. Well, by acccident they are right. It is not the long specs that drove oil higher the last 2 years, it is the shorts. The shorts got squeezed and had to cover, driving up the spot price bigtime. I know, and I was one of those shorts. I covered this morning and got crushed on the trade. I was also short the Nasdaq and the financials, so I am not exactly wringing out my crying towell, but the fact remains that specs play both sides of a trade, and for the clowns on CNBC to blame just one side of a spec play is equally out of line with their assumption that the metals futures are not manipulated lower by short specs.

Oil is driven by fundamentals and short specs are offside, and therefore getting whipsawed. Gold and silver are driven by paper futures, and the shorts are in control, and therefore the spot prices are highly manipulated. Why people fail to understand this simple truth is beyond me, when the stats are right there in the commitment of traders, but it is what it is...

ECU is in short covering mode today it seems too, and of course the traders will close their positions and not appear as outstanding shorts, so the clueless idiots on SH will claim there is no manipulation. LMAO at the losers. Fundamentals will win for ECU just as they do in every other market on earth. You can run a scam for a while, but you cannot cap a market for ever. History is full of examples of this, and one more coming.

cheers!

mike