Ted Butler Commentary
October 21, 2009

For silver, in particular, the increase was shocking. The largest US bank (thought to be JPMorgan), or banks, increased its silver short position by more than 28%, or by 8,487 contracts to an all-time record of 38,375 contracts. Expressed in equivalent ounces, the US bank(s) increased its silver futures short position by 42,435,000 ounces to 191,875,000 ounces. With a short position of almost 192 million ounces, JPMorgan appears to be short 29% of the annual world mine production of silver (660 million oz). Never in history has one (or two) entities held a more concentrated position, long or short, in any commodity of finite supply.

In my estimation, if JPMorgan did not short sell more than 8,000 contracts, or 40 million ounces, silver would have been over $30 an ounce right now.