Hi Baba!

How about looking at it all from this point of view:

I think all markets are manipulated to some extent. For example, some mysterious buying has shown up to support the DOW and S&P whenever the markets were in danger of breaking down, at several critical junctures during the last couple of years. The existence of the plunge protection is a fact, and there is also the testimony of Ben Bernanke when he stated under oath that the FED would intervene directly in the markets to support financial stocks. So it is not a stretch to conclude that markets of far greater magnitude than the PM sector are indeed manipulated, ie. subjected to temporary intervention to create a desired trading outcome that is superimposed on the normal market behaviour.

The FED does not have a trading desk and instead must put orders through an intermediary just the same as the little retail players. One must assume then that the regulatory agencies have been issued instructions to ignore the manipulative efforts that are part of government financial policy, and one must also assume that the trading houses completing these instructions are also the beneficiaries of insider info. Is it such a stretch to conclude that big brokerage houses then are able to profit from what amounts to market rigging, without the risk of punitive sanctions from the regulators?

Another point to consider is, what other market sector can sustain a negative publicity campaign to the extent that the PM sector has been attacked, and a similar carpet bombing of shorting, and not have the exact same outcome as we just saw in the PM sector? Does anyone think that if the semi-conductors were featured numerous times with extremely bearish commentary in major market newspapers, plus regular and repeated TV admonishments that the companies involved were trading in a bubble, that those companies would perform any differently? Yet some people, like Bob Moriarty, have completely ignored that fact and seem to believe that the market performance last week was because the sector was in a bubble.

You cannot have the kind of coordinated attack that went down last week and not trigger a complete selloff. Trying to make excuses for the market performance while ignoring the elephant in the room is not constructive. People can make comments that the prudent choice was for people to take profits on the way up, and that some irrational exhuberance was a part of the story, and I will not dispute that. But to selectively consider the market without factoring in the effects of the smashdown is not going to make a case that silver was a bubble, or more importantly that silver will not go on to set new highs for this bull market even after the smackdown.

I will state my own personal disclosure in this. I was very bullish prior to the big selloff, although cautious that some kind of correction was overdue. I was buying more stock on the first day of the correction, and then a lot more on thursday and friday. I also bought more bullion. I sold nothing. I am firmly in the camp that believes a direct intervention was responsible for this selloff and that it will be temporary and a buying opp before new higher highs are printed. And I am a big boy and can make my own decisions and live with them, but I am not here to provide advice or guidance for others.

cheers!

mike