ted butler speculates that there may only be one silver short left, which i am guessing would be jp morgan, and not hsbc. after reading his analysis, it seems clear that there are at most two banks short silver, but i'm still not sure how he narrows it down to one. but he's the expert, and maybe he will explain further in another essay.

But even while it is easy to conclude that all new short selling is coming from the same four or less large traders, where do I get off suggesting it is one entity behind all the new silver short selling over the past 7 weeks? Here we have to look at another CFTC data source, the Bank Participation Report. Since the Bank Participation Report (BP) is a monthly publication, while the COT is weekly, we must make appropriate calibrations between the reports. The two most recent BP reports are as of January 6 and February 3. Using those two reports, plus the COTs of the exact same dates, this is what the reports show. Between those two dates, the COT indicates that the total commercial short position increased by 2253 contracts, with the big 4 category increasing by 2256 contracts, once again accounting for more than the entire increase in the commercial category.

The Bank Participation Reports corresponding to January 6 and February 3 indicate that the two U.S. banks increased their net short position by 2500 contracts in that same time period. This proves, at least during this specific period of time, that one or two U.S. banks accounted for more than 100% of all the commercial short selling and all the selling in the big 4 category. One or two entities, accounting for more than 100% of all total short selling for more than a month is manipulation. Period. It can only have occurred to attempt to cap the price and protect the existing short position.

Please remember that while I have been documenting the incremental changes in the concentrated short position of what may be one large trading entity, those changes are small compared to the total short position of this entity, which I estimate to be back above 30,000 contracts, or 150 million ounces. That’s more than 22% of the entire annual world mine production of silver. It is impossible for such a large concentrated short position not to be manipulative.

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