Precious metals prices remain range-bound over the short-term after a devastating three year run.
From a technical standpoint, it doesn't look great; we are stuck in this limbo of tightly controlled price limbo while the world continues to melt apart for the 99.9%.
COMEX positioning for the big banks and speculators has not changed that much over the last few months.
JPM's short remains at around 50 days of world production.
In fact, these spec longs who have been hanging in throughout may be the reason we've remained range bound over the last couple of options expirations - like the one this week.
Prices are not going to move up from here until the paper pushers who control prices via the exchanges find a way to profit from it.
Regulatory capture happened long, long ago.
The Painted Tape
Now we even know that central banks intervene directly. Yes, most people get it. Everything is manipulated. But the precious metals are manipulated more so.
And the blind spot for most is that these metals still hold monetary status. Let them trade freely, and you will see what I mean immediately.
The problem is one that forms the foundation of this massive monetary debacle: belief.
If the mainstream financially educated can't figure out that something like jobs or inflation data are nothing but figments from a mad professor's imagination, how can we expect them to grapple with the concept that gold and silver are still basically money?
They choose to believe the madness, and therefore the mechanism will go on until it breaks.
Any public push toward regulation, taxation or confiscation would simply flame the fire faster than Walmart sells out of ammo each time gun control is mentioned by the authorities.
Take a 10 minute look the through the GATA archives if you want to understand how they get away with manipulating prices 24/7.
Pull up any archive article from Ted Butler, if you want to know fundamental mechanism for how they rig the game from the COMEX pits.
Check in with Nanex if you need to learn more about the HFT scourge that enables the powerful to pilfer the innocent on a daily basis.
Speaking of Nanex, check out the latest revelation they uncovered.
Central banks are being incentivized by the CME to directly intervene. Now they don't need the big bad bullion banks as their patsies.
They can just do it themselves.
This is a reflection of far detached we've become.
Some say, "So what?" If it's so predictable, it's game-able. The market is bigger than any of this ultimately so (in the meantime) make the best of it.
Most chose not to “go there” because it would be bad for the brand.
Enough money and time you can trade the illusion and call it the market if you want.
But the other side. There is a dark shadow cast. To get there requires intervention.
The highest form is interest rates; which, in effect, supports the bond market. Markets that have a physical asset, one that is liquid and capable of widespread ownership and recognition.
Another day, another conspiracy fact, another nail in the coffin of faith in a broken monetary system where "profits" will disappear just as fast the 0's and 1's with which they are created can travel across the collocated internet connections.
We end up with this grand illusion of reality that does nothing - except fuel an ultimately disastrous complacency.
Until this great vacuum of hope, faith, and belief is replaced with hard, cold reality.
It will probably happen so fast that most people will not even notice that the metals have taken off for the stratosphere.
