The takedowns this week on silver/gold happened over a number of days so already the COT report coming today is out of date so there is really no way to know how many shorts were covered by JPM or anyone. I don't ever expect JPM to vacate the short side of silver on the CRIMEX or gold for that matter. The problem with the present system is that we only see about 20% of it at most on Crimex as the rest is hidden in derivatives and OTC market action and dark pools, this makes it hard to ever get a handle on what actually are the positions of the JPMorgs of the world even for Butler who I consider the foremost silver expert on the planet.

What I do know is that the cartel was briefly overun last year on both silver and gold and it was gold/silver long investors themselves who helped get the price discovery mechanism back under control for which the cartel was extremely gratefull. This process will in all likelihood continue and happen again and again until some balance is restored between amount of money printed on the planet and gold valuation, there is a long way to go yet before this balance is restored and it will take years yet.

In the meantime the cartel makes money on the upswings and downswings in my view and this is their game. They can never be defeated and will never go away but the price for gold and silver will march ever higher, sometimes in leaps and other times in a steady fashion depending on numerous outside stimuli. The problem with trying to play this game is they are likely to eat anyones lunch most of the time as their traders have limitless free money while we play with our own money, not a fair or even close to an even fight. In my view one has to be an investor type with minor trading and take the good with the bad or get left behind on the upswings and get crushed trying to trade with them. I would suggest that about .1% of the investing public can make money trading with/against the cartel on a consistent basis.

The gold/silver market has years of upside ahead of it including precious metal equities which histroy tells us will greatly outperform physical but few will be able to trade their way to big profits leaving investing as the primary option for large profits.