The following 2 paragraphs are extracted from a short article by Ted Butler.
" ... While I did not expect this sharp sell-off, its explanation should be clear in hindsight. The dealers wanted to reduce their short exposure and rigged prices lower during a thin trading time to get the tech funds selling below the key 50 day moving averages in gold and silver. The commercials, early this morning, sold a few contracts to get the ball rolling downhill and then pulled their bids until the tech funds starting selling in earnest as the moving averages were broken. Then the commercials bought back all the contracts the tech funds were coughing up. This should be obvious to everyone (save the regulators, who are averting their eyes.).
Additionally, the current sharp sell-off needs to be put into perspective. We did, after all, move sharply higher in the week or so into this sell-off. In fact, the relatively more severe sell-off in silver, given how mild the deterioration in its market structure was compared to gold’s, is encouraging in that the dealers really seem to be serious about closing as many of their silver short positions as possible. That makes sense to me, because if any big short position could cause them real trouble, it has to be silver. ...
The full article can be seen at http://news.silverseek.com/TedButler/1211910972.php
