It’s a raid OB.
What makes everyday action in PMs so exciting is that the price of PMs are suppressed, and have been for years. If the fiat prices of Gold and Silver were not suppressed, their high prices would rapidly become a crushing indictment of fiat and the Free Market would rush to buy them as a flight to safety.
The suppression is caused in general by false abundance, and on days like today by creating spikes in that false abundance.
False abundance in the PMs is created by paper Gold and Silver - ETFs, Gold certificates, multiple leasing of the same bit of Gold, shorting of PMs: anything which inflates the apparent supply of Silver or Gold.
Steep raids like today are created to create false market signals at critical decision points e.g. whenever the DOW is expected to open very low, whenever Obama gives a speech etc - all to drum home the message that PMs are not a wise haven for investment.
Perhaps more importantly they also act to shake out weak hands and allow the Raiders to buy real physical- or buy back shorts - at lower prices.
All of which is great news for normal people. The extremely heavy and continuing suppression of PM prices means that they are still affordable. I could kiss JP Morgan, except that I’d catch some ghastly disease.
Today buyers just got given a discount window. The impressive analyst TFerguson (http://www.tfmetalsreport.com/blog/2441/shakeout) believes that 1740 and 38 will be the lowest plausible values (for this raid) for Gold and Silver - so if you’re looking to jump in with new money those levels would represent your best opportunities this time around.
Hope this was helpful.
Just to tie this with a pretty bow:
Raids often happen on days when the Euro is expected to crash: this acts to pre-emptively channel Euro-refugees toward the dollar, and away from pesky physical Gold and Silver.
As always, your insight is helpful, a_c. Thanks.
Well put.