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There’s a lot of suspicion among reddit readers that the major bank who trade silver, particularly JP Morgan have sold extremely short.

Like the recent GameStop situation - if true, they can be squeezed and forced to cover those shorts at prices much higher

time will tell if true.

Indeed, we've heard the same theories. This particular JP Morgan theory has been out there a long time.

There may be significant differences though between commodities trading and stock trading. If the theory is true, and JP Morgan has just been selling paper backed by no real physical silver, then they can continue to just print more paper to depress the price. I know a great deal about the stock market mechanisms, and oddly quite little about commodities trading. I don't know if you can demand physical delivery when the options expire, as you can with stocks. Most is what I learned from Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy and Duke & Duke.

Also don’t know what the regulations are. I know in the stock market, the regulations about trading, settlement dates etc supposedly require shorts to locate and borrow before they short; but the broker dealers have an exemption and are allowed to ‘naked short’ for a period of up to 10 days before they have to settle the trade. And they can just as easily settle it, and then re-open it at virtually the same price so they can hold a naked short on the books, theoretically, indefinitely. Nobody is tracking the certificates by serial number, nobody is checking to make sure the same shares aren’t being borrowed twice, nobody is checking that someone isn’t shorting a trade generated by an already existing short (short ‘shares’ are not really shares at all, but just a promissory note to deliver a real share some time in the future so they are trading promissory notes for promissory notes for real shares as if they were real shares. It’s ridiculous and against the regulations but the regulators either don’t care, don’t understand, are hoodwinked, or actively look the other way). This all allows for significant depreciation in value by artificially increasing the supply of shares.

I got a feeling that in the commodities game, there is even less attention being paid to any of it. And again, I don’t know if you can actually demand physical delivery of a commodities option contract.

They buy future production at low prices and then sell it forward. Lots of it, including “naked” ounces which suppresses the short term price. The miners go all in it for short “we had a great quarter” buy our stock, but then a few years down the road if the price blows up they end up having to “high grade” (selectively pursue the richest portions) their mines to meet obligations and it ends up screwing up their long term operating plan OR driving them under when the prices falls and all the have to rely on for operating expenses is the low grade high extraction cost portions of the reserves.