Coincident with the passage of the Paulson Plan in early October, the top prime brokers (MS, GS, JPM) issued margin calls on hedge funds which raised the average margin required from about 15 percent to about 35 percent."

I was aware of the massive selling to raise $'s, but now see that the raising of margin by more than 100% was possibly the largest single stimulus to my (and possibly global) pain.

The interesting thing is that most were wiped out of cash and cannot take advantage of the current plethora of fire sales going on.


e.g. "While many gold and silver stock investors have had enough and want out at any price, those buying in this selloff are picking up stocks of companies trading at less than ONE! times earnings or cash flow and as little as 30% of the cash companies have in the bank. I don’t know if there has ever been a time in history where a group of stocks has traded so cheaply while their operations have performed so strongly and that is despite tremendous manipulation and suppression in their underlying products which are priced way below what they will be in a free market."

If I had the cajones, I would sell physical and buy the pm stocks for the leverage as the prices of commodities rebound

Thanks for the post fan