What a day eh? Someone already quoted Bob Dylan, but I think this one might be apropos for the shorters and the cartel...

"Something is happenin' but you don't know what it is... do you Mr. Jones?"

You can see all the dirty tricks being thrown at S & G with no real long term effect, as was said previously - it's just short bursts. We're also facing a few dirty tricks on our beloved ECU- I simply can't get over the predictability of the last minute trade with buyer and seller being the same. Farcical, blatant and fearless (perhaps a bit desperate?) attempt to fool the computerized trading systems & a blatant display of the disregard these companies have for law and/or regulators...

I used to work on one of those trend following quant machines and can tell you that they are looking at the day to day gain/loss very closely & looking for clear trends. There is also usually a 'human sentiment' factor in the software which works on things like: after 6 days of continuous up days, the % chance of a down day increases to X. This is the machine trying to think like humans will so it can take advantage of our weakness: fear of the unknown.

However, what I am seeing at the moment is humans not acting like normal humans... we collectively smell fear coming from those who usually purvey strength and we're the ones looking savvy. I've noticed that quite a few of the hedge funds which are supposedly investors in metals either flat the last month or down... seems the computers think we're going to flinch and keep getting caught out. So probably the only way to ensure the thieves can't continue to march us down ever night it to ensure we're well over into the black each day. How to do that? Buy, buy, buy and get everyone you know to buy what they can knowing that the collective buys and bullish metals will push our Penson 'friends' off a cliff. I for one will be happy to take their money.