Silver is up 25% YTD through last Friday.  I have not checked every commodity and stock index, but if silver is not the best performing asset YTD, it’s in the top three.  What’s more remarkable is that this move has occurred despite vociferous anti-gold/silver propaganda flooding from Wall Street and the media.

The current “meme” is that the large net short position by the bullion banks against the large net long position of the hedge funds has set the market up for another predictable price raid by banks.   I do not know if the banks will be able to pull it off yet again.

Depends on whether or not the hedge funds have stop-losses set that the banks can smash with enough paper to trigger them or whether the hedge funds will keep buying the paper that the banks print. In the past, it gets to a point at which the hedge fund computers start selling and the banks can successfully attack the stop-losses. that’s what causes the waterfall drops.

Up until now every attempted price raid since February has been met with aggressive buying, especially in the junior miners.  Too be sure, the banks – under the direction of the Fed under the direction of the BIS – are getting geared up to take another run at taking down the price of gold/silver.   Whether or not they will be successful is another matter. There is a lot of cash on the sidelines which recently exited the stock and high yield bond markets and is looking to pile opportunistically in the PM sector.

Craig “Turd Ferguson” Hemke invited me on to his A2A  Podcast Show last week.  We engaged in a lively discussion about the precious metals and a lot of other timely issues which will affect the markets.   You can listen to the podcast by clicking here – TF Metals Reprot –  or on the image below.  Download as an MP3 here:   LINK