this is from james turk, the founder of goldmoney.com

If someone were manipulating the silver market, you would see exactly what has actually occurred in silver over the past several days.

To manipulate the price you would use your buying power and accumulate long positions until you force silver above resistance in the high $18.40s and thereby trigger all the buy-stops sitting there, including the one we placed. You would then sell your long positions into those buy-stops and keep selling until (1) you became short and (2) your selling drove prices lower.

I have just described exactly what has just taken place in silver. What we have seen is a classic textbook case of market manipulation. We have seen it so many times before in recent years, it is the reason I warned on 18 August: “Let’s see if silver can hold this level, particularly with option expiry coming soon.”

I expect that we will see the rest of this repetitive pattern of manipulation play out over the next few days until this month’s options expire. I also expect that silver will remain under $18 during this period.

There may in fact be another bout of selling pressure by the shorts to shake out some more weak-hands. It would give the manipulators an even bigger profit when they buy back on even lower prices the short positions they established on the breakout above $18.40.

http://www.fgmr.com/manipulating-the-silver-market.html