raid!! cartel smashes silver back under $35, page-23

Paper market will always be larger than the physical market, been like that for decades, and will continue for decades.

It allows anyone or any business to hedge against anything without having to take physical delivery: a purpose of these markets.

Oil is another where paper trades are spectacularly enormous compared to consumption, and consumption there is orders of magnitude larger than Silver and even Gold. Nymex and its lesser counterpart Comex will continue to run smoothly at these leverages.

With regard to 'manipulation', even if there is a hint of price being fundamentally low in the pure physical supply v demand dynamics, it would provide an opportunity for major market participants to make billions cleaning out those 'manipulators'. Especially with the leverage they can use to buy into the market ;)