I have written about money and perhaps even a bit about precious metals manipulation here before (check in the “economics” section), but I just saw something worthy of note, I think, as I also saw it yesterday, but was unable to capture the evidence.
Today, I caught it before it disappeared. First, whether you already believe it or not, in the spirit of any good audience, please willingly suspend disbelief, and humour me in my thinking that the precious metals markets are so heavily unbalanced and manipulated that it is almost silly to still keep calling them “markets” at all. It is more like a show being put on to keep the unsuspecting entertained, but more importantly, afraid of buying real metal. Some people might have the secret-decoder 3-D glasses, though, and I will here try to share my dim spectacles with you.
Below is a screen-shot of a TD “Active Trader” streaming quote and trading platform, and in the top right is a 1-minute (per “candlestick”) chart of the SLV ETF taken this morning, February 2 2011. Focus on the “inverted hammer” with the giant white “shadow” poking up to $27.82 that occurs at about 12:32 pm, at the very right of the chart, which occurred during a single minute with a share volume of over 220 thousand shares traded. It means that at least one of those shares traded hands at $27.82, or about a 30-cent premium over the current “market price” (click to enlarge).
Now look at the screen-shot below, the only difference being the elapse of a few minutes, and a “reload” of the chart.
POOF! Where did the inverted hammer go? That candle now shows no shadow, but a body-top at 27.52. It might not be so odd if it only happened just once, say, and one could put it down a glitch (though even that is *very* unlikely – all this stuff is so heavily CRC-checked, authenticated, etc, that simple errors like this simply do not occur – again, please trust me, I understand computers and networks and programs and protocols) but twice, on two consecutive days when silver is under a monstrous paper-selling attack? The very same event, the huge long shadow-up, subsequently to disappear off the charts?
When I saw it yesterday, I asked Christy to come in and see, it was so weird, and I had exclaimed “Wow! Hugely bullish!” but then it was gone…
Today I grabbed it. If it happens again, I will also yank the network connection so trades stop flowing on the L2 book view, so I can actually look at the trades. They were scrolled off the bottom before I could get them both times…
Can anyone explain this?
ben