(Here’s a brief excerpt from Wednesday’s article to subscribers)
Hot off the press is today’s just-released world annual silver survey from the Silver Institute. As previewed a couple of months back, the Institute is reporting flat total supply (mining plus recycling) and sharply increased demand growth of 18% or 186 million oz, resulting in the highest silver deficit in modern times of 237 million oz.
https://www.silverinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/World-Silver-Survey-2023.pdf
The survey then goes on to (try to) explain that despite the axiom of the law of supply and demand that more demand than supply (by a large margin) must result in higher prices, that silver prices were lower on average over the year 2022 than the year before. The Silver Institute’s (Metals Focus’s) pithy explanation for something that should be impossible under the free law of supply and demand, namely, prices moving lower when demand is greater than supply was due to “institutional activity” in silver. Isn’t that just marvelous? I suppose “institutional activity” sounds a lot more dignified and proper than does blatant price manipulation.
The fact is that the only possible explanation for there being much greater demand than supply and prices falling (as the Silver Institute is reporting), is if someone is monkeying with the price. ”Monkeying with prices” is a bland term for what the collusive COMEX commercials do for a living. I guess price manipulation is a term to be avoided at all costs in these reports, despite the fact that all the data in the survey point to that inescapable conclusion.
Don’t worry, I’m not about to launch into another ramble about the ongoing COMEX silver (and gold) manipulation. By this time, you either see it or refuse to see it. More important is that, thanks to the undeniable facts published by those that obviously refuse to see that silver is manipulated in price (like the Silver Institute), it doesn’t matter much any longer who sees the manipulation or not. That’s because the unalterable effects of what a long-term price manipulation (suppression) in silver has wrought is far more important than who sees it or not.
The reason the Silver Institute is reporting a gaping deficit in silver and flat production growth for more than a decade is precisely because prices have been artificially suppressed and manipulated over this time. Nothing, other than price manipulation, is capable for the specific set of facts laid out in this survey. It’s not possible to have more demand than supply, to a record level, and for prices not to explode higher. The good news for silver investors is that the artificial depressed prices have existed for so long and silver inventories have been so thoroughly depleted that the silver manipulation appears to breathing its last gasps. Any day, week or month is all that stands between where we are in silver prices currently and where we’ll be looking down at in a very short time. Sure, we have to be prepared for whatever the last tricks the collusive and crooked COMEX commercials may have up their sleeves, but the hard data on actual supply and demand is so compelling that those dirty tricks won’t matter for much longer.
Ted Butler
April 21, 2023
About the author
The fight for free and fair pricing in the precious metals lost a longtime advocate with the passing of Ted Butler. Few have fought against the bullion banks as vigorously as Ted, and now we must continue the battle in his honor.
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