Just one more quick point to add to my already long post. I am not suggesting that the funds are in complete control of the markets. If they were, then the bullion banks would not have been covering shorts into a rising gold and silver price last month, and losing huge in the process. But the big boys do have a very big hammer to work with that leaves retail investors at a very big disadvantage. They get to act first, and decisively.

Take the bear raid on silver in May. Before the western traders had a chance to act, the boys hammered silver hard and set the ball rolling down hill. The smaller players see the direction of the market and react. But the easy money is made setting positions before they boys make their move.

Secondly, not all the trades are HFT players on behalf of the crooks. There are many smart traders now that can interpret when the Cartel makes their move and then follow in kind, either long or short. I am short gold stocks quite frequently in my daytrading, just because I know how the scam will play out and it represents fast easy money. I bet lots of others like myself that are PM bulls are short right now because they see what is going down (no pun intended).

And then you have the leveraged ETFs that are employed as trading vehicles and these funds will buy or short heavily to reflect the units that are bought and sold, further adding to volatility. Once you have all of this momo driving a market up or down, THEN the technicals get breached and the little guys are conned into acting last. By the time the reversal comes the little guys are usually the big losers and on the wrong side of the trade.

Isn't our free market great? The point is, there are many players acting that have nothing to do with any Cartel, intervention, or crooked funds. However it is the crooks that set the tone and do so in such a massive scale that the rest of the market is then triggered into the desired reaction and its game on.

cheers!

mike